Absent in statements on the secretary of state’s visit to North Korea is any indication that Kim Jong-un will dismantle his nuclear weapons.
SEOUL, South Korea — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met on Sunday with Kim Jong-un of North Korea as he tried to get him to take steps toward denuclearization and arrange another summit meeting with President Trump. Here are four things Mr. Pompeo got — and didn’t get — from the meeting.
After Mr. Pompeo’s visit, hopes are rising for a second meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim.
President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, who was briefed by Mr. Pompeo on his trip to Pyongyang, said the North and the United States had agreed to hold its second summit meeting “as early as possible” to follow up on the vaguely worded agreement on denuclearizing North Korea that the two reached in Singapore in June.
But Mr. Pompeo left Pyongyang without a location and date for what his department called “the upcoming second summit.” He left that to talks between Stephen E. Biegun, Washington’s new point man on North Korea, and Choe Son-hui, the North’s vice foreign minister.
In the proposed second summit meeting, Mr. Trump hopes to deliver major progress in his efforts to denuclearize North Korea, while Mr. Kim has vowed not to give up his nuclear weapons without “corresponding” concessions from Washington.
“We’re not quite there yet, but we’ll get there,” Mr. Pompeo said on Monday. “Sometimes that last issue is hard to close.”
After Mr. Pompeo’s visit, Washington announced that Mr. Kim had invited inspectors to visit its Punggye-ri nuclear test site to confirm that “it has been irreversibly dismantled.”
In May, North Korea destroyed the Punggye-ri site, a network of underground tunnels where its six nuclear tests were conducted. It allowed international news crews to film engineers dynamiting the tunnels, but barred outside experts or inspectors, raising questions on whether it destroyed only the tunnel entrances so it could reopen them for more tests.
