Pompeo to head to North Korea as doubts mount about its intentions

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 71%. (I'm a bot)

WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will leave for North Korea on Thursday seeking agreement on a plan for the country's denuclearization, despite mounting doubts about Pyongyang's willingness to abandon a weapons program that threatens the United States and its allies.

The State Department said Pompeo would head on Saturday from Pyongyang to Tokyo, where he would discuss North Korean denuclearization with Japanese and South Korean leaders.

A U.S. delegation led by U.S. ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim met with North Korean counterparts at Panmunjom on the border between North and South Korea on Sunday to discuss next steps on the implementation of the summit declaration, the State Department said.

Some experts disputed Bolton's optimistic time frame for decommissioning North Korea's weapons, even if North Korea were willing to agree to such moves, amid multiple reports suggesting otherwise.

Last week, 38 North, a North Korea monitoring project affiliated with Washington's Stimson Center think tank, said satellite imagery showed the North had been upgrading its Yongbyon nuclear complex.

North Korea has consistently refused in past rounds of failed negotiations to provide an inventory of its weapons program, and U.S. intelligence remains uncertain of how many nuclear warheads North Korea has.

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