North Korea's Kim arrives home after Trump summit

North Korea's Kim Jong Un arrived home on Tuesday, state media said, completing his long journey through China after his Hanoi summit with US President Donald Trump ended without a nuclear deal. Kim's return to Pyongyang marked the end of a marathon 4,000-kilometre journey from Vietnam, where his much-hyped second summit with Trump came to an abrupt halt last week. Earlier, Donald Trump had said he cut short his nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un because the two sides could not agree on sanctions. “It wasn’t a good thing to be signing anything,” Trump said during a post-summit news conference. “We had some options, and at this time we decided not to do any of the options.” Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn’t do that,” Trump said. 

Kim Jong Un trip was followed by an official visit to the country, where Kim paid tribute to Vietnam's late revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.

"Kim Jong Un... arrived at home on Tuesday after successfully wrapping up his official goodwill visit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam," the official KCNA news agency said.

"At 3 o'clock in the early morning, his train entered the railway station yard" in Pyongyang, it added.

Kim has visited China, the North's key diplomatic protector and main provider of trade and aid, four times, and it had been thought he may have made a stop in Beijing to see President Xi Jinping.

Talks between Kim and Trump in Hanoi finished abruptly, with a signing ceremony scrapped after the pair failed to reach an agreement on walking back North Korea's nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

Donald Trump had said that the congressional questioning last week of his former lawyer may have contributed to the failure of his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—even as his national security advisor claimed the Hanoi meeting was a success. A high-stakes second summit to strike a disarmament deal with Kim broke up in disarray in Vietnam Thursday, with Trump saying: “Sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times.” The summit took place at the same time a Democrat-led congressional committee was grilling Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, who labelled his ex-boss a “racist”, “conman”, and “cheat”.