‘I would be honored to do it,’ he says in Bloomberg interview 
 
 U.S. President Donald Trump said he would meet with Kim Jong Un amid heightened tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program if the circumstances were right. 
 
 “If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it,” Trump said Monday in an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg News. “If it’s under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that.” 
 
 Trump says he is open to meeting North Korea’s Kim (audio) (Source: Bloomberg) 
 
 The U.S. has no diplomatic relations with North Korea, and as recently as last week Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. would negotiate with Kim’s regime only if it made credible steps toward giving up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. 
 
 Trump speaks during an interview in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on May 1. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg 
 
 “Most political people would never say that,” Trump said of his willingness to meet with the reclusive Kim, “but I’m telling you under the right circumstances I would meet with him. We have breaking news.” 
 
 Asked later about Trump’s comments, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that “clearly conditions are not there right now” for a meeting. He said “we’ve got to see their provocative behavior ratcheted down.” 
 
 North Korea has become the most urgent national security threat and foreign policy issue facing Trump as his first 100 days in office passed. Kim’s regime has continued developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in defiance of international condemnation and sanctions. Military analysts have said North Korea is on course to develop a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile that could reach the U.S. mainland as soon as 2020, during Trump’s term in office. 
 
 On Tuesday, South Korea said a U.S. missile shield deployed in the country against China’s objections is now technically ready for operations. South Korea’s Defense Ministry had said previously it expected the system to be fully operational by the end of the year. 
 
 The government in Seoul on Tuesday played down the chance of a near-term meeting between Trump and Kim. 
 
 ‘Right Direction’ 
 
 The South Korean and U.S. stance on Pyongyang remains the same, Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck said at a briefing. "The door for dialogue is open" if Pyongyang decides to go in the "right direction" of denuclearization. China Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a regular briefing that North Korea and the U.S. should both show good faith, and that talks were the best option to resolving the tension. 
 
 Even if the conditions were right, from the U.S. perspective, a meeting would be unlikely. Kim has not met any major world leader since taking charge after his father’s death in late 2011 and hasn’t left his isolated country. His nuclear program gives him prestige at home. And leaving North Korea, even for a short period, could expose him to the risk of a coup by opponents in the military or Pyongyang’s elite, analysts say. 
 
 North Korea’s official news agency on Tuesday released a commentary from its Minju Joson newspaper saying the U.S. is “seriously mistaken” if it thinks the regime will compromise. 
 
 “The Trump administration would be well advised to learn how humbly the preceding administrations were put in the awkward position of lowering the fist of pressure they had raised before the DPRK,” the commentary said, using the formal initials for North Korea’s name. 
 
 Detailed, Verified 
 
 Kim would need to be willing to discuss detailed and verifiable steps for denuclearization, said Joseph DeTrani, a former senior adviser to the U.S. director of national intelligence who helped broker a 2005 agreement on Pyongyang’s nuclear program. 
 
 “Not only would they need to show a willingness to discuss denuclearization, but you’d need to stop nuclearization,” he said. “No one would want to sit down for talks while they are still launching missiles and having nuclear tests.” 
 
 Kim’s predecessors weren’t much more accessible or cooperative. Over more than two decades, six-nation talks, bilateral negotiations, food aid and UN sanctions have all failed to deter the Kim dynasty’s quest for a nuclear arsenal. That has left the Trump administration relying increasingly on China, North Korea’s neighbor and top trading partner, to exert pressure on the regime. 
 
 While Trump didn’t spell out what conditions would have to be met for him to sit down with Kim, Evans Revere, a former U.S. diplomat in South Korea, said “it’s almost impossible to imagine North Korea meeting the conditions that would allow such a meeting to occur.” 
 
 “North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty when it was caught cheating, violated every one of the denuclearization commitments it made, and now threatens the United States and its allies with nuclear weapons,” Revere, a senior adviser at the Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington, said in an email. “That’s hardly the basis for a presidential meeting with Kim Jong Un.” 
 
 Tensions have escalated since Trump vowed in January that he wouldn’t let North Korea develop a nuclear weapon capable of reaching the U.S., and North Korea has labeled American military moves in the region as acts of “intimidation and blackmail.” North Korea has continued to test missiles this year after carrying out two nuclear tests last year. 
 
 Read how North Korea defies the world with nuclear ambitions -- a QuickTake 
 
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 While dispatching an aircraft carrier group and a submarine to the region, the Trump administration has emphasized the use of economic sanctions and diplomacy to persuade North Korea to curtail its nuclear program. Trump has said he’s encouraged by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s efforts to defuse the situation. Trump and Xi met last month at the U.S. president’s private club in Florida and have talked several times since. 
 
 Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was the last top U.S. official to meet with a North Korean leader. She discussed the country’s nuclear program with Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, in 2000. At the time, she was the most senior official to visit years since the Korean War. ||||| Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump said Monday he would be willing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "under the right circumstances" to defuse tensions over North Korea's nuclear program. 
 
 "If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it," Trump told Bloomberg News in an interview Monday. "If it's under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that." 
 
 No sitting US president has ever met with the leader of North Korea while in power, and the idea is extremely controversial. 
 
 White House press secretary Sean Spicer, however, said later on Monday that the US would first need to see changes in North Korean behavior before a potential sit-down. 
 
 "We've got to see their provocative behavior ratcheted down immediately," Spicer said. "Clearly, the conditions are not there right now." 
 
 Spicer also offered an explanation for Trump's view, expressed to CBS, that Kim is a "smart cookie." 
 
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 "He assumed power at a young age when his father passed," Spicer said. "There was a lot of potential threats that could have come his way. He's managed to lead a country forward, despite the concerns that we and so many people have. He is a young person to be leading a country with nuclear weapons." 
 
 Speaking Tuesday, a Chinese official said "the only feasible way to a denuclearized Korean peninsula as well as peace and stability there is through dialogue and construction." 
 
 "This is also the only correct choice," Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said, calling on all sides to "find a breakthrough in the resumption of peace talks as soon as possible." 
 
 Trump's comment about meeting Kim comes as tensions have risen in recent months between the US and North Korea as Pyongyang has sought to advance its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and Washington has made a show of force in the region to deter their use. 
 
 The US directed an aircraft carrier-led strike group to the region as well as deployed a new anti-ballistic missile system to South Korea. 
 
 CIA Director Mike Pompeo arrived in Seoul over the weekend plans to attend internal meetings with US Forces Korea and embassy staff, according to Daniel Turnbull, a spokesperson for the US Embassy. 
 
 Despite pivotal elections in South Korea next week, Pompeo has no plans to meet with any of the presidential candidates. Leading candidates have promised a new era of relations with Pyongyang. 
 
 Trump said during the presidential campaign that he would be willing to meet with Kim Jong Un, explaining in June that "there's a 10% or 20% chance that I can talk him out of those damn nukes 'cause who the hell wants him to have nukes." 
 
 "I'll speak to anybody," Trump said then. 
 
 His comments received criticism from both sides of the aisle at the time, and since Trump has become president, top officials in his administration have taken a more equivocal position on the issue. 
 
 In the Bloomberg interview, Trump gave a nod to his willingness to take an unconventional approach. 
 
 "Most political people would never say that," he noted. "But I'm telling you under the right circumstances I would meet with him." 
 
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 The North Korean nuclear issue has quickly become one of the top national security concerns for the Trump administration and administration officials have repeatedly stressed the increasing urgency of the situation. Trump has focused on finding a diplomatic solution to the North Korean issue -- working increasingly closely with China -- but has also refused to rule out a military solution to the problem. 
 
 Mixed messages from the Trump administration regarding its policy on North Korea have also further obscured what the next phase of the standoff on the Korean Peninsula could be. 
 
 On Monday, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus told "CBS This Morning" that he could not see a scenario in which Trump and Kim sat down face-to-face unless Pyongyang was willing to "disarm and give up what he's put in mountainsides across his country and give up his drive for nuclear capability and ICBMs." 
 
 Speaking to NPR last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson indicated the US is willing to engage in talks with Pyongyang, a possibility dismissed in April by Vice President Mike Pence until North Korea denuclearizes.
– He's the heir to his father's empire, he attended an exclusive boarding school, his foes criticize him as potentially unstable—and President Trump says he's willing to meet with him. Trump tells Bloomberg that he would be "honored" to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, but it would have to be under the right circumstances. "If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it," Trump says. Analysts say a Kim-Trump summit would be unprecedented and is highly unlikely: Kim hasn't met any other major world leaders and is believed to be unwilling to leave Pyongyang because he fears a coup, meaning Trump would have to go to North Korea. White House press secretary Sean Spicer later told reporters that conditions are clearly "not there right now" for such a meeting. "We've got to see their provocative behavior ratcheted down immediately," he said. The meeting proposal—which Trump described as "breaking news" during the interview—is yet another highly controversial move by the president, though CNN notes that Trump said during his campaign that he would be willing to "speak to anybody," including Kim. He said he'd be willing to meet the leader because "there's a 10% or 20% chance that I can talk him out of those damn nukes, 'cause who the hell wants him to have nukes." (In an earlier interview, Trump described Kim as a "smart cookie.")