Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump sign a ‘comprehensive’ document

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump have signed a document at the end of their historic Singapore summit on Tuesday, ushering in the international community's hopes for a major change to tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The two leaders emerged from a half-day of private talks, both individually and with their respective teams, to sign an as yet undisclosed document that Trump said would "take care of a very big and very dangerous problem for the world".

"We were very proud of what took place today, I think our whole relationship with North Korea and the Korean Peninsula is going to be a very much different situation than it has been in the past," Trump said after the signing event at the Capella Singapore resort hotel.

Before the signing ceremony, Kim said: "The world will see a major change. I would like to express my gratitude to President Trump for making this meeting happen."

Trump and Kim are in Singapore in the first meeting between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader. The two leaders might conclude a deal on the denuclearization issue, months after they exchanged fiery retorts over North Korea's ballistic missile tests.