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Vietnam deports Kim Jong-un impersonator ahead of Kim-Trump summit in Hanoi

Agencia EFE
Hanoi, Hoàn Kiếm, Hanoi, VietnamUpdated: Feb 25, 2019, 04:25 PM IST
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File photo. Photograph:(AFP)

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Donald Trump is due to attend a second summit with the North Korean dictator on Wednesday and Thursday.

An impersonator of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Monday said Vietnamese authorities were deporting him from the country, just 24 hours before the real Kim was expected to arrive in Hanoi ahead of a summit with the president of the United States.

Donald Trump is due to attend a second summit with the North Korean dictator on Wednesday and Thursday.

In a Facebook post, the comedian, known as Howard X, said three officers had escorted him to the airport in the capital, where he boarded a Vietnam Airlines flight bound for Singapore.

The police had detained him on Friday to question the impersonator, who is a resident of Hong Kong, and told him that his visa was "invalid."

"My real crime was looking like the president of North Korea," the comedian said, who also published a photograph of him bidding farewell to an impersonator of Donald Trump, whom the local authorities have allowed remaining in the country for several more days but have barred him from any public performances.

The pair kissed and hugged as they said their goodbyes in front of a throng of cameras and reporters at a hotel in Hanoi on Monday before Howard X was escorted to the airport.

The real Kim Jong-un is expected to arrive Monday or Tuesday in Hanoi for a state visit before the summit with the US president later this week.

In the first visit by a North Korean leader to Vietnam since the reunification of the Southeast Asian country in 1975, Kim will meet with the president and General Secretary of the Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, at the presidential palace in Hanoi.

Kim and Trump are scheduled to hold their second summit in the Vietnamese capital after meeting for the first time in Singapore in Jun. 2018.

The two are expected to discuss the stalled denuclearization of the Pyongyang regime, which the pair agreed to work towards after their summit last year.

Howard X and Trump impersonator Russell White also made headlines in the run-up to that first meeting in Singapore.

The fake Kim had said that Singaporean authorities had briefly detained him at the airport upon his arrival, but he was allowed to remain for the duration of the summit.