North Koreans arrive at White House to deliver letter
A top aide to Kim Jong Un visited the Oval Office on Friday, ready to hand off a letter from the North Korean leader to President Donald Trump amid talks between the two sides aimed at reviving an on-again, off-again nuclear summit.
Kim Yong Chol arrived at White House Friday afternoon, where he was greeted by chief of staff John Kelly. Kelly then whisked Kim into the building, where he was met with Trump.
He is the most senior North Korean to visit the White House in 18 years, a highly symbolic sign of easing tensions after fears of war escalated amid North Korean nuclear and missile tests last year.
Kim’s arrival in Washington came a day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that he was confident negotiations with Pyongyang were “moving in the right direction.”
“Our two countries face a pivotal moment in our relationship, and it would be nothing short of tragic to let this opportunity go to waste, Pompeo said in New York after meeting with Kim.
Pompeo would not say that the summit is a definite go for Singapore on June 12 and could not say if that decision would be made after Trump reads Kim Jong Un’s letter. However, his comments were the most positive from any U.S. official since Trump abruptly cancelled the meeting last week after belligerent statements from the North.
The two countries, eying the first summit between the U.S. and the North after six decades of hostility, have also been holding negotiations in Singapore and the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas.
Early Thursday, Trump told reporters “we are doing very well” with North Korea. He added there
may even need to be a second or third summit meeting to reach a deal on North Korean denuclearization but still hedged, saying “maybe we’ll have none.”
Kim Yong Chol left his hotel in New York City early Friday for the trip to Washington in a convoy of SUVS. Pompeo, the former CIA chief who has travelled to North Korea and met with Kim Jong Un twice in the past two months, said he believed the country’s leaders are “contemplating a path forward where they can make a strategic shift, one that their country has not been prepared to make before.”
He tweeted from New York:
“Good progress today during our meetings” with Kim and his team. Yet he also said at his news conference that difficult work remains including hurdles that may appear to be insurmountable as negotiations progress on the U.S. demand for North Korea’s complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.
“We will push forward to test the proposition that we can achieve that outcome,” he said.
Pompeo spoke after meeting with Kim Yong Chol for a little more than two hours at the residence of the deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The talks had been expected to be held in two sessions, one in the morning and one in the early afternoon, and had not been expected to conclude until 1:30 p.m. Instead, the two men wrapped up at 11:25 a.m.
Pompeo said they finished everything they needed to address in the morning session. Immediately afterward, he tweeted that he had had substantive talks on the priorities for the potential summit.
Pompeo was accompanied by Andrew Kim, the head of a CIA unit assigned to work on North Korea, and Mark Lambert, the head of the State Department’s Korea desk.