Pompeo completes his North Korea visit without seeing Kim Jong Un

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says goodbye to Kim Yong Chol (R), North Korean senior ruling party official and former intelligence chief, before boarding his plane at Sunan International Air

(Image credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

published 7 July 2018

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo completed his visit to North Korea Saturday without having met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Nevertheless, Pompeo spoke optimistically of the trip, during which he negotiated with senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol.

"I think we made progress in every element of our discussions," Pompeo told American reporters who accompanied him to Pyongyang. "These are complicated issues but we made progress on almost all of the central issues. Some places a great deal of progress; other places there's still more work to be done."

Further U.S.-North Korea talks about Pyongyang's denuclearization and the repatriation of U.S. remains from the Korean War are being planned. This week's visit began amid reports citing U.S. intelligence agents who reportedly say North Korea is concealing parts of its nuclear program, contrary to its promise of complete denuclearization.

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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.