With 18 days left in the Trump administration, the U.S. secretary of state has threatened North Korea with maximum pressure.
Mike Pompeo wrote on his official Twitter page on Saturday that the policy of appeasement towards Pyongyang has not worked and that the United States must now try a new approach: maximum pressure.
The rulers in North Korea and the United States signed an agreement in Singapore in 2018, agreeing to Pyongyang’s nuclear disarmament in return for the U.S. lifting sanctions on North Korea.
Then, in a historic move, U.S. President Donald Trump met with North Korea’s strongman Kim Jong Un at the inter-Korean border in late June 2019. He became the first U.S. president in office not only to meet with a North Korean president there, but also to step onto North Korean soil, symbolically crossing the demarcation line. After the nearly hour-long conversation, Trump announced plans to resume nuclear talks that were frozen in February. “We had a very, very good meeting with strongman Kim,” he told reporters after saying goodbye to the North Korean leader.
Since then, however, nothing at all has been going on between the two countries, prompting the North Korean foreign minister to note that “hope has turned into a dark nightmare.”
There is a “rapidly progressing deterioration” in relations between the two countries, North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Son Gwon lamented in a statement disseminated by the state news agency KCNA.
by Jeremy Abbott – American Correspondent – TN