North Korea understands what the United States means when it demands complete denuclearization, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told lawmakers Wednesday.
“The North Koreans understand the scope of the request that we’re making with respect to denuclearization and the elements that would be required,” he told a Senate subcommittee that oversees the State Department budget. “We have been pretty unambiguous in our conversations about what we mean when we say complete denuclearization.”
For one, the United States is demanding a “thorough understanding” of North Korea’s weapons program, Pompeo said, including: “their fissile material on hand, their capacity to continue to develop that material, weaponization efforts, engineering, physics efforts, as well as the weapons and missiles that would deliver them.”
Pompeo’s testimony comes amid reports that North Korea is rapidly upgrading its Yongbyon nuclear research center, an assessment based on satellite images taken on June 21. Kim Jong-un and President Trump met on June 12, and in a joint statement after the meeting, Pyongyang said it “commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
Pompeo affirmed Wednesday that North Korea still poses a nuclear threat, even though Trump tweeted after the summit that “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” Asked about that tweet, Pompeo said that the president was saying that the United States had reduced the threat and tension emanating from North Korea.
Pyongyang and Washington also agreed in mid-June to recover the remains of U.S. service members missing since the Korean War, “including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.”
Pompeo told lawmakers that the United States has not yet “physically received” the remains of U.S. service members. Trump said during a rally in Duluth, Minnesota, last week that North Korea has “sent back” the remains of 200 troops.
“We got back our great fallen heroes, the remains sent back today, already 200 got sent back,” he said. The next day, Trump said: “they’ve already sent back or are in the process of sending back the remains of our great heroes who died in North Korea during the war.”
Pompeo said Wednesday that he is optimistic that the United States will “receive some remains in the not too distant future.”
“We are dogged in trying to facilitate this as quickly as we possibly can,” he said.
CNN reported last week that the United States is expecting to receive the remains of as many as 200 service members. The U.S. military said on Saturday that it had sent 100 wooden coffins to the North-South border in preparation for receiving the remains.
Speaking before the Senate subcommittee Wednesday, Pompeo told Chairman Lindsey Graham that Pyongyang appreciates that the United States is following through on its summit commitments. He cited the suspension of a major joint exercise with South Korea previously scheduled for August.
“We are following through,” Pompeo said. “It is our expectation that the North Koreans will begin to do that relatively quickly as well.”
