Taking Kim Jong-un At His Word Will Give The Deceptive Dictator Way Too Much Leverage There are plenty of reasons to be suspicious that North Korea hasn’t fundamentally changed its goals, even if it has had to change its tactics.
By Megan G. Oprea
April 30, 2018 On Friday, North and South Korea made history. Or at least that’s what everyone is saying. While the leaders of those two countries did meet at the most recent summit since 2007, and while many impressive, headline-making developments have emerged over the past few days, there are plenty of reasons to be suspicious that North Korea hasn’t fundamentally changed its goals, even if it has had to change its tactics.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met on Friday in the demilitarized zone that has separated the two Koreas since they signed an armistice in 1953. Their initial meeting and handshake was attended by a glut of fanfare and the scrutiny of hundreds of camera lenses and live TV coverage. Kim and Moon were kicking off a summit whose purpose is to end the spiraling crisis on the Korean peninsula over North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Its secondary purpose, of course, was to act as a warm-up for the meeting between Kim and President Donald Trump, set to take place sometime in May or June.
Since Friday, the news cycle has been busting with breaking headlines of “historic†developments emerging from this summit. The first came on Friday, when Kim crossed into South Korea for the first time, followed by Moon briefly crossing into North Korea long enough to have some photos taken. Later in the day, the two countries signed a joint declaration stating that they would work toward signing a peace agreement to officially bring an end to the Korean War, and that they had a shared goal of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.
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http://thefederalist.com/2018/04/30/taking-kim-jong-un-word-will-give-way-much-leverage/
