President Trump shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Tracy Wilkinson and Barbara Demick, Hardford Courant: Analysis: Singapore summit agreement recycles old deals, defers the hard work
The diplomatic history of U.S.-North Korean relations is littered with broken promises to denuclearize and deals gone sour.
At their meeting in Singapore, President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a document remarkably similar to, and as vague as, those that have failed in the past to bring peace to the Korean peninsula and rid it of nuclear arms.
The summit, for all the anticipatory hype, was never expected to produce much in the way of new policies or strategy. But it actually produced less than many analysts expected.
The meeting did succeed in turning down the heated rhetoric, shifting the relationship to one of diplomacy instead of threatened war and suggesting a new, tentative rapprochement between two longtime foes.
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WNU Editor: The above analysis is what I have been reading .... and hearing .... and seeing from political pundits, foreign policy experts, and the media all day. And their criticisms are all the same. Are they right? In my opinion no. The momentum is for change .... I can sense it on the Korean peninsula .... specifically in North Korea. How do I know .... because I experienced the same thing when I was growing up in the Soviet Union .... specifically in the 1980s when President Reagan and Soviet leader Gorbachev started to negotiate nuclear and missile agreements. I had access to the Western press during this time .... and everyone in the West .... specifically in the U.S. .... were saying the same thing then as they are saying now. But where they failed then .... and where they are failing now .... is that they did not consider how the average Soviet felt .... or today .... how the average North Korean feels. Everyone wants a better life, and Kim Jong-un comes from a generation that is different from what his father and grandfather experienced. Is Kim Jong-un a North Korean Mikhail Gorbachev .... definitely not. But when Kim Jong-un crossed the DMZ two months he change the dynamics on the Korean Peninsula .... and it is going to reverberate everywhere .... especially on the Peninsula.
