North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has told US officials,
including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, that he is interested in
giving up North Korea’s nuclear weapons because he doesn’t want his
children to be burdened with having to deal with them.
Former CIA official Andrew Kim confirmed Kim’s comments in the media,
saying he told Pompeo this during a meeting back in April of 2018. He
said Kim was very worried about his children having to “carry the
nuclear weapon on their back their whole life.”
While Kim has repeatedly said publicly he is willing to get rid of
nuclear arms because he doesn’t feel he needs them to secure North
Korea, comments on his eye toward the future, and his children’s’
eventual rule, were never mentioned.
That’s noteworthy, because some US officials who would surely have been
privy to these comments months ago have continued to express public
skepticism about Kim’s willingness to disarm, even though this is a
fairly well thought out position that he told the US almost a year ago.
I have never heard any US leader, or leader of France, UK, Russia, China making such a declaration, even though they, too, are signatories to the NPT and as such are supposed to reduce their WMD and eventually, it is hoped, to eliminate them, as the vast majority of UN members have pledged to do.
“The times they are a changin’. “