SEOUL – South Korea’s National Intelligence Service believes North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, is open to meeting with President Trump again.

Although the summit “did not materialize” when Mr. Trump was in Korea before the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, the South’s powerful intelligence agency insists “various channels confirmed that North Korea has been preparing for dialogue with the U.S. behind the scenes.”

The assessment appears in a letter from the NIS to leaders of the intelligence committee of South Korea’s national assembly in which the NIS perceives “subtle changes” in North Korean rhetoric. Mr. Kim has “hinted at conditional dialogue with the U.S.” while refraining “from direct remarks on nuclear armament,” the report states.

The NIS’S analysis comes despite reports that Mr. Kim is ordering a military construction unit to work on  “rebuilding not only roads and railways, but also all sorts of facilities, including military warehouses” damaged during the war in Ukraine, according to a South Korean website, Daily NK, noted for its sources inside North Korea.

Mr. Kim, shipping a steady stream of artillery shells and other arms and ammunition, is making heroes of the soldiers that he has ordered to fight for the Russians in territories bordering Ukraine.  Dedicating a memorial hall in Pyongyang in their honor, he declared “a new history of combat unity has begun.” North Koreans and Russians “shared blood in the same trench” forming a “solid invincible relationship that shares the fate of life and death,” he said.

The NIS, however, does not think Mr. Kim’s bond with Russia’s President Putin precludes another meeting with Mr. Trump, who has seen him three times, most recently at the truce village of Panmunjom on the North-South Korean line in June 2019.

“Based on closer ties with Russia and improved North Korea-China relations, North Korea is pushing for U.S.-North Korea relations,” said the NIS statement to the national assembly members. “We anticipate that a North Korea-U.S. summit could be pursued again after the March 2026 South Korea-U.S. joint military exercise.”

The NIS drafted its assessment while the American secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, was in Seoul talking to South Korea’s president, Lee Jae-myong, about shifts in the American defense of Korea. Most importantly, Mr. Lee emphasized “regaining of wartime operational control” of Korean troops during his five-year term as president, which ends in 2030.  The top American general takes command of Korean as well as American troops in war time — a policy that Koreans have long opposed.

The Americans and Koreans have been talking for at least ten years about OPCON — operational control — but progress has been delayed by the technicalities and complications of working closely in time of war under separate commands. The possibility of a deal, however, lies in Americans using bases in South Korea for operations outside Korea, including the defense of Taiwan.

South Korea, wary of upsetting Communist China, its largest trading partner and a close ally of North Korea, has not wanted American assets in Korea — notably fighter planes — used for anything other than defense of the South.

“Flexibility for regional contingency is something we would take a look at,” Mr. Hegseth remarked at a press conference at the South’s defense ministry,  hinting at an understanding under which American planes could play war games elsewhere.