Kim has become the first North Korean leader to visit Vietnam since 1964, when his grandfather and the country's founder, Kim Il Sung, traveled to Hanoi via China to meet North Vietnam's then leader Ho Chi Minh.
Footage captured by the Japanese TV network TBS shows Kim Jong-un, a heavy smoker, taking a pre-dawn cigarette break on Tuesday at Nanning railway station in southern China during his 70-hour journey to Vietnam for his two-day meeting with the United States president.
Trump said late a year ago he and Kim "fell in love", and on the eve of his departure for the second summit said they had developed "a very, very good relationship".
The summit venue, the colonial and neoclassical Sofitel Legend Metropole in the old part of Hanoi, came with its own dose of history: Trump was trying to talk Kim into giving up his nuclear arsenal at a hotel with a bomb shelter that protected the likes of actress Jane Fonda and singer Joan Baez from American air raids during the Vietnam War. Currently, officials in the US estimate that North Korea has up to 60 nuclear weapons.
But Pyongyang sees denuclearization more broadly, seeking an end to sanctions and what it sees as U.S. threats - usually taken to include the American military presence in South Korea, and sometimes in the wider region.
Their first meeting in Singapore last June failed to produce any obvious gains, although Trump declared it a success.
"The ambiguity and obscurity of the term "denuclearization" only exacerbates the skepticism about both the US and North Korean commitments to denuclearization".
On Wednesday, Trump will be meeting Vietnam's President and Secretary-General of the Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong as well as the country's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
"So long as Kim doesn't embarrass Trump publicly by testing a nuclear weapon or a ballistic missile, domestically Trump can keep rinsing and repeating", Narang, author of the book Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era tells VOA.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan: We're going to fight until the end
Matteo Guendouzi is in midfield with Lucas Torreira, while Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan support Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. And winger Mkhitaryan said: "Well we are not looking at the table at the moment because we still have lots of games to play".
For Trump, a deal that eases the North Korean threat could hand him a big foreign-policy achievement in the midst of domestic troubles.
Trump and Kim are due to meet for dinner later in the evening, their first engagement together in Vietnam.
Trump made no comment to reporters on his aircraft, but had previously tweeted his hopes for a "very productive" meeting, reiterating that North Korea could enjoy economic riches if it gave up its nuclear weapons.
Thousands of Vietnamese lined the sidewalks as Trump's motorcade entered the city, some waving small American, North Korean and Vietnamese flags.
USA intelligence officials have said there is no sign Kim will ever give up his entire arsenal, and United Nations investigators say human rights have not improved in North Korea.
The US President said he was certain "Chairman Kim" would "make a wise decision". These could include "things like exchange of the liaison offices, a declaration to end the Korean War and probably a commitment to. starting peace treaty negotiations" with South Korea.
That might not be of particular concern to Mr Trump, who has openly questioned the cost of the large U.S. troop presence and recently forced the negotiation of a new cost-sharing agreement with South Korea.
He knows the importance that Mr Trump attaches to... -North Korea summit in Vietnam.
Whether or not there will be one likely is going to depend heavily on what progress the summit yields of peace talks.
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