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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump plans to meet face-to-face with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un next month for a second nuclear summit, the White House announced Friday.
"The President looks forward to meeting with Chairman Kim at a place to be announced at a later date," according to the White House readout of Trump's meeting with top Kim deputy Kim Yong Choi.
Trump and Kim Yong Choi had planned to discuss "relations between the two countries and continued progress on North Korea’s final, fully verified denuclearization," White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement before Friday's meeting.
Trump announced a denuclearization deal with Kim Jong Un at the conclusion of a high-profile summit in Singapore in June, but U.S. officials have told NBC News that Pyongyang has continued to develop ballistic missiles at undeclared sites.
While Trump has portrayed the suspension of nuclear missile tests as a sign that North Korea is no longer a threat to its neighbors or to the U.S., retired Air Force Gen. Barry McCaffrey told NBC News in November that North Korea's actions amounted to "a political charade."
"In the short term, North Korea is the most consequential threat to U.S. national security we're facing," he said at the time. "They have nuclear weapons, they have delivery systems, they are not going to denuclearize."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Kim Yong Choi on Friday morning.
They "had a good discussion" about "efforts to make progress on the commitments President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un made at their summit in Singapore,” State Department deputy spokesperson Robert Palladino said.