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SEOUL, South Korea – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that he had made a "good trip" to North Korea. He met his leader, Kim Jong-un, on Sunday and made progress in diplomatic efforts to denuclearize the country.
Mr. Pompeo published a photo of him with Mr. Kim on his Twitter account Sunday.
"We had a good trip to Pyongyang to meet with President Kim," he wrote. "We continue to make progress on Singapore Summit agreements," referring to the meeting between Kim and President Trump in June.
Later Sunday, Mr. Pompeo arrived in South Korea, where he planned to meet President Moon Jae-in and other officials.
Mr Pompeo was on his fourth visit to Pyongyang Sunday in the hope of a breakthrough in negotiations on the terms of denuclearization of North Korea. His meeting with Mr. Kim gave him the opportunity to ensure that the two nations are on the same level of action regarding Kim's determination to work for the "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." ".
Mr Pompeo also asked whether a second summit meeting between Mr Kim and Mr Trump was possible and, if so, what the results might be.
Harry J. Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Washington-based National Interest Center, described the meeting as a "landmark event for relations between the United States and North Korea." with a huge inconvenience "if things went wrong. "
But discussions on denuclearization have since stagnated. And Trump's critics said his eagerness to push for a resolution to the North Korean nuclear crisis, one of the most pressing issues he inherited from the Obama administration, blinded him to the misleading nature of the country.
In July, when Mr. Pompeo would have made his last trip to Pyongyang, Mr. Kim would not even have met him, and the North has accused Washington of having made a "request for unilateral denuclearization and similar to that of a gangster. When Mr. Pompeo planned another trip to Pyongyang in August, Mr. Trump canceled it at the last minute, when it was clear that no major concessions were expected from the North to abandon his nuclear arsenal.
Mr Moon, from South Korea, then intervened as mediator. He flew last month to Pyongyang for his third summit meeting with Mr. Kim.
At a joint televised press conference internationally with Mr Moon, Mr Kim said he wanted the Korean Peninsula to be "free of nuclear weapons and nuclear threat." ". He also proposed to dismantle the missile test facilities and invite international experts to be transparent. . He also proposed to "permanently dismantle" the Yongbyon nuclear complex, the main center of the North for the production of fuel for nuclear bombs – but only if Washington took the "corresponding" measures.
Since then, Trump has seemed extremely optimistic, citing "beautiful letters". He said that Mr. Kim had written to him that he was ready to meet Mr. Kim soon. He even said that he and Mr. Kim "fell in love".
But nothing indicates that North Korea has changed its decades-old trading strategy, which often involves making commitments that it does not take.
In his address to the UN General Assembly last month, Ri Yong-ho, his foreign minister, said that, even though his government's commitment to denuclearization was " strong and firm, "it was" impossible "for his country to unilaterally disarm if Washington did not take steps to demonstrate that it was no longer a threat. Noting the persistence of American hostility, Mr. Ri cited Washington's campaign aimed at escalating sanctions against the north and its refusal to declare the end of the Korean War, which did not take place. is arrested only by a truce.
But Washington said it would maintain sanctions as a means of pressure until North Korea becomes neutral. He also insisted that the North first begin the denuclearization process by submitting a complete inventory of its nuclear program and accepting intrusive inspections to verify that no nuclear warheads or fissile material are hidden.
Previous nuclear talks between North Korea and the United States had collapsed on how to verify that the North had surrendered to all its nuclear activities.
If the United States insisted that North Korea provide a complete nuclear inventory and undergo a tedious audit first, the negotiations will derail again as in the past, some analysts warned.
"Going down this road is a dead end," said Siegfried S. Hecker, former director of the The Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has visited North Korea several times, said at a conference in Seoul on September 27.
Instead, he said the two sides should start with risk-reduction measures, such as the dismantling of the Yongbyon complex, and leave verification difficult and tedious at a later phase of denuclearization, once both parties will trust each other.
Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, of South Korea, also raised the idea of leaving inspection and verification at a later stage in his remarks during an interview with the national broadcaster KBS on 21 September.
