Nuclear security

The United States Is Still Trying to Sell North Korea on Denuclearization

It was a remarkable statement: “I don’t know if North Korea has made the choice yet to denuclearize,” a senior Trump administration official noted on Thursday, just days before Donald Trump is due to meet Kim Jong Un for a second summit that the president has touted as evidence of his success in ending the North Korean nuclear threat.

Eight months after the U.S. and North Korean leaders first met in Singapore, the official’s admission underscored that the key question looming over the next round of negotiations in Vietnam is still whether Kim will give up his nuclear program, not how he will do so.

“The reason why we’re engaged in this is because we believe there’s a possibility that North Korea could make the choice to fully denuclearize,” said the official, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity about the upcoming Trump-Kim meeting, on February 27–28. “And that’s why the president has assigned such a priority to engaging with them.”