Prospect Portrait
ILLUSTRATION BY TIM MCDONAGH
The quiet tenacity of Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s Secretary of State, was never so clear as during the dizzying reversals surrounding the US-North Korea summit. The historic meeting in Singapore on 12th June, which Trump claimed would yield a denuclearised North Korea, was announced by the US president in April. Then in May, Kim Jong Un granted “amnesty” to three Americans who had been detained in North Korea. Two weeks later, foreign journalists were invited to remote Punggye- ri, the country’s only known nuclear test site, to observe the demolition of buildings and tunnels—a deafening spectacle, though possibly just a stunt.