Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un on Sunday, in part to prepare for a second summit between Kim and President Donald Trump.
Pompeo said that Kim had agreed to allow international inspectors to visit Punggye-ri, one of the Southeast Asian nation's nuclear testing sites. Speaking to the press, Pompeo said that inspectors would be allowed at the site "as soon as we get it logistically worked out."
"Chairman Kim said he's ready to — ready to allow them to come in, and there's a lot of logistics that will be required to execute that, but when we get them we'll put them on the ground," he added.
Despite Kim's talk of denuclearization during his first summit with Trump, he has yet to allow any outside inspectors into his country. Without this access, intelligence agencies and other experts have had to rely on satellite images and scattered reports from sources inside the country in order to gauge whether or not there has actually been any progress.
Kim had also promised to permit international inspectors to view the destruction of the Punggye-ri site in May, but later backtracked. The South China Morning Post reported in April that the Punggye-ri site may have been shut down not out of cooperation, but because nuclear testing had caused part of Mount Mantap to collapse, potentially causing the North Koreans to lose containment of radioactive fallout.
Pompeo also discussed when and where a potential second summit between Trump and Kim could take place. However, no details about when or where this might occur have yet been revealed.
In September, three unnamed senior U.S. officials told NBC News that North Korea was still developing its nuclear weapons program.
On Twitter, Pompeo described his visit to North Korea as a "good trip," adding that the Americans and North Koreans "continue to make progress on agreements made at Singapore Summit."
Had a good trip to #Pyongyang to meet with Chairman Kim. We continue to make progress on agreements made at Singapore Summit. Thanks for hosting me and my team @StateDept pic.twitter.com/mufyOKkDLw
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) October 7, 2018
Kim and his family have promised to denuclearize and then failed to follow through on six different occasions: six separate times: in 1985, 1992, 1994, 2005, 2007, and 2012.
