North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wrote a letter that President Donald Trump may not be happy with. “There won’t be a summit,” said one expert.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wrote a letter to President Donald Trump — and apparently Kim didn’t say what Trump wanted to hear.
That could increase the chances that Trump refuses a potential meeting between the two leaders, which puts the US and North Korea at higher risk for going to war.
According to an unnamed foreign official who spoke to the Wall Street Journal on Friday morning, Kim wrote in a letter that he still wanted to meet with Trump. Kim Yong Chol, a top North Korean official considered Kim Jong Un’s right-hand man, will likely hand-deliver the letter to Trump around 1 pm on Friday at the White House.
The fact that Kim still wants to meet Trump is a positive sign; there’s been a lot of back-and-forth about a potential summit over the past several weeks. But Kim doesn’t express a desire to make any concessions in his note, even though he reportedly doesn’t threaten the US in any way.
The North Korean leader’s message could potentially be a big problem. The Trump administration keeps saying that it wants North Korea to agree to complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization quickly. That means Pyongyang would have to somehow dismantle its nuclear program very soon, even though a top expert says that process could take around 15 years to complete.
North Korea, however, wants a phased approach in which both Washington and Pyongyang make a few concessions over a long period of time, according to experts. That could mean North Korea allows inspectors to view its nuclear sites in exchange for the US diplomatically recognizing the Kim regime.
Some experts say that Kim’s letter means the potential meeting between Trump and Kim — tentatively scheduled for June 12 in Singapore — is in danger.
“There won’t be a summit,” Harry Kazianis, a North Korea expert at the Center for the National Interest think tank, told me. “The bottom line is both sides are just too far apart. Kim wants to make an aspirational pledge while we want something firm. There is no way to bridge that gap easily.”
Trump is planning to spend the weekend at Camp David discussing the US agenda for the possible summit. But it’s unclear what, exactly, Trump will do after he receives the North Korean leader’s note.
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https://www.vox.com/2018/6/1/17417348/kim-trump-north-korea-letter-summit
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