North Korea is building ICBMs at a facility outside Pyongyang, a sign that the country is continuing its weapons programs despite U. S. diplomacy.
WASHINGTON — President Trump has consistently touted the results of his North Korean diplomacy, insisting since his June summit meeting with Kim Jong-un that Pyongyang is no longer a nuclear threat and noting that its missile tests have stopped.
But like other foreign policy assertions from the White House, reality has proved more complicated.
North Korea has continued its work on missile and weapons programs since the leaders met, American officials say, including manufacturing new intercontinental ballistic missiles at a facility near Pyongyang, the capital, according to one Defense Department official. And North Korea continues to produce nuclear fuel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told senators last week.
Mr. Kim has little interest in giving up the North’s nuclear arsenal or rolling back its progress on ICBMs, experts who have long studied North Korea’s government and its missile programs believe. The North’s weapons work, including at a facility that creates ICBMs, has continued in the weeks after the summit meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim, said Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California.
American officials said they have not seen an increase in work in recent weeks but have watched the programs proceed at the same pace as in previous months. In particular, work on one to two ICBMs at Sanumdong, a missile manufacturing facility on the outskirts of Pyongyang, is consistent with the facility’s activity before the summit meeting, the Defense Department official said. The work on the new missiles was first reported by The Washington Post.
Some Trump administration officials have been frustrated that North Korea has continued its weapons work, viewing it as a violation of the spirit of the agreement between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump.
But other American officials and outside experts said it should have been expected that North Korea would continue work at its missile facilities because Mr. Kim made no explicit agreement to halt the manufacturing of its missile systems or nuclear fuel.
“They are expanding everything,” Mr. Lewis said. “And to be fair, they have never said they agreed to give up nuclear weapons. The South Koreans have said the North Koreans have agreed to give up nuclear weapons. Trump has said they have agreed to give them up. But they have never said it.”
The North’s big investment in its nuclear program in recent years made it unlikely that it would undertake an abrupt change of gears, Mr. Lewis said. Since Mr. Kim came to power, there has been a steady increase in North Korea’s investment in missile technology and nuclear arms.
