North Korean leader Kim Jong-un told the U.S. secretary of state he did not want his children to live with the burden of nuclear weapons, a former CIA officer involved in high-level diplomacy over the North’s weapons was quoted as saying on Saturday.
Mr. Kim made the rare personal comments to Mike Pompeo during a visit to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, in April last year to lay the groundwork for the historic first summit between the North’s leader and U.S. President Donald Trump in June in Singapore, former CIA official Andrew Kim said, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency and the Wall Street Journal reported.
“I’m a father and a husband. And I have children’,” Mr. Andrew Kim quoted the North Korean leader as telling Mr. Pompeo, when asked whether he was willing to end his nuclear programme.
“’And I don’t want my children to carry the nuclear weapon on their back their whole life. That was his answer,” Mr. Andrew Kim told a lecture on Friday at Stanford Universitys Asia Pacific Research Centre, where he is a visiting scholar.
Before he retired from the CIA, Mr. Andrew Kim established the agency’s Korea Mission Centre, in April 2017, and accompanied Mr. Pompeo — who was then CIA director — to Pyongyang in 2018.
In their Singapore summit, Mr. Kim Jong-un and Mr. Trump pledged to work towards peace between their countries and for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
But little progress has been made since then and they are set to meet again in Hanoi on February 27 and 28. They are expected to focus on what steps North Korea might take towards denuclearisation, in exchange for what U.S. concession.
The former CIA officer said the North Korean leader expressed a strong desire to improve ties with the United States as a way to build confidence between them, which he said was needed to end the nuclear weapons programme.
The North Korean leader left Pyongyang by train for his visit to Vietnam on Saturday afternoon, Russia’s TASS news agency reported on February 23 citing a North Korean diplomatic source.
North Korea’s state media has yet to confirm either Mr. Kim Jong-un’s trip to Vietnam or his summit with Mr. Trump.
