North Korea says it will stop nuclear and missile tests and shut down a major testing site

People watch a television news report showing pictures of President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at a railway station in Seoul
(Image credit: Jung Yeon-je/Getty Images)

North Korea "no longer needs" to test nuclear weapons and missiles, leader Kim Jong Un said Saturday, and will shut down the site of the past six nuclear tests.

Kim cast the decision as a practical matter because Pyongyang has already achieved "the proven condition of complete nuclear weapons," but the announcement was hailed by many as an important gesture of goodwill in advance of Kim's upcoming meeting with President Trump. However, Kim gave no indication he is willing to surrender his current nuclear arsenal, which he views as a bulwark against forcible regime change.

The president responded to Kim's statement on Twitter:

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The last North Korean weapons test was in November. Read The Week's Gracy Olmstead on what it would mean to live with a nuclear North Korea.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.