Nuclear bumps in long road ahead

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Pyongyang left one thing clear: there will be long and arduous work ahead to completely remove the threat of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and other weapons of mass destruction.

The only agreements the top US diplomat officially made during his two-day visit to Pyongyang was the establishment of working groups to discuss a denuclearisation plan; working-level contacts on the shutdown of a missile engine test site; and talks on the repatriation of the remains of American soldiers killed in the Korean War.

This means that despite Pompeo’s positive assessment of his talks with North Korean officials, the US side did not achieve its goal of persuading the North to agree on an operational denuclearisation road map and timeline.

What US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un promised in their historic summit in Singapore on June 12 was a complete denuclearisation of the North. It is obvious that Pompeo failed in his mission due to resistance from the North.

The North Korean side’s statement denouncing the US side — the first of its kind since the Singapore summit — also heralds hurdles lying ahead of the US-North Korea denuclearisation talks.

The statement issued after Pompeo left Pyongyang on Saturday accused Washington of demanding “unilateral and gangster-like” denuclearisation, pointing to the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement.

The statement reiterated Pyongyang’s position on a “phased, synchronous” approach, saying it would be the shortest path towards realisation of the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.

It is not unusual for the North to resort to such antagonism and accusations during a key negotiation, but the statement definitely shows that the two sides failed to narrow differences on the key issue of how to denuclearise the North and on what kind of timeline. Seoul, July 9