President Donald Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba at the White House Friday and said the U.S. will have relations with the North Korean regime of dictator Kim Jong Un.

"We will have relations with North Korea, with Kim Jong Un. I get along with them very well," Trump told reporters alongside Ishiba.

Trump, who first met Kim in 2018 in Singapore and became the first sitting president to meet with the leader of North Korea, is looking to build off his personal diplomacy he established with Kim during his first term.

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"We had a good relationship. And I think it's a very big asset for everybody that I do get along with them," the president said. 

Trump met Kim again in 2019 and became the first president to step foot inside North Korean territory from the demilitarized zone.

Trump said Japan would welcome renewed dialogue with North Korea because relations between Japan and North Korea remain tense since diplomatic relations have never been established.

"And I can tell you that Japan likes the idea because their relationship is not very good with him," Trump said.

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Ishiba said it's a positive development Trump and Kim met during Trump's first term. And now that he has returned to power, the U.S., Japan and its allies can move toward resolving issues with North Korea, including denuclearization.

"Japan and U.S. will work together toward the complete denuclearization of North Korea," Ishiba added.

Prime Minister Ishiba also addressed a grievance involving the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. Although North Korea released some of the prisoners in the early 2000s, Pyongyang never provided Japan with any explanation for the abduction of its citizens, and there can be no normalization of relations between Japan and North Korea until the issue is resolved.

"And so our time is limited," Ishiba warned.

"So, I don't know if the president of the United States, if President Trump is able to resolve this issue. We do understand that it's a Japan issue, first and foremost. Having said that, we would love to continue to cooperate with them," the prime minister added.

Amid a wave of early shakeups in the new administration, President Donald Trump has twice this month proposed "denuclearization" talks with U.S. adversaries.

"Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capacity is something we don’t even want to talk about today, because you don’t want to hear it," Trump mused in remarks to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, last week. 

"I want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think it’s very possible," suggesting talks on the issue between the U.S., Russia and China. 

Such an idea could represent a major thawing in U.S. relations with two global adversaries – but begs the question of whether the U.S. could trust the nations to hold up their end of the deal.  

President Vladimir Putin announced Russia would suspend its participation in the New START treaty in 2023 over U.S. support for Ukraine. Russia had frequently been caught violating the terms of the deal. But China has never engaged in negotiations with the U.S. over arms reduction. 

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Trump reiterated to Fox News' Sean Hannity on Wednesday that he'd been close to a "denuclearization" deal with Russia during his first term. 

"I was dealing with Putin about the denuclearization of Russia and the United States. And then we were going to bring China along on that one. I was very close to having a deal. I would have made a deal with Putin on that denuclearization. It's very dangerous and very expensive, and that would have been great, but we had a bad election that interrupted us."

The Defense Department now expects that China will have more than 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, a near-doubling of the estimated 600 they possess right now. 

In a speech on Jan. 17, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that "amid a ‘hybrid war’ waged by Washington against Russia, we aren’t seeing any basis, not only for any additional joint measures in the sphere of arms control and reduction of strategic risks, but for any discussion of strategic stability issues with the United States."

But Putin, in an address on Monday, struck a more diplomatic tone: "We see the statements by the newly elected president… about the desire to restore direct contacts with Russia. We also hear his statement about the need to do everything possible to prevent World War III. We, of course, welcome this attitude." 

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said of Trump's comments at a news conference on Wednesday: "China's development of nuclear weapons is a historic choice forced to be made. As a responsible major country, China is committed to the path of peaceful development and friendly cooperation with all countries in the world."

Experts argue Russia is using its leverage over nuclear arms control as a means for the U.S. agreeing to favorable terms to end the war with Ukraine.

"Russians are ‘me first’ painstaking negotiators, and what they're doing in this case, is they're clearly laying a bit of a trap," said John Erath of the Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation.

"It makes sense dangling arms control, which they perceive as something that we want, in front of us and saying, ‘Oh, by the way, we'll talk about reducing nuclear weapons,’ as an incentive to get us to throw the Ukrainians under the bus."

But whether Trump was revealing a policy priority or speaking on a whim with the Davos comments is anyone’s guess.  

The president took heat during his first term for meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to discuss nuclear reduction. That effort fell apart, and Trump resorted to threatening to rain "fire and fury" on North Korea. 

