President Donald Trump told a cheering crowd at a campaign rally that there was once tough talk "back and forth" between him and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "and then we fell in love."
Trump said at the Saturday night rally in West Virginia: "He wrote me beautiful letters and they're great letters. We fell in love."
He joked about criticism he would get from the news media for making a comment some would consider "unpresidential" and for being so positive about the North Korean leader.
"Why has President Trump given up so much?" Trump said in his mock "news anchor" voice. "I didn't give up anything."
He noted that Kim is interested in a second meeting after their initial meeting in Singapore in June was hailed by Trump as a big step toward denuclearization of North Korea.
But denuclearization negotiations have stalled.
More than three months after the June summit in Singapore, North Korea's top diplomat Ri Yong Ho told world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly Saturday that the North doesn't see a "corresponding response" from the U.S. to North Korea's early disarmament moves. Instead, he noted, the U.S. is continuing sanctions aimed at keeping up pressure.
Trump took a much more optimistic view in his rally speech.
"We're doing great with North Korea," he said. "We were going to war with North Korea. Millions of people would have been killed. Now we have this great relationship."
He said his efforts to improve relations with Kim have brought positive results — ending rocket tests, helping free hostages and getting the remains of American servicemen returned home.
And he defended his unusual approach in talking about relations with Kim.
"It's so easy to be presidential, but instead of having 10,000 people outside trying to get into this packed arena, we'd have about 200 people standing right there," Trump said, pointing at the crowd directly in front of him.
On Monday at the United Nations General Assembly Trump lauded the North Korean strongman -- who is accused by the UN and others of widespread human rights abuses -- as "terrific", one year after Trump eviscerated Kim from the same platform.
Trump used his debut address at the UN General Assembly 12 months ago to threaten to "totally destroy" North Korea and belittle its leader as "rocket man," prompting Kim to respond by calling the president a "mentally deranged US dotard."
Those were among a series of playground-type slurs the leaders of the two nuclear-armed states hurled at each other, setting the world on edge.
Last August, after US media reported Pyongyang had successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead to fit into a missile, Trump warned Pyongyang not to threaten the United States or it would face "fire and fury like the world has never seen."
Kim had earlier compared comments by Trump to the bark of a "rabid dog," and Trump derided Kim as a "sick puppy" -- before the apparent outbreak of puppy love.
Trump met Kim in Singapore in June for the first-ever summit between the two countries that have never signed a peace treaty.
The summit led to a warming of ties and a halt in Pyongyang's missile launches, but there has been little concrete progress since.
North Korea's foreign minister Ri Yong Ho on Saturday told the UN there was "no way" that his country would disarm first as long as the US to push for tough enforcement of sanctions against Pyongyang.
