US President Donald Trump has said that he planned to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and said the Asian nation held 57 "very powerful" nuclear weapons.
The remarks come on Wednesday as Trump ordered Pentagon officials to cut short joint exercises with the South Korean military, writing in a Sunday social media post that they sent a message to Pyongyang that was "totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful."
Trump and Kim met three times in his first spell in the White House, and at the time he said they "fell in love" after exchanging "beautiful letters." But they haven't met in his second term.
In recent days Trump has dropped growing hints about communications with Kim, although he wouldn't confirm on Wednesday that the pair were exchanging letters.
The leaders' relationship cooled after face-to-face meetings in 2018 and 2019, including a brief exchange at the demilitarised zone between the Koreas in which Trump became the first sitting US president to step into North Korean territory.
"I know Kim Jong-un very well, and he's going to be fine as long as we have a smart president," Trump told reporters on Wednesday during a tour of the helipad he is constructing on the White House's historic south lawn.
"They should have never allowed it. If I were president, I wouldn't have allowed it. But he's got them."
There have been varying estimates by experts over the years on how many nuclear weapons North Korea has.
In June, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that North Korea has "possibly assembled around 60 warheads, possesses enough fissile material to produce at least 30 more."
