Mike Pompeo looked back on the highlights of his two-year stint as secretary of state, saying the release of three American detainees from North Korea was “pretty special.”
“I haven’t had a chance to reflect on it,” the US’s top diplomat said on Fox News Thursday, when asked his most memorable moment on the job. “I guess if I were to give you my quick response, it was really something to come back from Pyongyang with three Americans and travel home with them from Asia and return them to their families.”
Pompeo was referring to the 2018 trip he took to the North to bring home US citizens Kim Dong-chul, Kim Sang-duk and Kim Hak-song, who were freed from a labor camp in Pyongyang.
The trio had been accused of espionage or “hostile acts.”
“They were at real risk and we got a chance to bring three Americans home that morning back at the very beginning of my time as secretary of state,” Pompeo said. “It was pretty special to do that.”
As for the future, Pompeo, 56, said it was “hard to know” what was next in his career but that he’ll “keep doing this until we’re tapped on the shoulder and told it’s no longer time to be the secretary of state.”
“Susan and I will figure it out,” he said, referring to his wife Susan Pompeo.
