Pompeo Meets With Top North Korean Official In Hopes Of Reviving Singapore Summit
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with a top North Korean official over dinner in New York on Wednesday, as the two sought to salvage a June 12 summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un.
The summit, planned since April, was called off just a week ago by Trump amid a renewed round of heated rhetoric from Pyongyang and concerns over whether North Korea was sincere about "denuclearization." Within days of cancelling the summit, however, there was talk of getting it back on track.
The meeting between Pompeo and Kim Yong Chol, North Korea's former military intelligence chief, marks the highest-level official visit by a North Korean to the U.S. since 2000.
As we reported previously, Kim Yong Chol "is a veteran of diplomacy with South Korea who is considered to be Kim Jong Un's right-hand man. ... Kim is also widely believed to be behind the 2010 sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean Naval vessel, in which 46 seamen died."
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/31/615691882/pompeo-meets-with-top-north-korean-official-in-hopes-of-reviving-singapore-summi