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Visit to the DMZ

While the stated purpose for Trump's trip to South Korea is to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the president also may travel to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.

The White House has not confirmed whether he will.

\"We're not going into details of the president's schedule yet. There are some things that are still coming together,\" a senior administration official said.

While the White House won't say if the president will travel to the DMZ, a senior administration official said there are \"no plans\" for the president to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during the trip.

Asked directly on Wednesday whether he'll meet with Kim, Trump said, \"I'll be meeting with a lot of other people, not quite him, but I may be speaking to him in a different form.\"

The two leaders continue to exchange letters, and the president sent Kim a new letter as recently as last week.

Trump had planned to visit the DMZ on his last trip to South Korea, but the idea had to be scrapped due to bad weather that made a helicopter trip there too risky.

Either way, the visit comes amid a flurry of diplomatic activity that has U.S. officials optimistic. China's president made his first state visit to Pyongyang, Kim dispatched his sister Kim Yo Jong to the DMZ to meet briefly with South Korean officials and Kim has exchanged positive, but nonspecific letters with Trump.

The South Korean president said in an interview with Korean news agencies on Wednesday that North Korea and the United States are engaged in \"behind-the-scenes talks\" to set up a third summit between Trump and Kim. The White House declined to comment on Moon's comments.

Tensions with Iran

While Iran may not be on the formal agenda at the G-20, the gathering of major allies in Japan will provide an opportunity for key world leaders to discuss the escalating regional tensions and plans to respond.

The meeting of allies comes just a week after the president pulled back from a military strike on Iran in retaliation for shooting down a U.S. drone that Iranians contend was in Iranian airspace, but that the U.S. says was in international airspace.

But even as the possibility of military conflict between the U.S. and Iran has been averted, at least in the short term, Conley said the challenge for the U.S. going into the G-20 is a lack of an agreement with allies on how to approach Iran, especially after the U.S. withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal last year.

\"There is no allied coordinated unified effort vis-à-vis Iran and this is going to -- we don't even have the British in support of our position, which was clear during the U.K. state visit by President Trump,\" Conley said.

NEW: Pres. Trump departs for G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. https://t.co/CFdzczE0fE pic.twitter.com/7kWbPkZ99y

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) June 26, 2019

Sitting down with the Saudi crown prince

Trump also plans to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman for a bilateral meeting that the White House said would be an opportunity to discuss the escalating tension with Iran.

But beyond the security cooperation between the two nations in countering Iran in the region, the meeting stands out as the first formal meeting between the president and the crown prince since the killing of journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi.

The encounter comes after the United Nations extrajudicial executions investigator released a report last week stating there is \"credible evidence\" to warrant further investigation into the role that Saudi leadership, including the crown prince, in Khashoggi's death.

Trump spoke by phone with the crown prince late last week but has said he did not raise the U.N. report in that conversation and further brushed off the report's recommendation that the FBI further investigate Khashoggi's death.

\"I think it's been heavily investigated,\" Trump said, emphasizing the importance of the security and business relationship with Saudi Arabia.

\"I'm not like a fool that says, 'We don't want to do business with them,'\" Trump said in an interview with NBC News' Chuck Todd. \"And, by the way, if they don't do business with us, you know what they do? They'll do business with the Russians or with the Chinese. They will buy -- we make the best equipment in the world -- but they will buy great equipment from Russia and from China.\"

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