U.S. Won't Seek Kim Jong Un's Ouster From North Korea: Pompeo

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. will not seek a North Korean regime change in exchange for the rogue country's commitment to denuclearization, according to newly minted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Pompeo made the rounds on various channels Sunday, including talking about the denuclearization efforts with Fox News host Chris Wallace.

Pompeo on Friday said that if Kim chooses the “right path” the U.S. would work with the country to “achieve prosperity.”

When asked by Wallace if that means a regime change was "off the table," Pompeo seemed to deflect, saying it meant "private sector Americans" would be going into North Korea to help develop its infrastructure, particularly its energy grid.

"Those are the kind of things that, if we get what it is the President has demanded – the complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of North Korea – that the American people will offer in spades," he said.

Seemingly unsatisfied with the answer, Wallace pressed Pompeo further, asking the secretary of state: "And as part of that, are we, in effect, saying to Kim, 'If you give us what we want, you can stay on in power?'"

Pompeo replied that the U.S. will have to give Kim "security assurances to be sure."

"This has been a tradeoff that has been pending for 25 years," he said. "No president has ever put America in a position where the North Korean leadership thought that this was truly possible, that the Americans would actually do this, would lead to the place where America was no longer held at risk by the North Korean regime."

Pompeo also said the U.S. is concerned with preventing a nuclear bomb from killing Americans when asked whether he had any problem with Kim's history of operating an oppressive regime.

"Look, we’ll have to see how the negotiations proceed, but make no mistake about it: America’s interest here is preventing the risk that North Korea will launch a nuclear weapon into LA or Denver or into the very place we’re sitting here this morning, Chris," he declared. "That’s our objective, that’s the end state the President has laid out, and that’s the mission that he sent me on this past week to put us on the trajectory to go achieve that."

Pompeo said on CBS’s “Face The Nation” that he had already made the overture to Kim.

“I have told him that what President Trump wants is to see the North Korean regime get rid of its nuclear weapons program, completely and in totality, and in exchange for that we are prepared to ensure that the North Korean people get the opportunity that they so richly deserve.”

Pompeo's assurance comes six months after President Donald Trump called Kim "Little Rocket Man" in a tweet and said it was hard "to believe his people, and the military, put up with living in such horrible conditions."

Trump and Kim plan to meet face-to-face in Singapore on June 12.

North Korea has tested several intercontinental ballistic missiles over the last year. Pompeo visited the country last week to go over preparations for the summit. He came back with three American detainees.

Photo credit: Korea Summit Press Pool/Getty Images