Trump has publicly continued to pretend that North Korea and their leader Kim Jong-un is committed to the fake agreement the two of them signed in Singapore but, according to an exclusive report from Vox, developments to the contrary have taken place behind closed doors.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has reportedly presented his North Korean counterparts with proposals for disarming during his recent trips to the North and all of the proposals have been rejected.
The details of the US-proposed timeline, which have not previously been reported, are as follows: North Korea hands over 60 to 70 percent of its nuclear warheads within six to eight months; the US or a third party — likely another country — takes possession of them and removes them from North Korea. It’s unclear what concessions, if any, the US would offer in exchange beyond sanctions relief or removing North Korea from the state sponsors of terrorism list.
According to two people familiar with the discussions, this is the plan that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has presented to North Korean negotiators multiple times over the past two months. But each time, the North Korean negotiators, led by Kim Yong Chol — a top aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — have turned down Pompeo’s proposal.
The intelligence community apparently doesn't know exactly how many nuclear weapons North Korea possesses so, at this point, Pompeo's primary goal is to get the North to disclose how many weapons they have according to Vox.
The idea is that it would be impossible to verify the North has given up their weapons if we don't know how many they had to begin with, but it's also true that we can't trust any numbers disclosed by the North.
None of this matters in any case because North Korea is never going to give up their nuclear weapons, but it's darkly humorous to me that they consider basic disclosure to be a major milestone at a time when Trump has already declared victory.
Our apparent ignorance of the North's nuclear stockpile further solidifies how empty and nonsensical Trump's agreement with Kim Jong-un was.