Trump confident N Korea’s Kim won’t break promise

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump brushed off news of a possible weapons test by North Korea, vowing that leader Kim Jong-un “will do nothing to interfere” and that a denuclearisation deal with the US “will happen.”
Saturday’s tweet, posted while Trump was in a motorcade to the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, was the president’s first response to news that Pyongyang had fired numerous short-range projectiles off its eastern coast on Saturday, according to South Korean authorities.
The move was seen as Kim’s latest and most provocative signal of frustration over talks with Trump following the pair’s failed summit in Vietnam.
The significance of the test was difficult to assess as South Korea revised its account of the nature and scale of the weapons discharged from the eastern port of Wonsan on Saturday. After first calling them “missiles,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff later changed its description to “projectiles,” saying greater clarity would require more analysis.
The details are key since Trump has cited Kim’s self-imposed freeze on missile and nuclear weapons tests to support his decision to continue negotiations with the North Korean leader. South Korea’s descriptions of the incident suggested shorter-range rockets or artillery that would be less likely for the US to interpret as a violation of Kim’s pledge to refrain from testing.
“We are aware of North Korea’s actions. We will continue to monitor as necessary,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said. National Security Adviser John Bolton briefed the president about the launch, according to a senior administration official, who asked for anonymity.
The weapons were fired from the Hodo Peninsula, which has been the site of past live-fire artillery exercises, and travelled 70 to 200 kilometres, the joint chiefs said. The Yonhap News Agency later reported that the weapons fired were “not missiles,” citing unidentified lawmakers briefed by intelligence officials.
“Missiles are projectiles, but South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff might be using ‘projectile’ to imply an unguided rocket, like one of North Korea’s older rocket artillery systems,” said Ankit Panda, an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. “This could also be a politicised attempt to make the word ‘missile’ not so prominent, in case that creates the kind of news cycle that Trump doesn’t want.”
The weapons test was nonetheless Kim’s most significant provocation since he launched an intercontinental ballistic missile in November 2017, declared his nuclear weapons programme “complete” and opened talks. South Korea President Moon Jae-in’s spokeswoman condemned the incident, saying in a statement that they “go against” a military agreement the two Koreas reached in September to halt “hostile activities.”
Kim has expressed increasing frustration since Trump refused his demands for sanctions relief and walked out of their second summit in Hanoi in February. After a year of talks, Kim has made only a pledge to “work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula,” without defining the phrase.
Kim accused the US of “bad faith” during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok. He had told North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly that he would wait “with patience till the end of this year” for the US to make a better offer.