Washington's top diplomat Mike Pompeo was addressing Vietnamese business leaders but his real audience was not in the Hanoi dining room.
The US Secretary of State was sending a message from the thriving commercial heart of this once war-torn city all the way to North Korea.
Vietnam fought a brutal war to expel American invaders, but now the former foes enjoy burgeoning trade ties and a cautious but real friendship. And, whether talking at a business dinner or walking the bustling shopping streets of old Hanoi, Pompeo wants Kim Jong Un to know it.
If only North Korea were to surrender its nuclear arsenal, he suggests, it too could grow rich like its fellow one party state Vietnam.
Addressing business leaders, Pompeo said that US-Vietnam trade had grown 8,000 per cent in the past two decades, as it rose to relative prosperity.
"I say all of that because it's important, but I hope that the United States, that one day we can share the same relationship with North Korea," he said.
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Last month US President Donald Trump met Kim in Singapore at a historic summit designed to open a diplomatic route outside of conflict. The meeting culminated with the leaders signing a pledge that Pyongyang would work towards denuclearisation in exchange for security guarantees.
Trump hailed it as a break-through, boasting that the threat of nuclear war had ended and that the world could now "sleep well". But the diplomatic process could now be in jeopardy.
Pompeo visited Pyongyang last week seeking a more concrete plan for denuclearisation. After he left, North Korea issued a scathing statement, accusing Washington of a "gangster-like" obsession with forcing its unilateral disarmament.
Kim's regime sees "denuclearisation" not as a one-sided surrender of its hard-won but United Nations-prohibited nuclear arsenal. Instead they favor a step-by-step process of political normalisation and a reduction in the implicit threat posed by US forces.
Pompeo, speaking in Japan, said there were "things that would take place along the way that would achieve the security assurances te North Koreans need".
But he was clear there would be no relief from UN-backed economic sanctions until the US vision of denuclearisation is well underway. So the diplomatic process faces a dangerous stand-off, perhaps a dead end, but the US envoy has one more card up his sleeve to play.
He and Trump hope that Kim -- or those with influence over him -- may be wooed by the prospect of eventual, post-nuclear prosperity.
In a much-mocked advertorial-style video shown to Kim at the Singapore summit last month, Trump's officials touted North Korea's economic potential.
Trump, back in his comfort zone in his former job as a real estate promoter, has spoken of future of tourism and beach hotels.
In Vietnam a day after leaving Pyongyang, Pompeo found what he hopes will be a better image: a communist country and former foe now thriving as a US partner.
If Washington and Hanoi can put behind the wounds of war and their ideological differences, why can't North Korea hope for a similar future?