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"Yongbyon is the heart of North Korea's nuclear program," Hecker said, explaining that completely dismantling the reactor there would be critical and would mean North Korea would never be able to make plutonium there again.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration is hoping to get a significant concession from North Korea on Yongbyon, but it's unclear if the U.S. can offer something in exchange that Kim would accept. North Korea wants sanctions relief, and U.S. officials have advised the president against taking such a step at this stage in negotiations. North Korea has offered to freeze activity at Yongbyon in past rounds of negotiations with previous U.S. administrations.

Current and former U.S. officials note that North Korea has other sites with similar capabilities, however, and they are raising concerns that Pyongyang won't negotiate on all aspects of its weapons programs if it's not forced to disclose them.

In recent months researchers have discovered that North Korea has as many as 20 undisclosed ballistic missile sites, according to Beyond Parallel, a project sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a defense think tank. One of the sites is the Sino-ri Missile Base about 130 miles north of the demilitarized zone between North Korea and South Korea, where about 28,000 U.S. troops are stationed.

North Korea hasn't launched a missile test since engaging diplomatically with the U.S. last year, but it has continued to otherwise refine and advance its nuclear weapons program in the months since Trump first met with Kim last June in Singapore, U.S. officials have said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who had been leading negotiations until he named a special envoy to focus on the effort, has grown increasingly concerned about the prospects of reaching a deal with North Korea that gets rid of its nuclear threat, current and former senior U.S. officials said.

Update 3: In what might be the first hint about how the Hanoi summit's failure could impact trade talks, the editor of an English-language Communist Party mouthpiece insinuated in a tweet that Beijing is unhappy with the US's negotiating tactics, and that Trump should have "serious talks" about lifting sanctions in exchange for partial denuclearization.

In other words, if Beijing believes the US should meet Pyongyang half way, what are the chances that President Xi will have an abrupt change of heart about the US's negotiating position in the trade talks?

* * *

Update 2: During a midnight news conference that was ostensibly intended as a debriefing (but, given the timing, clearly motivated by the North's desire to undermine President Trump), North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho contradicted Trump's narrative about what prompted him to abruptly walk away from the talks in Vietnam.

According to Ri, the North offered a "realistic proposal": In exchange for partial sanctions relief (Trump claimed that Kim had demanded "all sanctions lifted in their entirety" presumably including both US and UN sanctions). Namely, that Kim had proposed the dismantling of its plutonium and uranium processing facilities at Yongbyon in the presence of US experts, in exchange for partial relief.

Ri insisted that the North's position would "never change," though he noted that the US had proposed another round of talks in the future.

In another blow to Trump, Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said he suspected that Kim may have "lost the will" to continue negotiating with the US.

• *I HAVE A FEELING KIM MAY HAVE 'LOST THE WILL': N. KOREA'S CHOE
• *NORTH KOREA SAYS U.S. 'MISSED AN OPPORTUNITY' IN HANOI TALKS
• *N.KOREA SAYS ITS DENUCLEARIZATION/SANCTIONS STANCE WON'T CHANGE
• *N. KOREA SAYS U.S. INSISTED ON STEPS BEYOND N. KOREA'S PROPOSAL
• *N.KOREA OFFERED PARTIAL DENUKE STEPS FOR SOME SANCTIONS RELIEF

We imagine Trump won't allow this embarrassing contradiction from a leader with whom he said he "fell in love" after their first round of talks (largely due to Kim's "beautiful letters") to go unchallenged.

* * *

Update: As analysts try to parse what the summit chaos in Vietnam means for US-China trade talks, Beijing has chimed in to offer some clues of its own.

In a statement that mirrored what President Xi said about a US-China deal, Beijing said the US and North Korea must "meet each other half way" on a nuclear deal.

Meanwhile, some have proposed that the collapse of the summit could strengthen Beijing's hand in the trade talks, as Trump might feel pressured to go easy on China to try and win a deal with North Korea.

* * *

Even arm chair observers probably understood long before the Hanoi summit had even been scheduled that the gulf between the American and North Korean positions on denuclearization was probably too wide to overcome (after nearly a year of talks, the two sides are no closer to a deal). Yet, President Trump had apparently hoped that the pomp and circumstance of another historic summit would soften Kim Jong Un up. But despite all the talk about North Korea being "ready to denuclearize" and both leaders hyping up the possibility that a deal would be struck, alas, no deal was forthcoming, and Trump is now headed back to Washington empty handed.

Talks between the two world leaders broke down Thursday afternoon as President Trump abruptly walked away from the table and canceled a planned lunch and signing ceremony (it's still not clear what the two leaders had hoped to sign, though scheduling the ceremony before a deal had been struck did seem risky). With the talks in disarray, Trump moved up a news conference where he and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took questions from the press.

Trump told reporters that he had asked Kim to commit to full denuclearization before the US agreed to sanctions relief, and that "he was unprepared to do that."

Trump told reporters that the talks collapsed after the North refused to yield from its demand that the US completely remove all of the U.S.-led international sanctions - including the sanctions approved by the UN security council - in exchange for the shuttering of the North's Yongbyon nuclear facility. Trump and Pompeo refused to make a deal without the North committing to giving up its secretive nuclear facilities outside Yongbyon, as well as its missile and warheads.

According to Trump, the talks ended amicably enough, with a commitment to keep the talks alive, and Kim also promised that he would not resume nuclear and missile tests - the basis for the detente between the two countries - and Trump said he would take Kim at his word.

Trump added that he'd "much rather do it right than do it fast."

"It was about the sanctions," Trump said. "Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn't do that. They were willing to denuke a large portion of the areas that we wanted, but we couldn't give up all of the sanctions for that."

"I'd much rather do it right than do it fast," Trump added, echoing his remarks from earlier in the day, when he insisted that "speed" was not important. "We're in position to do something very special."

Full press conference:

Jody Wilson-Raybould says she faced "consistent and sustained" political pressure from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and top officials, including "veiled threats," on the need to shelve the criminal prosecution of Montreal's SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.

In dramatic televised testimony before the House of Commons justice committee spanning 3½ hours, the former justice minister and attorney-general outlined detailed conversations at the highest levels of the Trudeau government about helping the Quebec engineering and construction giant out of its legal difficulties.

Ms. Wilson-Raybould said the intense, behind-the-scenes campaign to press her to intervene in the justice system involved about 10 phone calls and 10 meetings that she characterized as inappropriate between September and December, 2018.

"I experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in my role as the attorney-general of Canada in an inappropriate effort to secure a deferred prosecution agreement with SNC-Lavalin," Ms. Wilson-Raybould told MPs.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer later called on Mr. Trudeau to resign, saying he has "lost the moral authority to govern," and said the RCMP should investigate. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh called for a public inquiry.

Mr. Trudeau told a late news conference in Montreal that neither he nor his staff acted inappropriately and that he has faith in an investigation by the Ethics Commissioner.

Read the full text of Ms. Wilson-Raybould's opening statement

[...]

SNC-Lavalin faces one charge of corruption under the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act and one charge of fraud under the Criminal Code. It is alleged SNC paid millions of dollars in bribes to public officials in Libya between 2001 and 2011 to secure government contracts.

The engineering company says executives who were responsible for the wrongdoing have left the company, and it has reformed ethics and compliance rules.

If convicted, SNC-Lavalin could be banned from bidding on federal contracts for up to 10 years.

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