Pompeo makes surprise trip to North Korea to finish plans for Trump-Kim summit

As President Trump withdrew from one nuclear disarmament deal on Tuesday, his secretary of State was making a surprise trip to North Korea in pursuit of another.

Mike Pompeo made his second unannounced visit to the long-isolated nation in just over a month to complete plans for a summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expected next month.

On the flight to Pyongyang, Pompeo said the first, secret trip in early April, when he was still director of the CIA, was largely an “intel effort” to set ground rules for what could be a historic meeting. Until then, the administration only had South Korea’s word that the North was interested in sitting down for talks with Trump.

Pompeo told two reporters traveling with him to North Korea that he hoped to “begin to put some outlines around the substance of the agenda for the summit,” to come up with “a framework for a successful summit.”

The secretary of State, not even two weeks on the job, also said he planned to make clear to North Korean officials what not to expect from the talks, including that their nation would get no sanctions relief until “such time as we achieved our objectives.” Trump has defined his goal as ridding the Korean peninsula of Kim’s nuclear weaponry.

“We’re hoping to set out that set of conditions that will give them this opportunity to have a historic, big change in the security relationship between North Korea and the United States,” Pompeo said, “which will achieve what the president has tweeted about and talked about: complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization.”

One nagging issue has been that Kim probably does not define “denuclearization” the same way as Trump does. Kim has agreed to halting tests, but shedding his formidable arsenal is something he’s widely expected to resist.

Contrary to what Trump has stated as recently as Tuesday, Pompeo said the location and date of the summit had not been established.

He also said he had no commitment from the North Koreans on the release of three Americans imprisoned there. Nor was he certain he would be meeting with Kim himself, as he did on the first trip, or with “senior leaders” who spoke for the government.

The State Department had kept this trip, which took off from Washington on Monday night, under wraps. Trump publicly disclosed it at the end of his televised announcement that he is pulling the United States out of the landmark, multinational Iran nuclear deal.

Asked if the administration’s reneging on one deal might discourage North Korea from trusting the Americans to stick to an agreement, a senior State Department official traveling with Pompeo said that was not the case. Some critics, including former President Obama, said otherwise after Trump’s action on Iran. Others suggested Pompeo’s trip may have been timed to distract from the Iran decision, which was widely criticized by allied leaders.

“I think our diplomacy in North Korea speaks for itself and answers the question that you’re asking,” said the official, who briefed the reporters on condition of anonymity. Trump is “now showing what we’ve said all along: We are committed to a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis.”

tracy.wilkinson@latimes.com

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