• Pyongyang, Seoul hold first military summit in decades
Tough sanctions will remain on North Korea until its complete denuclearization, the United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said yesterday, apparently contradicting the North’s view that the process agreed at this week’s summit would be phased and reciprocal.
Also yesterday North and South Korea held their first military talks in more than a decade. The talks followed on from an inter-Korean summit in April at which Moon and Kim agreed to defuse tension and cease “hostile acts”.
US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un issued a joint statement after their Singapore meeting that reaffirmed the North’s commitment to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”, while Trump “committed to provide security guarantees”.
Trump later told a news conference he would end joint US-South Korean military exercises.
“President Trump has been incredibly clear about the sequencing of denuclearization and relief from the sanctions,” Pompeo told reporters after meeting South Korea’s president and Japan’s foreign minister in Seoul.
“We are going to get complete denuclearization; only then will there be relief from the sanctions,” he said. “What’s most important was that the people of the world, including those in the United States, Japan and Koreans, have all been able to escape the threat of war, nuclear weapons and missiles,” Moon told Pompeo.