"I think he's very sensitive to the dangers of nuclear war, and realizes that in many ways, we're closer to that today than we have been in many, many decades," said George Beebe, a director at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. 

One thing most experts agree on is that the U.S. nuclear program is expensive and outdated. With some 3,700 warheads in its arsenal, the U.S. is expected to spend $756 billion to store and maintain its nuclear weapons between 2023 and 2032. 

"Regardless of reductions, however, the administration and Congress must continue modernizing and ensuring the reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal while eliminating excessive spending where possible," said Andrea Stricker, deputy director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy's nonproliferation program. 

Arms experts admit that Russia has cheated on arms treaties, but U.S. intelligence capabilities have grown to ensure compliance.

"We've done it throughout the Cold War to varying degrees, and I think we've gotten better and more capable in our intelligence community of monitoring compliance with these sorts of things. So that is certainly a feasible approach to take," said Beebe.

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But China and Russia aren’t the only U.S. adversaries with nuclear weapons. North Korea is estimated to have an arsenal of 50 nuclear warheads, Iran is on the precipice of enriching uranium to potent enough levels for a bomb. 

"Before engaging in arms control talks, Washington needs a strategy for how it will simultaneously deter two peer nuclear competitors, Russia and China, which could combine forces with states like North Korea and Iran to attack or coerce the United States," said Stricker.

In the four decades between the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan in 1945 and the first arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, the world was on edge as the two superpowers raced to claim the world's largest arsenal. In 1987, Washington and Moscow signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which led to the dismantling of thousands of bombs.

But over the years, the U.S. and Russia lost their monopoly on civilization-ending weapons: now nine countries are nuclear-armed, rendering bilateral treaties less and less effective. 

Ukraine captured two wounded North Korean soldiers who were fighting on behalf of Russia in a Russian border region, South Korea’s intelligence service said, confirming an account from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday.

Seoul's National Intelligence Service (NIS) told AFP it has "confirmed that the Ukrainian military captured two North Korean soldiers on January 9 in the Kursk battlefield in Russia."

The confirmation comes after Zelenskyy said in a post on the Telegram messaging app that the two captured North Korean soldiers were wounded and taken to Kyiv, where they are communicating with Ukrainian security services SBU.

SBU released video that appears to show the two prisoners on beds inside jail cells. The authenticity of the video could not be independently verified.

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A doctor interviewed in the SBU video said one soldier suffered a facial wound while the other soldier had an open wound and a lower leg fracture. Both men were receiving medical treatment.

SBU also said one of the soldiers had no documents at all, while the other had been carrying a Russian military ID card in the name of a man from Tuva, a Russian region bordering Mongolia.

Ukraine’s military says North Korean soldiers are outfitted in Russian military uniforms and carry fake military IDs in their pockets, a scheme that Andrii Yusov, spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, says could mean Moscow and "its representatives at the U.N. can deny the facts."

Despite Ukrainian, U.S. and South Korean assertions that Pyongyang has sent 10,000 – 12,000 troops to fight alongside Russia in the Kursk border region, Moscow has never publicly acknowledged the North Korean forces.

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While reports of their presence first emerged in October, Ukrainian troops only confirmed engagement on the ground in December.

On Thursday, Zelenskyy put the number of killed or wounded North Koreans at 4,000, though U.S. estimates are lower, at around 1,200.

Despite North Korea’s suffering losses and initial inexperience on the battlefield, Ukrainian soldiers, military intelligence and experts suggest first-hand experience will only help them develop further as a fighting force.

"For the first time in decades, the North Korean army is gaining real military experience," Yusov said. "This is a global challenge — not just for Ukraine and Europe, but for the entire world."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A North Korean M1989 Koksan self-propelled howitzer has allegedly been spotted on Russia’s front lines, according to reports on Tuesday after news regarding the shipment of two of the big guns was first reported in November.

The artillery weapon has a reported range of up to 37 miles when employing rocket-assisted shells and is capable of firing between one and two shells every five minutes. 

News of the weaponry, along with a video apparently showing one of the howitzers in a combat location, was first reported by East 2 West news, and images of the howitzer popped up on social media, though Fox News Digital could not independently verify the location of the weapon.

