South Korea's Spy Agency Sees Chance of Trump-Kim Summit 'At Any Time'

South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) has concluded that a summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un could materialize at any moment, according to a report carried by the Taipei Times on Tuesday. The assessment, delivered by South Korea's top spy agency, marks one of the clearest signals yet that Seoul's security establishment believes a renewed round of top-level diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang is drawing closer.

The judgment was not made in isolation. Bloomberg separately reported a similar assessment, suggesting that intelligence and media circles beyond South Korea are converging on the view that conditions may be ripe for another face-to-face encounter between the two leaders.

Trump and Kim previously met three times during Trump's first term in office, starting with the historic Singapore summit in 2018, followed by talks in Hanoi in 2019 that collapsed without a deal, and a brief meeting at the inter-Korean border later that year. Denuclearization talks have been largely dormant since, even as Trump has periodically voiced willingness to re-engage with Kim after returning to the presidency.

Any renewed summit diplomacy would carry direct consequences for South Korea, which sits at the center of the security dynamics on the peninsula. Seoul has consistently sought a voice in any US-North Korea negotiations, wary that a leader-to-leader deal could reshape sanctions, denuclearization terms or the US troop presence without adequately addressing South Korean concerns.

The NIS assessment stops short of confirming that a summit is imminent or that concrete planning is underway; rather, it reflects an intelligence judgment that the political and diplomatic groundwork could allow such a meeting to be arranged on short notice. North Korean state media has not commented on the report.

The disclosure adds to a series of subtle signals in recent months pointing to possible movement in US-North Korea relations, even as formal channels between the two governments remain largely frozen. Analysts say South Korea will be watching closely for any indication that Washington and Pyongyang are preparing to restart direct contact.