North Koreans stood up White House advance team in Singapore

North Korea stood up U.S. officials in Singapore last week at a meeting that was intended to set the stage for President Trump’s now-canceled summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the White House said Thursday.

White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin and other U.S. officials arrived in Singapore to meet with North Korean officials for a meeting that had been set up by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his North Korean counterparts.

“They waited and they waited,” a senior White House official said. “The North Koreans never showed up. They simply stood us up.”

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The major snub was one part of a “trail of broken promises” by North Korea in recent weeks that led Mr. Trump to cancel the June 12 summit, the official said.

North Korea also had pledged to allow international officials to witness Thursday’s supposed demolition of its nuclear test site, but backed out of that promise, too. Pyongyang did allow a group of foreign journalists to witness the demolition.

The White House official noted that North Korea also had promised in early March that it wouldn’t object to planned joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea. But when the exercises took place last week, North Korea objected vehemently.

In the past two weeks, the official said, North Korea displayed a “strange lack of judgment, combined with broken promises” that he said added up to “a profound lack of good faith.”