President Trump’s nominee for secretary of state reportedly made a top-secret visit to North Korea over the Easter holiday that allowed him to meet with the country’s leader, something no U.S. official has done in nearly two decades.
The meeting between Kim Jong Un and CIA Director Mike Pompeo marks an extraordinary breakthrough in U.S. efforts to pressure North Korea into abandoning its nuclear weapons program. It also comes as U.S. officials work to set up a historic face-to-face meeting between Trump and Kim, who expressed a willingness to negotiate with the U.S. leader following several rounds of economic sanctions against his already isolated regime.
“I’m optimistic that the United States government can set the conditions for that appropriately so that the president and the North Korean leader can have a conversation that will set us down the course of achieving a diplomatic outcome that … America and the world so desperately need,” Pompeo told a Senate panel during his confirmation hearing last week.
The Washington Post first reported news of Pompeo’s clandestine meeting with the North Korean leader late Tuesday, just hours after Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate that his administration had already engaged in talks at “very high levels” with North Korea. The president did not specify how many or which administration officials participated in those discussions.
“We have had direct talks at very high levels, extremely high levels, with North Korea,” Trump said during a sit-down with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Trump and Kim are expected to meet sometime between now and early June, once a neutral location is selected for the summit. It was unclear whether Japanese officials were made aware of the meeting between Kim and Pompeo prior to Abe’s bilateral meetings with Trump.
Kim has also met with Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of his planned meeting with Trump.
