Less than 12 hours after the second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un ended without results, a North Korean official disputed Trump’s account of the talks, saying the nation had made “a realistic proposal.”
Kim offered to make a written commitment to no longer test long-range missiles and to allow inspections on fissile material production facilities at the country’s main Yongbyon nuclear complex, foreign minister Ri Yong Ho said in a rare news conference, held after midnight in Hanoi, Vietnam, site of the summit.
Locator of map of Yongbyon nuclear facility in North Korea.
“This proposal was the biggest denuclearization measure we can take at the present stage in relation to the current level of confidence between the DPRK and the United States,” Ri said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Ri contradicted Trump’s account that North Korea had demanded sanctions against the country be lifted in their entirety, saying Kim had only asked that sanctions that “hamper the civilian economy and the livelihood of our people” be removed. Ri said the sanctions Kim had asked the U.S. to lift were the five imposed in 2016 and 2017, of a total 11 in place — the harshest of the sanctions that were enacted after a series of nuclear tests.
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