Pompeo wraps up fresh visit to North Korea amid denuclearisation drive

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has wrapped up his fourth visit to North Korea after meeting Kim Jong Un amid efforts to persuade him to give up his nuclear weapons.

Mr Pompeo tweeted on his arrival in Seoul that he had met Mr Kim and that they “continue to make progress on agreements made at Singapore Summit”.

He said: “Thanks for hosting me and my team.”

Mr Pompeo had flown to Pyongyang from Tokyo after talks with Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe during which he pledged the Trump administration would coordinate and unify its strategy for denuclearisation with allies.

Japan has been wary of the initiative, but South Korea has embraced it.

There was no immediate indication whether Mr Pompeo had managed to arrange a much-anticipated second summit between Mr Kim and US president Donald Trump.

Arriving in Seoul after several hours in Pyongyang on his fourth visit to North Korea, Mr Pompeo tweeted that he had a “good trip” and that he and Mr Kim “continue to make progress on agreements made at Singapore summit”.

Mr Trump and Mr Kim held a historic summit there in June that resulted in a vague agreement for the North to denuclearise.

Mr Pompeo, on the third stop of a four-leg Asian tour that began in Japan and ends in China on Monday, then met South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in.

Mr Moon, who has met Mr Kim twice, asked Mr Pompeo to make public as much information as he could about the trip.

However, Mr Pompeo declined that opportunity, saying: “I will certainly tell you in private about our conversation, but we had a good, productive conversation.

“As President Trump said, there are many steps along the way and we took one of them today. It was another step forward. So this is, I think, a good outcome for all of us.”

Mr Pompeo has repeatedly refused to discuss details of negotiations, including a US position on North Korea’s demand for a declared end to the Korean War and a proposal from Seoul for such a declaration to be accompanied by a shutdown of the North’s main known nuclear facility.

The US and Japan have pushed for the North to compile and turn over a detailed list of its nuclear sites to be dismantled as a next step in the process. The North has rejected that.

Since the denuclearisation effort got under way with a secret visit to the North by then-CIA chief Mr Pompeo in April, there has been only limited progress, even since the June 12 Trump-Kim summit that many had hoped would jump-start the effort.