Does Kim Jong-un want nuclear weapons?

Baskets of the North and South together

Brussels At the Singapore summit, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump agreed to seek nuclear disarmament on the Korean peninsula. They left other stages to their teams. Today, Foreign Minister Trumps, Mike Pompeo, is leaving for the third time in North Korea for negotiations with Kim and his entourage. Sunday, US negotiators advanced to Panmunjom, the village on the northern and southern border

Gestures of goodwill

On the sidelines of the June summit, Trump said that North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat. US security experts find this announcement too premature. The US military intelligence service told the CNN news channel that, according to its estimate, Kim has no intention of completely disarming his main arsenal, or at least not at this time. Also The Washington Post wrote this week that the US security services doubted Kim's good intentions.

After the summit, both parties make gestures of good will. Trump said the joint military exercises of the United States and South Korea, North Korea released three US prisoners and shut down its main nuclear testing site.

America is aiming for a significant reduction in Kim's core program by 2021

But according to experts, Pyongyang has not taken any fundamental initiative that would indicate its intention to actually end its main arsenal. Indeed, according to US security services, after the Singapore summit, evidence has shown that North Korea is trying to deceive the United States on the number of nuclear warheads it owns and is trying to keep a number of secret factories.

Satellite Photos

Academics also doubt the good intentions of North Korea. Recent satellite photos show that Kim's regime is still working on its nuclear business, according to the Institute of International Studies at Middlebury in Monterey, California. In the photographs, researchers have seen evidence that North Korea is working to expand a plant in the northeast that produces nuclear missile parts.

At the same time, the importance of this new information should not be overestimated, nuance Hong Min, an analyst at the National Institute of Reunification of the South Korean capital, Seoul. He pointed out that North Korea and the United States have only signed an agreement in principle. Kim is therefore not yet bound by concrete steps towards the gradual elimination of his nuclear arsenal.

According to John Bolton, National Security Advisor for Trumps, Pompeo heads to the North Korean delegation. But according to Pompeo himself, who really speaks on behalf of Trump, it may take much longer and America is aiming for a significant reduction towards the end of Trump's first term in 2021.