North Korea fires more projectiles, South Korean officials say, as Trump-Kim talks stall – By Deirdre Shesgreen (USA Today) / July 30 2019
WASHINGTON – North Korea fired multiple unidentified projectiles on Wednesday, according to South Korea’s military, another warning sign that the Trump administration’s push for denuclearization is in jeopardy.
Just last week, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles in what the regime said was a “solemn warning” to South Korea over its plans to conduct joint military exercises with the U.S. and its ongoing weapons development. North Korean state media said those missile launches were designed to send a message to “South Korean military warmongers.”
South Korean officials did not identify the projectiles fired on Wednesday but said they were launched from the Hodo peninsula on the country’s east coast. In a statement carried by Yonhap News Agency, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said it was monitoring the situation for further developments.
The tests represent a fresh setback as the Trump administration tries to revive talks over North Korea’s nuclear program. President Donald Trump met with Kim Jong Un last month at the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea.
Trump hailed that meeting – his third face-to-face session with Kim – as historic and “legendary.” But the dramatic event did not produce any breakthroughs. Instead, Trump and Kim only agreed to set up negotiating teams aimed at restarting talks to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs.
President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un step over the line in the Demilitarized Zone on June 30, 2019. (Photo: Susan Walsh/AP)
But North Korea has not named any negotiators or agreed to any specific timeline for those talks.
“I don’t know, I don’t have anything,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Wednesday when asked when the negotiations would restart.
“Chairman Kim said when the two leaders met at the DMZ (demilitarized zone) that they would start in a few weeks,” Pompeo said as he was en route to Thailand for a meeting with South East Asian nations. “It’s taking a little bit longer than that.”
A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the most recent contact between the Trump administration and the North Koreans occurred last week, when a National Security Council official went to the demilitarized zone to give the North Koreans some photographs from the Trump-Kim meeting there.
The administration official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the NSC contact asked the North Koreans when they could restart the working-level talks. The response was soon, although the North Koreans did not commit to any dates.
North Korean officials have been incensed by a decision by the U.S. and South Korea to conduct the joint military exercises, scheduled for next month. Kim Jong Un’s regime views those military exercises as a provocation. Trump had suspended the war games as part of an informal agreement with Kim, in which Kim suspended North Korea’s nuclear and long-range missile testing.
Trump has downplayed the significance of North Korea’s recent missile launches.
“They’re short-range missiles, and my relationship is very good with Chairman Kim,” Trump told reporters last week in the Oval Office. “We’ll see what happens.”
