Winter Storms Delay Airport Flights across U.S.
WHITFIELD: President Trump says a location has been picked for his next summit with Kim Jong-un, but he is not saying where. An agreement on a second summit was announced after the president and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held a meeting in the Oval Office with North Korea's lead negotiator on nuclear talks. Here's the president earlier today.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We had a very good meeting yesterday with North Korea. That was an incredible meeting. It lasted almost two hours. And we've agreed to meet sometime, probably the end of February. We've picked a country, but we'll be announcing it in the future. Kim Jong-un is looking very forward to it, and so am I. We've made a lot of progress that has not been reported by the media, but we have made a lot of progress.</s>WHITFIELD: CNN International Correspondent Will Ripley joins me now from Beijing. So is there any indication of where this second summit might be?</s>WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're hearing that Vietnam is probably the most likely of the locations that have been thrown around. Hawaii, I highly doubt, along with Bangkok. I also was reading a report that it could happen again in Singapore, but I don't see that happening either. I think Vietnam is, again, probably the most likely. That's what my sources are telling me based on the fact that it's close to North Korea, it has a good relationship with both the U.S. and North Korea, and it's a country that was once at war with the United States and has since risen from the ashes, transformed its economy, and could potentially be a model for North Korea as they try to grow their own economy. But location aside, there are a lot of other things that need to be sorted out. President Trump, you heard him just now, obviously he is very optimistic and he says that there is lots of progress being made behind the scenes. But keep in mind, the president shortly after Singapore, he famously tweeted that the nuclear threat from North Korea was over. And then there were these U.S. intelligence reports showing them expanding their missile bases, and analysts have been telling me that North Korea probably has more nuclear weapons now than they did at the beginning of the diplomatic process. Even the Pentagon put their missile defense strategy on Thursday, the same day the North Korean delegation was arriving in Washington, and they called North Korea an extraordinary threat to the U.S. So there's still some very significant issues here. North Korea has an arsenal. The U.S. wants them to get rid of it. And North Koreans say the U.S. needs to get rid of sanctions in order for them to do anything. They still need to build a lot of confidence, a lot of trust. So there are some talks happening right now in Sweden, in Stockholm, lower level negotiations with the U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun and his negotiating counterpart Choe Son- hui, who is North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister. If those lower level talks can hammer out some preconditions and they can come to a compromise on easing sanctions and also actually taking tangible steps toward denuclearization, then the second summit might actually be something as opposed to a photo op with another vaguely worded statement, Fred.</s>WHITFIELD: Will Ripley in Beijing, thank you so much. Let's bring in Gordon Chang, he's a columnist for "The Daily Beast" and the author of "Nuclear Showdown, North Korea Takes on the World." Gordon, good to see you. So how crucial do you believe this second summit is?</s>GORDON CHANG, AUTHOR, NUCLEAR SHOWDOWN, NORTH KOREA TAKES ON THE WORLD": I actually don't think it's that crucial at all. President Trump actually talked about this last May, he said look, maybe we need one, two, three, maybe even more summits. And that really diminishes the importance of any one of them. And I can see why Kim Jong-un wants this summit. He wants to be able to delay more. He wants legitimization. He wants to use it to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington. I don't understand why we want it, though.</s>WHITFIELD: And this is already a pretty big win for North Korea, right? Getting to, a, having the first summit, and then having this Oval Office meeting, and now a second summit that is on the schedule.</s>CHANG: Yes, the first summit in Singapore in June was an enormous win for Kim Jong-un because it showed him on the world stage as an equal to the world's most powerful figure, President Trump. And so that helped him back home I think in terms of solidifying his hold on the regime. And it certainly allowed him to reach out to South Korea and to other countries as well. So they got a lot from that first summit. We didn't get very much at all, if anything. So I don't see why we're going to have another of these photo opportunities unless there's some real agreement.</s>WHITFIELD: So how will you game real progress? If there is indeed another summit, how will you assess what has been learned from the first summit, what may have been the U.S. gains from it, and how the U.S. builds on that?</s>CHANG: Well, there are two things that people are talking about as really crucial for coming out of this second summit to show progress. One of them is a declaration from North Korea of its missile and nuke sites, and the second is a firm table for disarmament. If you don't get those things, then this is just another opportunity to talk and stall, which means another win for North Korea.</s>WHITFIELD: What do you want to see, besides a document, what would you want to see in this second summit, that would, I guess, look more serious or more convincing to you that there was something gained on both sides from it?</s>CHANG: I'd like to see this summit not occur. I'd like to see President Trump go back to doing what made him successful prior to the June summit, which was maximum pressure, sanctions. What we've seen in the last seven or eight months is open violation of the sanctions, not only by the North Koreans, not only by the South Koreans, not only by the Chinese but the Russians as well. And this is really allowed Kim Jong-un to do what he wants, to think he can just sort of just play out this process. So I think we need to go back to those sanctions rather than talking.</s>WHITFIELD: Gordon Chang, always good to see you. Thank you so much.</s>CHANG: Thanks, Fred.</s>WHITFIELD: And don't miss former U.S. secretary of state John Kerry as he joins CNN's David Axelrod for "The Axe Files" tonight at 7:00 eastern only on CNN.