US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hopes that North Korea will make the right decision on denuclearization talks.

His remarks came Monday evening speaking in California in front of IT companies employees represented in Silicon Valley. 

"So we continue to be in conversation with them about convincing them that it is in the North Koreans’ best interest to deliver on the commitment that Chairman Kim made now, goodness, 18 months ago in June of 2018.  It’s been slow.  It’s been two steps forward and a step or two back.  I still remain hopeful that North Korea will make the right decision, not – certainly the right decision for the world, but the right decision for the North Korean people as well," he said. "The weapons systems that they have do pose a real risk.  America doesn’t pose a security risk to the North Koreans.  We want a brighter future for them.  And if we can get the right arrangement, if we can get the sequence right, and we can have serious conversations about it, I still hold out hope that we can convince Chairman Kim to move away from the nuclear weapons as their great wall of protection and convince them that there is a brighter, even more secure posture that they can have without those nuclear weapons."

At a meeting on June 30, 2019 in Panmunjom Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump agreed to resume working-level consultations on denuclearization , which were suspended after the failure of their summit in Hanoi in February 2019. In accordance with this agreement, on October 5, 2019, representatives of the US States and North Korea met in Stockholm to discuss prospects for normalizing bilateral relations, but failed to establish a dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang by the end 2019.