[13] In September 2018, The New York Times reported that "North Korea is making nuclear fuel and building weapons as actively as ever" but did so quietly, "allowing Mr. Trump to portray a denuclearization effort as on track.

"[14] Two months later, The Times reported that North Korea appeared to be engaged in a "great deception" by offering to dismantle one missile base while developing sixteen others, and that this expansion program was long known to American intelligence but contradicted Trump's public assertions that his diplomacy was yielding results.

[20] The February 2019 summit was confirmed after Kim Yong-chol, North Korea's top negotiator, met with Trump in the Oval Office on January 18, 2019.

[37][38][39] Bloomberg and the South Korean newspaper Munhwa Ilbo anticipated the location of the second Trump–Kim Summit to be Hanoi, due to Vietnam maintaining good diplomatic relations with both North Korea and the United States.

[44] North Korean officials had repeatedly investigated the State Guest House and the Hôtel Métropole, Hanoi's first international hotel, the latter of which became the site for the summit.

[1] There were a few key attendees at the dinner; seated at the round table were U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, DPRK Vice Chairman Kim Yong-chol, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ri Yong-ho.

The leaders went into a closed-room meeting, but the planned working lunch between Trump and Kim Jong Un and the potential joint signing ceremony were canceled.

After preliminary negotiations between Trump and Kim Jong Un went over a period of time, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters waiting to cover the lunch that it had been called off.

Ri offered a different account of his country's position compared to Trump: North Korea had only proposed a partial lifting of sanctions.

[58] NBC News reported that American negotiators had dropped their demand that North Korea provide a detailed inventory of its nuclear and missile programs on the second day of the summit.

"[59] Cheong Seong-chang, vice president of research planning at the Sejong Institute in South Korea, said: "After the first Trump–Kim summit, for 260 days, they did not waste their timeliness.

"[60] BBC News believed that Kim Jong Un could have potentially learned from Vietnam's social, political and economic history[61][62] during the second Trump-Kim summit.

The BBC believed these are some cases North Korea could learn from Vietnam's practice to help them in improving their economy by attracting foreign investors and developing closer relations with other countries.

[65] The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Kim Jong Un's previous propaganda was changed into patriotism and economy, and in improving the relationship between the United States, China, and South Korea.

[67] Jung Da-min, staff reporter at The Korea Times, believed that the Hanoi summit was not a total loss since it still resulted in diplomacy between the two countries.

[68] Hwang Jihwan, a Professor in the Department of International Relations at the University of Seoul, believed the no-deal outcome of the Hanoi summit was because both parties asked for more than what each could give.

[69] The Chosun Ilbo reported on May 30, 2019, that Kim Hyok-chol, the lead working-level negotiator for North Korea at the Hanoi summit, was executed along with four other diplomats in March 2019.

[73][74] A Monmouth University poll found that while 65% of those surveyed—including 42% of Democrats—agreed that holding the summit was a good idea, 44% said it was likely to help reduce the North Korean nuclear threat.

Asking continuously for an all nukes for sanctions deal is deemed as malicious in its intent and illogical and that it would put a strain on U.S.–North Korean relationships, which were volatile in the past, and could result in more problems for the U.S. and its allies in Asia, according to Bandow.

Compared to the USSR, North Korea is also not a normalized country, but Trump was able to directly engage with Kim Jong Un, something George W. Bush and Barack Obama were not able to do in their combined 16-year term.

[77] U.S. Senior Expert on North Korea, Frank Aum, said that future goals of the Trump administration should be the founding of smaller deals that resulted from the Hanoi summit.

Deals that include the declaration of the end of the Korean War, the exchange of liaison offices in both Pyongyang and Washington, some sanctions relief, and verified dismantling of some of North Korea's nuclear facilities (Nyngbyon, Punggye-ri, and Dongchang-ri) are attainable.

[80] Abby Bard, a research associate for Asia policy at the Center for American Progress, suggested Trump and Kim Jong Un's teams need critical space between them to build trust and verify the intentions between the two parties.

[81] Despite the collapse of the Hanoi summit, Katharine Moon, professor of political sciences and the Wasserman Chair of Asian Studies at Wellesley College, said that there were good things that came out of it: it opened doors for further negotiations in the future, and these talks require working-level counterparts that aim to pursue respective and mutual interests between the two countries to breakthrough their engagement.

In previous talks, both leaders agreed to reconnect the railways and roads that run through both their countries, normalize a factory park in the Kaesong Industrial Zone, and allow South Korean tourists to visit the Mount Kumgang resort again.

[90][91] Joseph Yun, the American Special Representative for North Korea Policy until March 2018, said of the summit's outcome: "This really speaks to the lack of preparation.

In the speech he gave to the Conservative Political Action Conference, he mentioned that there were positive developments in negotiating the return of American prisoners in North Korea, and the remains of soldiers killed in the Korean War.

Putin believed that Kim Jong Un needed international security guarantees to give up North Korea's nuclear arsenal and program.

"[110] South Korean National Intelligence Service chief Suh Hoon said there was recent transport vehicle activity at the Sanumdong ICBM factory.

[111] Some analysts believed that the renewed activity at Sohae and Sanumdong was designed to pressure Washington back to the negotiating table, rather than to actually restart the nuclear testing program.