WASHINGTON -- The White House said Thursday that President Donald Trump received a new letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and responded quickly with a letter of his own. The correspondence, following up on their Singapore summit, came as fresh concerns arise over Pyongyang's commitment to denuclearization.
Trump early Thursday tweeted his thanks to the North Korean leader "for your nice letter -- I look forward to seeing you soon!"
The White House did not provide details on the specific content of the letter from Kim, received Wednesday, or of Trump's reply. White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the letters addressed their commitment to work toward North Korea's "complete denuclearization."
Sanders said no second meeting is "locked in" as a follow-up to the Singapore summit in June, but they remain open to discussions.
[NUCLEAR NORTH KOREA: Maps, data on country’s nuclear program]
The latest letter from Kim arrived on the heels of concerns over North Korea's ballistic missile program and commitment to denuclearization. Senior Trump administration officials have urged patience, cautioning that the process of denuclearizing North Korea and removing the threat of its long-range missiles will take time.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was headed to an Asian security meeting in Singapore, where a meeting this weekend with North Korea's foreign minister was possible.
Trump has sought to show progress from his June 12 summit with Kim. He said during a rally Tuesday in Tampa, Fla., that the U.S. was "doing well" with North Korea and noted the return of detained Americans and Pyongyang's ceasing of nuclear testing and missile tests. "A lot of good things are happening. No tests. No rockets flying. But we'll see what happens," Trump said.
U.S. officials have been closely watching North Korea's willingness to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
In the weeks since Trump declared on Twitter that Pyongyang was "no longer a Nuclear Threat," there have been multiple signs that call into question its commitment to denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.
The Washington Post reported this week that U.S. spy agencies are seeing signs that North Korea is constructing new missiles at a factory that produced the country's first intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States, according to officials familiar with the intelligence.
Newly obtained evidence, including satellite photos taken in recent weeks, indicates that work is underway on at least one and possibly two liquid-fueled ICBMs at a large research facility in Sanumdong, on the outskirts of Pyongyang, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe classified intelligence.
The Post also reported that North Korean officials have talked about how they plan to deceive the U.S. about the size of their arsenal of missiles and nuclear warheads and facilities.
Separately, the U.S. military is beginning the painstaking process of analyzing and identifying remains from the Korean War now that they are back on American soil.
Trump in his tweet Thursday expressed gratitude to Kim "for keeping your word" on the return of the remains of more than 50 American service members killed during the Korean War. Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. military leaders received the remains in Hawaii during a somber ceremony on Wednesday.
The remains handed over by North Korea last week in 55 boxes are "consistent with being Americans," based on an initial examination, although none has been positively identified, a U.S. scientist who has seen the remains said Thursday.
John Byrd, director of the Defense Department laboratory in Hawaii where the 55 cases arrived on Wednesday, cited several reasons for saying that at least some of the remains appear to be those of Americans missing from the Korean War.
A cursory examination at Wonsan confirmed that the remains were human, he said, and a closer look at Osan gave reason to believe they likely are Americans.
"What we saw were remains that were consistent with what we have found from the Korean War recoveries that we've done over the years, and we found remains that were consistent with being Americans," Byrd said, speaking by video teleconference from Hawaii.
"We have remains that look to have been in a state of preservation consistent with coming from the Korean War era," he said, and materials provided with the remains included U.S.-issued military equipment such as canteens and buttons. He said the remains are "good candidates to be missing Americans from the Korean War," where thousands died on battlefields and in prisoner-of-war camps during the 1950-53 conflict and remain officially unaccounted for.
Information for this article was contributed by John Wagner, Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick of The Washington Post; and by Robert Burns of The Associated Press.
A Section on 08/03/2018