United States President Donald Trump said on Monday he wanted to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this year and that he was open to further trade talks with South Korea even as he lobbed new criticisms at the visiting Asian ally.

“I’d like to meet him this year,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as he welcomed South Korea’s new President, Lee Jae Myung, to the White House. “I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong Un in the appropriate future.”

Trump and Lee held their first meeting in tense circumstances. The US president lodged vague complaints about a “Purge or Revolution” in South Korea on social media before later walking the comments back as a likely “misunderstanding” between the allies.

Despite clinching a trade deal in July that spared South Korean exports harsher US tariffs, the two sides continue to wrangle over nuclear energy, military spending, and details of a trade deal that included $350 billion in promised South Korean investments in the United States.

North Korea’s rhetoric has ramped up, with Kim pledging to speed his nuclear program and condemning joint US-South Korea military drills. Over the weekend, Kim supervised the test firing of new air defense systems.

Since Trump’s January inauguration, Kim has ignored Trump’s repeated calls to revive the direct diplomacy he pursued during his 2017-2021 term in office, which produced no deal to halt North Korea’s nuclear program.

In the Oval Office, Lee avoided the theatrical confrontations that dominated a February visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and a May visit from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Lee, deploying a well-worn strategy by foreign visitors to the Trump White House, talked golf and lavished praise on the Republican president’s interior decorating and peacemaking. He told reporters earlier that he had read the president’s 1987 memoir, “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” to prepare.

As the leaders met, the liberal South Korean encouraged Trump to engage with North Korea.

“I hope you can bring peace to the Korean Peninsula, the only divided nation in the world, so that you can meet with Kim Jong Un, build a Trump World [real-estate complex] in North Korea so that I can play golf there, and so that you can truly play a role as a world-historical peacemaker,” Lee said, speaking in Korean.

South Korea’s economy relies heavily on the US, with Washington underwriting its security with troops and nuclear deterrence. Trump has called Seoul a “money machine” that takes advantage of American military protection.

DIFFICULT ISSUES

Trump is pressing South Korea on the trade deal they already reached and over a number of issues related to the countries’ military alliance.

He also said he would raise with Lee “intel” he had received about investigations in that country that he said targeted churches and a military base. The White House did not respond to a request for more information.

Earlier this month, Seoul police raided Sarang Jeil Church, headed by evangelical preacher Jun Kwang-hoon, who led protests in support of ousted South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

The police were investigating pro-Yoon activists who stormed a court in late January after it extended Yoon’s detention over his December attempt to declare martial law.

In July, prosecutors investigating Yoon’s actions served a search warrant on the Korean part of a military base jointly operated with the United States. South Korean officials have said that U.S. troops and materials were not subject to the search.

Members of Korea’s far-right movement, especially evangelical Christians and supporters of Yoon, see the ex-president as the subject of communist persecution.

Trump is expected to pressure Lee to commit to more spending on defense, including toward the upkeep of 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea.

Asked if he would reduce U.S. troop numbers there to give the US more flexibility in the region, Trump told reporters, “I don’t want to say that now,” but that maybe South Korea should give the U.S. ownership of the “land where we have the big fort,” a possible reference to Camp Humphreys, a US Army garrison in South Korea.

Before the meeting, Lee told reporters it would be difficult for Seoul to accept US demands to adopt “flexibility” over US military stationed in South Korea, a reference to the issue of using US military for a wider range of operations, including China-related threats.

Lee wants to chart a balanced path of cooperation with the US, while avoiding antagonizing South Korea’s top trade partner, Beijing.

As he headed to the US, Lee sent a special delegation to Beijing, which delivered a message calling for normalized ties with China.

Lee also told reporters some officials in Washington were calling for changes to the trade deal. The South Korean president will highlight some of South Korea’s expected US investments when he visits a shipyard in Philadelphia owned by the country’s Hanwha Group on Tuesday.