The Japanese government source told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper there was no guarantee that North Korea would take effective steps to achieve the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula even if Trump and Kim reached such an agreement at the second summit.
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Therefore, Japanese working-level officials have informed the United States that "it was too soon to offer economic cooperation and humanitarian assistance" to North Korea, according to the newspaper.
Earlier in the month, US State Secretary Mike Pompeo told NBC’s "Today" show that Washington would not move to ease economic sanctions on Pyongyang until it was confident that the nuclear threat from North Korea was significantly reduced.
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US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are scheduled to meet in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on Wednesday for a two-day summit. The first meeting between them took place in Singapore last June. During the talks, Kim pledged to make efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula in exchange for security guarantees for North Korea, the suspension of US-South Korean military drills and potential sanctions relief.
