North Korean missile site Trump says Kim pledged to destroy identified

A United States official named the missile test site that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to demolish during the recent summit with President Trump.

The site in question is the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground where North Korea has previously tested “liquid-propellant engines for its long-range ballistic missiles,” an American official told Reuters.

“Chairman Kim promised that North Korea would destroy a missile engine test stand soon,” that official told the news outlet. 

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The site’s identification comes just one week after Trump’s historic summit with Kim in Singapore, where the two leaders signed a joint statement that said the U.S. would give Pyongyang unspecified “security guarantees” and Kim would remain committed to the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

The president told reporters in Singapore that after signing the joint statement, Kim agreed to destroy a major testing site.

“Chairman Kim has told me that North Korea is already destroying a major missile engine testing site. That’s not in your signed document; we agreed to that after the agreement was signed,” Trump said June 12.

“That’s a big thing — for the missiles that they were testing, the site is going to be destroyed very soon.” 

But the joint statement between Kim and Trump did not include details about how the two countries will reach denuclearization. 

Following the summit, Trump said North Korea is “no longer a nuclear threat,” but Defense Secretary James Mattis on Wednesday said he was “not aware” of North Korean taking any actions to dismantle its nuclear program.

The president last week said the U.S. would pause its joint exercises with South Korea while it partakes in the ongoing discussions over North Korea’s nuclear program. 

“Holding back the ‘war games’ during the negotiations was my request because they are VERY EXPENSIVE and set a bad light during a good faith negotiation,” Trump wrote on Twitter Sunday. 

The official who spoke to Reuters said “the United States will continue to monitor this site closely as we move forward in our negotiations.”