North Korean leader Kim Jong-un views US forces stationed in South Korea as a counterweight and “bulwark” against China’s “real threat” to his sovereignty, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday.

The former top US diplomat underscored that a critical lesson he learned from nuclear talks with Pyongyang is Kim’s perception of the United States Forces Korea, although the Trump administration “didn’t get all the way to try to convince Chairman Kim that his nuclear weapons pose more of a threat to him than they did a security blanket.”

Pompeo, who also previously served as the director of the CIA and visited Pyongyang multiple times, said Kim declined to give an explicit answer when asked about the implications of the withdrawal of US forces on the Korean Peninsula for his regime, recalling his in-person meetings with Kim.