US vows to make North rich

WASHINGTON: 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 Kim Jong Un which he described as “warm”.

US President Donald Trump and Kim are scheduled to meet in Singapore on June 12 . “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 US 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.