NBC News: “North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says he plans to shut down his country’s nuclear complex, halt missile testing and cease hostile acts toward South Korea as part of a new agreement unveiled Wednesday. The pact unveiled during a joint news conference held at the end of a two-day meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang also includes plans for the countries to host the Summer Olympics in 2032.”

But the New York Times cautions: “The offers Mr. Kim made on Wednesday … indicated that he was willing to curtail his country’s ability to produce more nuclear warheads and ICBMs. But they say little about what he will do with his existing arsenal. Mr. Kim’s ultimate goal, analysts say, is to make the Trump administration complacent enough about the recent détente to ease sanctions in return for a mere freeze — not the dismantlement — of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un requested a second meeting with President Trump, and U.S. diplomats are already working to set up the summit, Bloomberg reports.

“The request is the latest direct communication between the two leaders, who held a summit in Singapore in June and agreed that North Korea would abandon its nuclear weapons program. But Kim’s regime has shown little sign it’s moving toward denuclearization, and Trump canceled a planned trip to Pyongyang by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month citing a lack of progress.”

NBC News: “The newest intelligence shows Kim’s regime has escalated efforts to conceal its nuclear activity, according to three senior U.S. officials. During the three months since the historic Singapore summit and Trump’s proclamation that North Korea intends to denuclearize, North Korea has built structures to obscure the entrance to at least one warhead storage facility.”

“The U.S. has also observed North Korean workers moving warheads out of the facility, the officials said, though they would not speculate on where the warheads went.”

“President Trump told North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during their Singapore summit in June that he’d sign a declaration to end the Korean War soon after their meeting,” Vox reports.

“But since then, the Trump administration has repeatedly asked Pyongyang to dismantle most of its nuclear arsenal first, before signing such a document. That decision is likely what has led to the current stalemate in negotiations between the two countries — and the increasingly hostile rhetoric from North Korea.”

North Korea’s state newspaper accused the United States of “hatching a criminal plot to unleash a war against the DPRK” while “having a dialogue with a smile on its face” following a report on South Korean radio that American forces in Japan were running drills aimed at invading Pyongyang, CNN reports.

White House national security adviser John Bolton told Fox News that North Korea has not made progress toward denuclearization, in stark contrast to President Trump’s claims of an agreement with Kim Jong Un.

Said Bolton: “The United States has lived up to the Singapore declaration. It’s just North Korea that has not taken the steps we feel are necessary to denuclearize.”

A new United Nations report finds that North Korea “has not stopped its nuclear and missile programs and is violating U.N. sanctions including by ‘a massive increase in illicit ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products,'” the AP reports.

“A summary of the report by experts monitoring U.N. sanctions against North Korea, which was sent to the Security Council Friday night… said North Korea is also violating sanctions by transferring coal at sea and flouting an arms embargo and financial sanctions.”

“Arms control experts confirm to NBC News that both satellite photos and U.S. intelligence show North Korea is continuing to produce ballistic missiles and work on its missile program, even after the historic June summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The experts point specifically to a July 7 satellite photo that shows activity consistent with missile production.”

“U.S. spy agencies are seeing signs that North Korea is constructing new missiles at a factory that produced the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States,” the Washington Post reports.

“Newly obtained evidence, including satellite photos taken in recent weeks, indicates that work is underway on at least one, and possibly two, liquid-fueled ICBMs at a large research facility in Sanumdong, on the outskirts of Pyongyang.”

Washington Post: “Diplomats say the North Koreans have canceled follow-up meetings, demanded more money and failed to maintain basic communications, even as the once-isolated regime’s engagements with China and South Korea flourish.”

“Meanwhile, a missile-engine testing facility that Trump said would be destroyed remains intact, and U.S. intelligence officials say Pyongyang is working to conceal key aspects of its nuclear program.”

”The lack of immediate progress, though predicted by many analysts, has frustrated the president, who has fumed at his aides in private even as he publicly hails the success of the negotiations.”

“North Korean officials didn’t show up for a planned meeting with U.S. counterparts to discuss returning the remains of American war dead… in the latest sign of tensions between the two sides,” Bloomberg reports.

“U.S. negotiators arrived Thursday at the militarized border between the two Koreas as previously announced by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and were kept waiting,”

“As U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touched down in Pyongyang at 10:54 a.m. on Friday he had few details of his schedule in the North Korean capital — even which hotel he and his staff would stay in,” Bloomberg reports.

“In the end, Pompeo stayed at neither of the hotels where he thought he’d be. The North Koreans took him, his staff and the six journalists traveling with the delegation to a gated guesthouse on the outskirts of the capital, just behind the mausoleum where the bodies of regime founder Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il lie embalmed and on occasional display.”

“It was the start of a confused visit of less than 30 hours, marked by a pair of lavish banquets that the secretary and his staff appeared to dread for their length and the daunting number of courses presented by unfailingly polite waiters. He only learned of his own schedule hours ahead of time, and the meeting with Kim Jong Un never happened — despite strenuous efforts from his staff.”

North Korea accused the Trump administration of pushing a “unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization” and called it “deeply regrettable,” hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said his two days of talks in the North Korean capital were “productive,” the New York Times reports.

Washington Post: “The mixed messages followed a visit in which Pompeo did not meet with the North Korean leader while in the country and did not secure a breakthrough in forging a shared understanding of denuclearization.”

“Pompeo has come under increasing pressure to produce tangible results from the summit that President Trump quickly touted as a game-changing moment that eliminated North Korea’s nuclear threat.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left for North Korea for denuclearization talks and brought two gifts for leader Kim Jong-un: One is a letter from President Trump and the other an Elton John CD with his song ‘Rocket Man’, according to South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo.

Said one diplomatic source in Washington: “The ‘Rocket Man’ CD was the subject of discussion during Trump’s lunch with Kim. Kim mentioned that Trump referred to him as ‘rocket man’ when tensions ran high last year after a series of nuclear tests and missile launches by the North. Trump then asked Kim if he knew the song and Kim said no.”

“Trump remembered the conversation and told Pompeo to take a CD with the song for Kim. He reportedly wrote a message on it and signed it.”

“Turning the enthusiasm of the meeting in Singapore into a concrete, verifiable agreement is now the job of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is leaving Washington early Thursday for North Korea. It will be his third trip there, but the first to flesh out a timetable and a common understanding of what the Singapore commitment to ‘work toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula’ really means,” the New York Times reports.

“Complicating the task is this: Mr. Pompeo, a former C.I.A. chief who knows the details of the North Korean program intimately and has solicited plans for how to accomplish his goals, must show that he can get the North Koreans to go far beyond the agreement his predecessor once-removed, John Kerry, achieved in negotiations with Iran.”