At least the North Koreans are being honest now and admitting they never had any plans to denuclearize:
Earlier Saturday, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kim Song, said that denuclearization has already been taken off the negotiating table with the U.S.
“We do not need to have lengthy talks with the U.S. now and denuclearization is already gone out of the negotiating table,” Kim said in a statement issued after Britain and five other European nations condemned the North’s “continued testing of ballistic missiles.”
Satellite imagery indicated on Monday that North Korea had tested a rocket engine, and a senior Pyongyang official called Donald Trump a “heedless and erratic old man”, resuming insults of the U.S. president that had been set aside during a thaw.
The statement carried in state media KCNA by Kim Yong Chol, a ruling party vice chairman who was instrumental in arranging a failed second summit in February, was the strongest salvo yet in a war of words that has rekindled in recent days.
He described Trump as impatient, rebuked him over his own rhetoric and repeated a threat from last week that Pyongyang would dust off its previous insult “dotard” for the U.S. leader.
President Moon wants everyone to believe that the Kim regime really means it this time to denuclearize:
President Moon Jae-in speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York on Tuesday (local time). / Yonhap
South Korean President Moon Jae-in pushed back Tuesday against widespread skepticism about the sincerity of Kim Jong Un’s vows to give up his nuclear bombs, saying that the current round of diplomacy with North Korea is ”completely different” than the many failed deals that have frustrated past negotiators.
Moon, fresh off a dramatic summit in Pyongyang last week with Kim that saw more promises from the North Korean leader to dismantle his weapons programs, is at the U.N. General Assembly this week, meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and other world leaders to explain and, to some extent, defend his efforts to bring peace to the famously hostile Korean Peninsula.
He told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York that it was ”only natural that we have plenty of suspicions regarding the true motivations” of Kim. It was, after all, only last year that a series of increasingly powerful North Korean weapons tests, including the nation’s sixth nuclear test explosion, and the tough reaction by Trump had many worrying about war. Some critics believe that tough sanctions and pressure, rather than engagement and concessions, stand a better chance of ridding the North of its nukes.
”It’s completely different this time around,” Moon said, speaking through an interpreter. What’s changed this time is that, unlike past efforts that collapsed when the countries tried to implement deals that had been made at the working level, this one has Trump and Kim making the decisions and then driving their lieutenants to follow through.
”This was a promise made in front of the whole world” by Trump and Kim, Moon said. ”For this reason, I believe the promise will be kept.” [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but if Kim Jong-un wants people to think he is serious about denuclearization he can start shipping out nuclear material from his country. The concessions they have made so far are all easily reversible that he wants sanctions dropped and a peace treaty signed in return for.
Shipping nuclear material out of the country cannot be reversed and worthy of bigger concessions from the US. Until the Kim regime starts doing that people are going to rightfully remain skeptical about his intentions. As I have long been saying, the Kim regime wants “pretend denuclearization” which many people in the academic class, political class, and US adversaries want as well.
