ABC News(NEW YORK) — National Security Adviser John Bolton said one advantage of President Trump’s meeting soon with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is that Trump will be able to “size Kim Jong Un up.”
“I think one advantage of having this meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong Un so soon, in effect, without months and months and months of preparation, is that President Trump will be able to size Kim Jong Un up and see whether the commitment” to denuclearization is real, Bolton told ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent and This Week Co-Anchor Martha Raddatz on Sunday.
If Kim wants North Korea “to be a normal nation, if he wants to have normal relations with the rest of the world, if he wants trade and investment to be possible for his desperately poor country, this is the path to do it,” Bolton said on This Week.
Asked by Raddatz what North Korea needs to do to strike a deal with the U.S., Bolton said, “We want to see the denuclearization process so completely underway that it’s irreversible. … That’s something that has to happen before the benefits start to flow.”
That “means getting rid of all the nuclear weapons, dismantling them. … It means getting rid of the uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing capabilities,” the national security adviser said. “It means addressing the ballistic missile issue.”
Bolton continued, “Nobody believes that this is easy to do. It’s going to require some discussion with North Korea. They’re going to have to reveal all of their locations. They’re going to have to allow open inspection.”
As to what North Korea may be able to gain from the opening of trade and investment, Bolton referenced photos showing the contrast between the vibrant South Korea and the North. “The South is lit up. You can almost draw the lines of the coastline,” he said. “North Korea — you can’t tell the difference between North Korea and the Yellow Sea on the west.”
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