US President Donald Trump’s decision to tap a hard-liner as his new secretary of state ahead of a historic US-North Korea summit hints at serious intentions for the talks, and his determination to tighten his grip over North Korea policy, experts say.



The decision to pick Mike Pompeo, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who has been loyal to Trump, could boost US-North Korea talks, they say. But concerns also persist that there is now no one left in Washington to challenge Trump’s decisions.



Trump on Tuesday announced that he sought Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s resignation and nominated Pompeo for the post, who he said had a “similar thought process” to himself. Before leaving on a trip to California, Trump spoke openly of his differences with Tillerson, saying, “We got along actually quite well but we disagreed on things.”



The decision came less than a week after Trump accepted an invitation from Kim to meet for talks by May to achieve denuclearization in a surprising turn of events following a year of tensions heightened by the North’s nuclear and missile provocations.



Outgoing US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivers farewell remarks in Washington on Tuesday. (EPA-Yonhap)



The shake-up of his team shows that he wants to be well-prepared for the unprecedented summit with Kim, said Kim Yeon-chul, a professor at Inje University.



“The current situation is a result of three-way (behind-the-scenes) talks among North Korea’s United Front Department, South Korea’s spy agency and the CIA,” he said. “Giving Pompeo the task of preparing for North Korea-US talks signals Trump’s determination to negotiate with North Korean leader Kim.”



Woo Jung-yeop, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute, said that Trump sought to have a top diplomat better aligned with his policy views so that the US could promote its commitment to a maximum pressure campaign and pursuit of “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization” of the communist state.



“Rather than a shift to a tougher stance on North Korea, the move could be seen as empowering the State Department, which has been seen as being increasingly sidelined by President Trump, for the upcoming negotiations with North Koreans,” he said.



Pompeo, a former Republican congressman, has been one of Trump’s most loyal cabinet members and more in sync with Trump on foreign policies. He also closely communicated with his South Korean counterpart Suh Hoon when Seoul engaged with Pyongyang during and after the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.



“One of the key features for any negotiator is that they have to be able to credibly represent their leadership,” Abraham Denmark, director of the Asia Program at the Wilson Center, said during a forum in Washington. “That your counterpart knows that whatever deal you make, you know that your boss will back you up.”



Pompeo could be a more “credible negotiator” if he can credibly say he represents the president and if the president is able to convey that sort of representational status, he said.





Mike Pompeo (AP)