WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump bestowed praise Friday on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un after a flurry of short-range missile tests that rattled the region and lowered expectations for the resumption of nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang.
Trump issued a three-part tweet reflecting an approach to North Korea that emphasizes personal diplomacy. Despite widespread skepticism that Kim will give up his nuclear weapons program, Trump is attempting to coax Kim back into negotiations with flattery and by offering to help him achieve a better economic future for his country.
Trump tweeted that North Korea's recent tests of short-range missiles weren't part of the commitments he and Kim made at their historic June 2018 summit in Singapore, although he conceded that they might be in violation of a U.N. resolution.
"There may be a United Nations violation, but Chairman Kim does not want to disappoint me with a violation of trust," Trump tweeted. "There is far too much for North Korea to gain -- the potential as a Country, under Kim Jong Un's leadership, is unlimited."
Trump continued to praise Kim in his tweets, saying he has a "great and beautiful vision for his country." Trump said that only if he is president can Kim realize that vision.
"He will do the right thing because he is far too smart not to, and he does not want to disappoint his friend, President Trump!"
The North's new missile launches came as the United Kingdom, France and Germany -- after a closed U.N. Security Council briefing -- condemned the North's recent ballistic activity as violations of U.N. sanctions and urged Pyongyang to engage in "meaningful negotiations" with the United States on eliminating its nuclear weapons.
Trump's chief U.S. envoy to North Korea, Stephen Biegun, had hoped to meet Friday in Thailand with a representative of North Korea. But North Korea stayed away from the annual gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has served as a venue for their talks in the past.
Unable to meet with a North Korean official, Biegun met with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts to discuss prospects for resuming stalled denuclearization negotiations with the North.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier Friday that he wished North Korea had sent its foreign minister to the meeting. But he also expressed optimism that talks would resume soon.
"I always look forward to a chance to talk with him," Pompeo told an audience at the Siam Society. "I wish they'd have come here. I think it would have given us an opportunity to have another set of conversations, and I hope it won't be too long before I have a chance to do that."
Pompeo said diplomacy is often fraught with "bumps" and "tos and fros," but stressed that the Trump administration remains willing to restart the talks, which broke down after Trump's second summit with Kim in Vietnam in late February.
Trump and Kim met again in June at the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. After that, U.S. officials expressed hope talks would resume in a matter of weeks.
"You should never doubt what we are communicating to North Korea, there are conversations going on even as we speak," Pompeo said Friday. "We are still fully committed to achieving the outcome that we have laid out -- the fully verified denuclearization of North Korea -- and to do so through the use of diplomacy."
North Korea has given Trump until the end of the year to ease up on sanctions choking its economy and threatened to step up provocations if he doesn't. But it left the door open for direct talks between the leaders as it has touted a "mysteriously wonderful" chemistry between Kim and Trump, while lambasting Pompeo for "gangster-like" tactics in trying to force it to disarm before it receives any rewards.
Earlier, South Korea's military said the North had fired what appeared to be short-range ballistic missiles twice Friday into the sea off its eastern coast in its third round of weapons tests in just over a week.
South Korea's presidential office, which held an emergency meeting presided over by chief national security adviser Chung Eui-yong to discuss the launches, said the South Korean and U.S. militaries shared an assessment that the projectiles were likely newly developed short-range ballistic missiles that the North has been testing in recent weeks, including tests Wednesday and on July 25.
But early today, North Korea rejected the South's assessment, saying Kim had supervised another test-firing of a new multiple rocket launcher system.
North Korea has said Kim supervised the first test of the same rocket artillery system on Wednesday. Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said Kim expressed "great satisfaction" over Friday's tests, which it said confirmed the system's "altitude control level flight performance, track changing capability, accuracy of hitting a target and warhead explosion power of the guided ordnance rocket."
The report didn't include any direct mention of the United States or South Korea.
Kim Eun-han, a spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry, said the Seoul government expressed "deep regret" over launches that it believes could hurt efforts for peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Japan's Defense Ministry said it was analyzing the launch and that the projectiles did not reach Japanese territorial waters or its exclusive economic zone.
Friday's projectile reached an altitude of about 15 miles and flew for about 140 miles at a maximum speed of Mach 6.9, South Korea's Defense Ministry said. This means it could strike some U.S. military bases in the country a minute or two after launch.
North Korea appears to be testing its KN-23, solid-fuel, short-range ballistic missile.
The KN-23, similar to a Russian Iskander, is capable of carrying nuclear warheads and has been shown to fly as far as 430 miles. It's designed to be mobile, which makes it easier to hide, and fly at a height and speed that makes it hard for U.S. interceptor systems to shoot down, weapons experts have said.
Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Lee, Deb Riechmann, Kim Tong-Hyung and Mari Yamaguchi of The Associated Press; and by Philip J. Heijmans, Natnicha Chuwiruch and Jihye Lee of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 08/03/2019