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According to open-source intelligence posted on X in November, the howitzers were geolocated and found to have been passing through Siberia by rail less than a month after the U.S. confirmed North Korea had deployed up to 12,000 soldiers to Russia and some five months after Pyongyang and Moscow signed a defensive treaty pledging to militarily back each other.  

It remains unclear if the video of the North Korean big gun was taken from Russia’s Kursk region, where Pyongyang’s soldiers have been sent to counter Ukraine’s incursion first launched in August. 

Both Ukraine and Russia have reported heavy losses in the region, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claiming that some 3,800 North Korean troops have been killed or wounded in a Sunday interview. 

The Ukrainian military on Monday claimed that some 15,000 Russian soldiers had been killed and 23,000 injured in Kursk during the past five months.

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Moscow, according to a Tuesday BBC report, alleged that at least 49,000 Ukrainian troops had been lost, though it has not differentiated between the number of Ukrainians wounded or killed.

Fox News Digital has not been able to independently verify either nation’s casualty reports. 

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed on Monday that Ukrainian forces made "tactical advances amid continued intensified offensive operations" in Kursk. 

"Ukrainian forces may be continuing to conduct long-range strikes against Russian rear areas in Kursk Oblast as part of efforts to use integrated strike capabilities to support ground operations," the think tank added. 

Russian forces continued limited ground operations towards the city of Kharkiv in northern Ukraine on Sunday and Monday, but reportedly saw little advances – an operation Ukraine has in large part successfully countered since May.  

Head of the Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration, Oleh Synehubov, said on Monday that Ukraine's recent offensive operations in Kursk have been able to reduce the number of Russian ground attacks in northern Kharkiv Oblast, reported the ISW.

Reports on Monday suggested that Russian forces had made some advances in Donetsk and had captured Kurakhove, a front-line town in the Donbas region. The seizure of this town could indicate Russian forces are closing in on Ukrainian troops, who have been hammered for months looking to stop Russian forces from encircling the town of Pokrovsk, and which could give Russian forces a strategic win and access to supply routes connecting the area to Zaporizhzhia. 

Ukraine has not officially confirmed whether Kurakhove has fallen.

Russian forces are not assessed to have made any strategic advances along other front-line areas at this time. 

Russia is planning to share advanced satellite technology with North Korea, according to a warning from Secretary of State Antony Blinken. 

"The DPRK is already receiving Russian military equipment and training. Now, we have reason to believe that Moscow intends to share advanced space and satellite technology with Pyongyang," Blinken said while in Seoul, using North Korea’s official name.

Such technology would allow North Korea to identify targets and aim strikes at adversaries across the world, including the U.S. As of last year, North Korea was estimated to have an arsenal of 50 nuclear weapons. 

The warning comes as North Korea fired a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan, expanding its weapons tests in the weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. 

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In one of his last moves as head of the State Department, Blinken was visiting Seoul for talks with South Korean allies about the North Korean nuclear threat. He'll also visit with officials in Japan, France, Italy and the Holy See. 

Supplying North Korea with satellite technology would come after North Korea supplied Russia with troops and arms to fight in its war on Ukraine. 

Russia "may be close" to accepting North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, reversing decades of commitment to denuclearizing the DPRK. 

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Russia helped North Korea launch its first successful satellite in 2023. A Russian rocket launched Iranian satellites into orbit in November, ratcheting up the 21st century space race between the U.S. and its foes. 

Last year, Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, issued an ominous warning calling on the Biden administration to declassify information that was later revealed to be about Russia's anti-satellite capabilities. 

In May, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb warned that Russia was developing an "indiscriminate" nuclear weapon designed for space, highlighting its potential impacts on communications, commerce and national security.

In a year-end political conference, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to implement his "toughest" anti-U.S. policy and condemned the Biden administration for strengthening ties with South Korea and Japan, describing the alliance as a "nuclear military bloc for aggression."

During his administration, President-elect Trump met with Kim three times for talks about nuclear programs. However, emboldened by Russian support and a lessened enforcement of international sanctions, Kim may be less likely to stand down in talks with the U.S. than ever before. 

It is also unclear if Trump would put the same emphasis on bolstering U.S. alliances in Asia that the Biden administration did. In the past, he has complained about the cost of keeping 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea to deter threats from the north and pushed for Seoul to increase its own defense contributions. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.