South Korea ecstatic over Trump-Kim meeting in Vietnam later this month

Seoul, Feb 7: US President Donald Trump's announcement on Tuesday, February 5, that he will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Vietnam on February 27 has excited South Korea, one of the few countries in the region that have real stakes in peace.

Seoul looked forward to the two leaders building off their first meeting in Singapore last year to make "more specific and substantial progress" this time, Washington Post reported.

The Blue House - official residence of the president of South Korea - also said that the choice of picking Vietnam as the venue of the second summit was symbolic and signalled that friendship with the US is possible after a prolonged hostility.

The South-east Asian nation was one of the names during the height of the Cold War over which the power blocs clashed and the US attack on it has remained immortal in the annals of history, creating waves of protests all over.

"Vietnam and the United States used to point guns and knives at each other but have now become friends," South Korean presidential spokesman Kim Eui-keum told a news conference Wednesday.

"We expect Vietnam to be a perfectly suitable backdrop to a new history to be written between North Korea and the United States."

On Tuesday, Trump said in his State of the Union address that his administration was pursuing peace in North Korea and noted the return of several American citizens who had been arrested by the North Korean regime as well as the hermit kingdom's suspension of nuclear missiles.

Trump also said in his address that the US would have been in a major war with North Korea had he been not the president.