Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote in his new memoir that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un told him in March 2018 that he needed US forces in South Korea to protect himself from China.
Kim "said that he needed the Americans in South Korea to protect him from the CCP, and that the CCP needs the Americans out so they can treat the peninsula like Tibet and Xinjiang," Pompeo wrote, referring to the Chinese Communist Party, in his book "Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I love."
About his first conversation with Kim when he flew into Pyongyang in March 2018 on a clandestine trip as CIA director, Pompeo described Kim as a “small, sweating, evil man” trying to “break the ice with all the charm you would expect from a mass murderer.”
When he told the North Korean ruler that China believes North Korea wants US forces out of South Korea, "Kim laughed and pounded on the table in sheer joy, exclaiming that the Chinese were liars."