Mike Pompeo has appealed for North Korea’s leadership to follow Vietnam’s path in overcoming past hostilities with the United States following Pyongyang’s blistering rebuke of his efforts to forge a denuclearisation deal.

The US secretary of state called on the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, to replicate Vietnam’s “miracle” of economic growth by improving ties with the US, vowing that America keeps its promises with former foes.

His comments follow a statement issued by Pyongyang on Saturday, which made clear it had no intention of carrying out the comprehensive unilateral disarmament Donald Trump has claimed was the outcome of his 12 June summit in Singapore with Kim, and accusing the US of “gangster-like behavior” in its demands for denuclearisation.



The long, detailed statement from the North Korean foreign ministry gave an assessment of Friday and Saturday’s talks between US and North Korean delegations in Pyongyang, describing them as “regrettable”. The statement flatly contradicted the upbeat assessment from Pompeo, who headed the US delegation.

Speaking to members of the US-Vietnamese business community in Hanoi on Sunday, Pompeo appeared undeterred, and said Vietnam’s experience since the normalisation of relations with the US in 1995 should be proof for North Korea that prosperity and partnership with the US is possible after decades of conflict and mistrust.



“The fact that we are cooperating – and not fighting – is proof that when a country decides to create a brighter future for itself alongside the United States, we follow through on American promises,” he said, repeating Trump’s pledge to help improve North Korea’s economy and provide it with security assurances in return for Kim giving up nuclear weapons.

“In light of the once-unimaginable prosperity and partnership we have with Vietnam today, I have a message for Chairman Kim Jong-un: President Trump believes your country can replicate this path.

“It’s yours if you’ll you seize the moment. This miracle can be yours. It can be your miracle in North Korea as well,” Pompeo said.

Earlier on Sunday during a brief stop in Tokyo, Pompeo had downplayed North Korea’s accusations.

After meeting with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts in Tokyo, Pompeo said his two days of talks in Pyongyang had produced results. But he also said that sanctions would remain until Pyongyang gets rid of its nuclear weapons.

“If those requests were gangster-like, the world is a gangster,” Pompeo said, noting that numerous UN security council resolutions have demanded that the North rid itself of nuclear weapons and end its ballistic missile program.

Asked how he could think the North Koreans had been negotiating in good faith, Pompeo replied: “Because they were.”



The North Korean foreign ministry statement, by contrast, adopted a wounded tone, saying hopes of progress raised by the Singapore summit between Kim and Trump, had been dashed by the one-sided approach taken by Pompeo’s delegation.

In particular, the statement to took the Americans to task for insisting on complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament (CVID).

“The US side came up only with its unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearisation just calling for CVID, declaration and verification, all of which run counter to the spirit of the Singapore summit meeting and talks,” the statement said.

While rebuffing the US approach to talks, however, the regime also laid out its most detailed negotiating position to date, suggesting confidence-building measures each side could take, including a proposal to freeze production of intercontinental ballistic missiles and a call for a formal declaration ending the Korean war.

It said Pyongyang would dismantle a “high thrust engine” testing site as a concrete measure towards “the suspension of ICBM production as part of denuclearisation steps” while making a start of “working level talks” on repatriation of remains.

In return the US would make “public a declaration on the end of war” on the 65th anniversary of the Korean war armistice, which falls on 27 July.

If the talks on such confidence-building measures failed, the North Korean statement warned “this will finally make each side seek for another choice and there is no guarantee that this will not result into yet another tragedy”.



Pompeo sought to dispel suggestions that the Trump administration has backed down from demanding the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of the North’s nuclear weapons. He said North Korea understood that denuclearisation must be “fully verified” and “final”.

The talks, however, appeared to have exposed a wide gap between the way the Trump administration and Pyongyang interpreted the outcome of the Singapore summit. In a joint statement with Trump, Kim committed his regime to move towards “complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.



Trump took it to mean total and unilateral nuclear disarmament. He returned to the US claiming North Korea was “no longer a nuclear threat”. Last week in Montana, he told a crowd: “But we signed a wonderful paper saying they’re going to denuclearise their whole thing. It’s going to all happen.”

However, since 1992, the regime has used the phrase, “complete denuclearisation” to mean a drawn-out, phased process of mutual demilitarisation of the peninsula.

In Singapore, Trump and Kim also agreed verbally on mutual confidence-building measures, in which Trump would suspend military exercises with South Korea, while Kim would dismantle a missile engine testing site and repatriate the remains of some US soldiers killed in the Korean war.

Trump immediately ordered the suspension of what he called US-South Korea “war games”, dismissing them as too expensive. However, three weeks after the summit, Pyongyang has yet to deliver on its side of the bargain – destroying the test site and sending back the soldiers’ remains.

It remains unclear how Trump will respond to the withering North Korean rhetoric. So far he has ignored suggestions that he achieved little of substance in Singapore.

“[Pyongyang] made some threats but it’s clear they’re not walking away from talks because they basically appealed to Trump,” said Duyeon Kim, a senior research fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum in Seoul.

“The [North Korean] reaction just shows that these negotiations will be a very long and complicated process before we get to an even more difficult process of actual denuclearisation.”