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North Korea’s future ‘brimming with prosperity’ if it gives up nukes: US
The US and South Korea “remain committed to achieving the permanent, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula,” secretary of state Mike Pompeo has said.
The future of North Korea is “brimming with peace and prosperity” if it agrees to denuclearisation, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has said after talks with the country’s leader Kim Jong-un which he described as “warm”.
US President Donald Trump and Kim are scheduled to meet on June 12 in Singapore. Pompeo is the only American official to have met the North Korean leader — and twice, first time as CIA director and the past week as secretary of state — and has been Trump’s lead sherpa on the North Korea talks.
“Our conversations were warm,” Pompeo told reporters on Friday at a joint news briefing with visiting South Korean foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha.
“We were each representing our two countries, trying our best to make sure that we were communicating clearly, that we had a shared understanding about what our mutual objectives were.”
He said the US and South Korea “remain committed to achieving the permanent, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.”
“If Chairman Kim chooses the right path, there is a future brimming with peace and prosperity for the North Korea – North Korean people.”
On US troops in South Korea, foreign minister Kang said it was an issue between the two allies “not to be put on the table with North Korea”.
Pompeo said the United States would remain on board to help develop the North’s economy, which has been devastated by its own mismanagement and crippling international sanctions.
After the Korean war, the South emerged to become a leading world economy.
