History. In none of the four such visits did a meeting with Donald Trump come within 26 days. The only meeting within eight weeks came on day 51, in Hanoi, a third country.
Hunch. China hosts the APEC summit of Pacific leaders on 18 and 19 November, and the summit has fuelled talk of a Trump and Kim meeting.
The APEC market resolves the same way with an earlier date: YES if Trump and Kim meet in person anywhere on or before 19 November 2026, the last day of the APEC leaders' summit in Shenzhen. A handshake without talks or a meeting of envoys does not count, and The Guardian and BBC News settle it if whitehouse.gov does not open.
We looked for cases where the leader of a country with no diplomatic ties to the US visited its main backer, after already meeting the US president in person. We found four such visits from 2018 to 2025: three trips by Kim Jong Un to Beijing and one by Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa to Turkey. Each time the US president was Donald Trump.