The Summit Was Unprecedented, the Statement Vague and the Day Historic

Among the statement’s most glaring omissions, said Daniel R. Russel, a former diplomat who worked on North Korea for President Barack Obama, was the lack of reference to North Korea’s ballistic missiles. Mr. Kim’s offer to destroy the testing facility came as a late add-on, according to the president.

The statement was similarly vague about what security guarantees the United States would offer North Korea. Reducing the number of American troops in South Korea is not currently on the table, Mr. Trump said. But he repeated his desire to bring troops back from Korea and other distant deployments.

He also repeated his determination to keep imposing sanctions on the North until it abandons nuclear weapons. But he confirmed that China, the North’s largest trading partner, had eased a clampdown on cross-border trade in recent weeks — a reversal he attributed partly to the trade tensions between China and the United States.

Still, the president said he did not plan to return to bellicose threats like “fire and fury,” which fueled tensions last year and helped drive South Korea to seek a diplomatic overture to the North.

Appearing to accept the views of his predecessors, as well as most of his own military commanders, Mr. Trump said he could not imagine a war in a country where the largest city, Seoul, is only 35 miles from the border where the conflict would likely erupt.

For Mr. Trump, averting such massive bloodshed justified the risk of meeting with Mr. Kim. He bridled at critics who said he had elevated a brutal dictator by agreeing to meet, and had extracted little in return.

“If I have to say I’m sitting on a stage with Chairman Kim and that gets us to save 30 million lives — it could be more than that — I’m willing to sit on the stage,” Mr. Trump said. “I’m willing to travel to Singapore.”

Still, as ever, the president hedged his bets.

“I think, honestly, I think he’s going to do these things,” Mr. Trump said. “I may be wrong. I mean, I may stand before you in six months and say ‘Hey, I was wrong.’ I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of excuse.”