[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 34 (Monday, February 25, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S1413]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              NORTH KOREA

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, the President is on his way to Thailand 
for a second summit with Chairman Kim of North Korea. It is in all of 
our interests for the President to achieve a diplomatic resolution with 
North Korea that achieves a stable peace and the complete, verifiable, 
and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Failing 
that, the Congress must continue to pressure a regime that permits 
gross humanitarian abuses and remains one of the most repressive 
governments on the globe.
  We cannot tolerate the President making concessions without, in 
exchange, receiving verifiable, enduring, and concrete commitments from 
North Korea to denuclearize.
  President Trump's first summit with Chairman Kim granted his regime 
the international legitimacy and acceptance that Kim has long craved 
while undermining our policy of maximum pressure and sanctions, 
seemingly so the President could have a photo op and make a speech.
  Unsurprisingly, the results of that meeting were disappointing. The 
President claimed, bizarrely and wildly, that North Korea is ``no 
longer a nuclear threat'' right after the meeting, while the U.S. 
intelligence community has continually testified before Congress that 
North Korea has not been denuclearizing and appears unlikely to give up 
its nuclear weapons. So how can the President say it is no longer a 
nuclear threat when the same threat existed when he threatened North 
Korea earlier and after, when he seemed to make nice to President Kim? 
Meanwhile, the President suspended joint military readiness drills with 
the South Koreans--drills we have been conducting for 60 years for the 
safety of East Asia.
  No one wants to see a repeat of the same movie. No one wants another 
summit that is more about photo ops and optics than progress. We are 
all rooting for diplomacy to succeed, but the President can't be too 
naive or too eager to reach a deal that gives him the photo op again 
but that doesn't achieve the complete denuclearization of the Korean 
Peninsula.

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