President Donald Trump said during a Tuesday interview on "Good Morning America" that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is "denuking" his country and is going to start "very quickly."
"He's denuking the whole place, and he's going to start very quickly. I think he's going to start now," Trump told ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos.
During the summit in Singapore, Trump became the first U.S. president to meet face-to-face with a North Korean head of state. The Trump administration has pushed for North Korea to denuclearize, while promising security and prosperity in return. The joint statement Trump and Kim signed gave few details on how the two countries will move forward with denuclearization of the peninsula.
"President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," said the statement.
In addition to signing the joint statement, Trump said North Korea will soon announce its next steps.
"They'll be announcing things over the next few days, talking about other missile sites because they were, as you know, they were sending out a lot of missiles," Trump said. "They are going to be getting rid of sites."
"Is he going to stop testing?" Stephanopoulos asked.
"He already has. We have—how many months has it been, George, seven, where there's been no missiles going up?" Trump said.
Trump added he believes Kim is committed not to start testing his nuclear weapons again and that it will take time for him to dismantle his nuclear program.
"Somebody said 15 years if you go rapidly, but when you're in a process of doing it, you're really dismantling. In other words, you can't do anything during that period of time, but they have a process for getting rid of nukes that does take—it's not like, oh gee, we'll get rid of them tomorrow," Trump said.
The president appeared to reference North Korea destroying parts of its Punggye-ri nuclear test site as evidence that the country is serious about denuclearization.
"They've really already started. They blew up a site, which was the real deal site. That was their big site. They've blown it up," Trump said. "They're getting rid of things that haven't been mentioned in the document. They're getting rid of certain missile areas, and they're not going to be sending missiles up."