Trump hails “great progress” after Kim letter – Reuters

As reported by Reuters, a note between North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump has seen Trump hail progress in US-DPRK communications, though the North Korean side of things remains thin on details and specifics.

Key quotes

“Kim Jong Un told President Donald Trump he believed their efforts could open up a “new future” between North Korea and the United States and expressed hope for “practical actions” in the future, according to a letter from the North Korean leader released on Thursday.

But Kim, in the note posted by Trump on Twitter, made no mention of any work by North Korea toward denuclearization at a time when there has been no sign of concrete action by Pyongyang since the two leaders held a landmark summit in Singapore on June 12. Despite that, Trump hailed the July 6 letter as a “very nice note,” saying “Great progress being made.”

Hours after Trump’s tweet, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said North Korea offered to meet a U.S. delegation on Sunday to discuss the repatriation of remains of U.S. soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War, a pledge Trump had said he secured from Kim during last month’s summit.  This came after the North Koreans failed to show up for a meeting on the issue scheduled for Thursday at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.

Trump later said North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat, even though no details were announced, and critics suggested the president had failed to secure any new commitments from Pyongyang toward the dismantling of its nuclear missile program.

The date of the letter suggests it may have been sent around the time of Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s visit to Pyongyang last week, in which the United States and North Korea struggled to make headway on the denuclearization issue.”