It’s hard to think of an encounter quite like President Trump’s spur-of-the-moment summit with Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone between the communist and free halves of Korea. We watched on the internet from Maine. As Mr. Trump stepped toward the demarcation line at Panmunjom only to be swarmed by photographers, we suddenly wondered whether he might be kidnapped.

Laugh not. It almost happened to us on one of the several visits that we’ve made to the joint security area where the Armistice Commission meets from time to time. Longish-wooden sheds, which can be entered from the north or south, straddle a raised strip of concrete that marks the 38th parallel at which the fighting between the communists and the United Nations was halted in 1953.

When we visited the DMZ in the late 1970s, the rules were that reporters could walk around the commission buildings and go north of the line something like — we’re writing this from memory — 30 yards. If a reporter got in trouble within that limit, our side would rescue him. If he was north of the limit when he got into trouble, the hapless scribe would be on his own. It was just too explosive.

So we ambled north of the line five or ten yards and were soon surrounded by a scrum of North Korean “journalists” dressed in dark suits. They began to ply us with questions. One eventually asked why President Carter had gone back on his promise to pull America’s GIs out of South Korea. We speculated that it was probably because he wanted to get re-elected.

Not, for a variety of reasons, a good answer.

It ignited a hornet’s nest of hostile questions, and soon we realized the scrum was edging us northward. In a few moments, we could be beyond rescue. When this epiphany hit us, we bolted to the south, shouldered our way through the pack of North Korean press, and got back to the DMZ, across which we stepped casually, none the worse, albeit wiser, for the wear.

It would be vainglorious of us to suggest that, with all the presidential security, Mr. Trump’s predicament was anything other than metaphorically similar. Nor do we share his instinct for flattery of the North Korean party boss, Mr. Kim. Then again, too, we don’t think he’s talking to our ilk when he rattles on about what an honor it is to have developed a friendship with Mr. Kim.

He clearly took a gamble in asking for a meeting with Mr. Kim, away from whom he had stalked at the summit in Hanoi. He clearly wants Secretary Pompeo and our special envoy for North Korea, Steve Biegun, to try to keep the talks alive. We have our doubts in respect of whether it will bear fruit, Secretary Pompeo’s stature notwithstanding. Alternate strategies, though, haven’t produced success.

President Obama was still seeking a meeting with Mr. Kim when the clock ran out on his administration. Now it may be that Mr. Kim is simply playing for time, in hopes of ending up opposite, say, a President Warren or Sanders. They might be all too happy to negotiate over a socialist future for the peninsula. Then again, Mr. Trump might win a second term and finally beckon Mr. Kim to try a more liberal and capitalistic approach.