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CIA Director Mike Pompeo

With the first summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and US President Donald Trump taking place just a few days from now in Washington, Trump is reportedly being briefed on developments in North Korea nearly every day. Since North Korea’s launch of a ballistic missile in February and the US-China summit in April, the Trump administration has described the North Korean nuclear issue as a top foreign policy priority.

North Korea is “a very real danger” said CIA Director Mike Pompeo in response to a question on The Hugh Hewitt Show on MSNBC on June 24. “They are ever-closer to having the capacity to hold America at risk with a nuclear weapon.”

“I hardly ever escape a day at the White House without the President asking me about North Korea and how it is that the United States is responding to that threat. It’s very much at the top of his mind,” he said.

“For 20 years, America has whistled past the graveyard, hoping on hope, that North Korea would turn colors and become part of the Western civilization,” Pompeo said. “There‘s no evidence that that’s going to take place, absent a very real, very concrete set of policies that put pressure on the North Koreans to de-nuclearize. I think that‘s what you see Secretary Tillerson trying to do around the world.”

Pompeo served three terms as a Republican congressman, and Politico reported that the person Trump has met the most often since his inauguration in January is Pompeo, who has access to all kinds of information. Pompeo reinforced this impression during the interview, saying, “I’m with the President nearly every day. We have 35 or 40 minutes on his schedule. That almost always runs long.”

Given these indications in the US, Trump and Moon are expected to easily reach a consensus on the urgency of resolving the North Korean nuclear issue and on the ultimate goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula during their summit on June 29 and 30. And since the Trump administration has failed to find a North Korean policy that is actually distinct from the Obama administration‘s policy of “strategic patience” despite labeling Obama’s policy a failure, there is growing interest in what solution Moon will persuade him to adopt.

In related news, Representative Brad Schneider and other lawmakers from districts with a large number of Korean-American voters are proposing for Moon to be given a chance to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress. But since it’s customary for such a joint address to be given during a state visit, that probably won’t happen during this visit.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

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