South Korea’s Ambassador Has a Message for All the North Korea Skeptics

South Korea’s ambassador to the United States acknowledges that Kim Jong Un hasn’t yet destroyed a major missile-engine test site, as the North Korean leader supposedly promised Donald Trump in Singapore he would. He says he’s “not in a position to confirm or deny” recent reports that North Korea may in fact be expanding nuclear-weapons facilities, despite promising to “work toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.” He concedes that a disclosure of the various elements of the North Korean nuclear program, let alone the nation’s nuclear disarmament, is “yet to come.”

And yet Cho Yoon Je has not succumbed to skepticism. When I went by the South Korean embassy this week, at a moment when many observers were concluding that North Korea isn’t really intending to abandon its nuclear program, and before U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo returned to Pyongyang to “fill in some details” on Kim’s pledges at the Singapore summit, I found the ambassador hopeful and optimistic.