Kim Jong Un oversaw a live-fire military exercise Saturday that potentially included North Korea's first ballistic missile launch since 2017, challenging U.S. President Donald Trump's bottom line in nuclear talks.
Kim watched as "large-caliber, long-range multiple-rocket launchers and tactical guided weapons" were fired off North Korea's eastern coast Saturday, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. The state media's report on Sunday was accompanied by a photo of what nonproliferation analysts said appeared to be the launch of a short-range ballistic missile.
While such a test would violate United Nations resolutions imposing sanctions on North Korea, it would stop short of breaching Kim's pledge to refrain from testing longer-range missiles that could threaten the U.S. "We still believe that there's an opportunity to get a negotiated outcome where we get fully verified denuclearization," Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."