That is what this article in the Politico suggests that President Trump is planning to do:

Taking Trump at his word during the campaign—when he decried U.S. allies Japan and South Korea as ungrateful free-riders—it would be reasonable to conclude that Trump is willing to forsake U.S. allies in the region by getting Kim to agree to negotiate away his ICBMs but ultimately leave Kim with a regional nuclear strike capability. Nuclear scholars have worried that a North Korean ICBM capability would “decouple” the United States from South Korea—the question of whether America would trade Seattle for Seoul in a nuclear conflict is a rhetorical one. We know the answer. The irony of a nuclear deal between Kim and Trump may actually be that true decoupling will happen when North Korea retains only the ability to strike U.S. allies but not the United States. Kim can simultaneously give a nod in the direction of denuclearization, remove the imminent threat to the U.S. homeland posed by his ICBMs, and expand a wedge between the United States and its allies.  [Politico]

You can read more at the link, but considering that President Trump has stressed denuclearization repeatedly he would have a hard time agreeing to allowing North Korea to keep nuclear weapons that they can use to strike an ally like Japan and US bases in the region.

This is why North Korea likes to detain Americans, they make great bargaining chips when negotiations like the ones going on now happen:

The U.S. government is looking into reports that three Americans detained in North Korea have been relocated from a labor camp to a hotel near Pyongyang ahead of a planned summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no immediate confirmation of any change in the detainees’ status. Trump administration officials have pressed for their release as a show of goodwill by North Korea before the unprecedented U.S.-North Korea summit expected in late May or early June.

“As everybody is aware, the past Administration has long been asking for three hostages to be released from a North Korean Labor camp, but to no avail. Stay tuned!” Trump said in a Twitter post late on Wednesday.

CNN, in a report on Thursday, cited an unnamed source saying the release of the three men was imminent, adding that the groundwork for the move came two months ago when North Korea’s foreign minister traveled to Sweden and proposed the idea.

South Korean media reports on Wednesday quoted a South Korean activist as saying North Korea had relocated the three Americans from a labor camp to a hotel on the outskirts of Pyongyang. Choi Soung-yong, the activist, told Reuters that Kim Hak-song, Tony Kim and Kim Dong-chul were moved in early April following instructions from superior authorities, citing residents in Pyongyang.  [Reuters]

You can read more at the link, but despite a clear risk of being a long term detainee for committing the smallest of offenses, we will probably continue to see Americans in future go over to North Korea and get detained.

President Moon continues to say all the right things in his continuing effort to get President Trump to sign up for the recent charm offensive with North Korea:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in flatly dismissed the idea of U.S. troops stationed here pulling out following a formal end to the Korean War, saying the issue has nothing to do with North Korea but only with the Korea-U.S. alliance.

“U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) is a matter of the South Korea-U.S. alliance. It has nothing to do with signing a peace treaty,” the president said, according to his spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom.

In a historic summit held at the border truce village of Panmunjom on Friday, Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed to push for a peace treaty that would formally end the 1950-53 Korean War.

Moon’s remarks came shortly after his special adviser Moon Chung-in hinted at the possibility of a withdrawal.

“What will happen to U.S. forces in South Korea if a peace treaty is signed? It will be difficult to justify their continuing presence in South Korea after its adoption,” the former Yonsei University professor said in a contributed articled published Monday by U.S. magazine Foreign Affairs.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but here is something to consider on what could happen with USFK if a peace treaty is agreed to.  Possibly the future of USFK could look a lot like the current THAAD site in Seongju.  President Moon will say all the right things that he supports USFK, just like he supposedly supports the THAAD site, but will set conditions to make it difficult for its continued existence.  In Seongju he continues to allow the blockade of the THAAD site which has made it extremely difficult to sustain and causing the quality of life for the soldiers there to be reportedly very poor.

After a peace treaty is signed President Moon could allow his army of leftist supporters to protest and blockade US military bases to make life miserable for US servicemembers in Korea.  Servicemembers stationed in Korea back in the 2002-2004 timeframe remember how bad serving in Korea was due to the 2002 Armored Vehicle Accident and the massive protests it created.  It got so bad that US soldiers were kidnapped from the subway and forced to make coerced statements in a sports stadium, some soldiers were grabbed off the streets and beaten, and USFK bases were even fire bombed.

Remember Moon Jae-in was the Chief of Staff for the ROK President at the time, Roh Moo-hyun who allowed all the outrageous behavior to happen.  Then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s threat to withdraw USFK was what eventually stopped the protests and attacks on troops.  What if President Moon this time just allows the protests and attacks to continue and the US decides on its own to withdraw?

Shoving? That was a gentle nudge with the back of his hand. Don't put me in the position of defending Kim Jong-un. https://t.co/fjjEehNjNa

— KingSejong (@KingSejong) May 2, 2018

Down go the propaganda speakers again, at least until the next time the North Koreans decide to start another provocation cycle:

Seoul’s Ministry of National Defense removed propaganda loudspeakers near the military demarcation line (MDL), Tuesday, in fulfillment of a part of the Panmunjeom Declaration signed by President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The ministry began the dismantling at 2 p.m.; and it took about an hour for around 30 people from the military and a speaker manufacturer to remove one speaker. The work in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, was covered by the media. The ministry did not say how long it would take to completely remove the dozens of speakers along the border

The move follows an agreement in the declaration announced Friday, in which the two Koreas agreed to cease all hostile acts against each other and eliminate any means of activities considered hostile in the areas along the MDL starting May 1, with a goal to turn the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) into a real peace zone.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder if it is a crew drill for these ROK Army soldiers to put propaganda speakers up and down as quickly as possible because we all know they are going back up again at some point?  😉

I totally agree with Dr. Lankov that the recent Kim-Moon Inter-Korean Summit was more marketing and hype than actual substance:

It was, frankly, quite striking to see the tidal wave of unwarranted optimism in South Korean media that accompanied the April 27 summit.

To be more precise, this tidal wave began to rise shortly before the summit actually took place, and reached a truly remarkable level after its (modest and predictable) results were announced.

To a very large extent, this optimism has been deliberately manufactured by the South Korean bureaucracy. The Moon administration has spared no expense creating the impression that a historical breakthrough was made at Panmunjom.

These marketing efforts are eagerly supported by left-leaning media outlets, with the Hankyoreh Sinmun and Kyonghyang Sinmun being arguably the most vocal participants in this state-led enthusiasm building campaign.  (…………)

One op-ed author, for example, assured his readers that in the near future, they will be able to take “the unification train” from Busan all the way to Moscow and Paris.

Another contributor shared his dreams about hiking in the North Korean mountains and buying freshly boiled corn from locals and assured readers that now, after this supposed breakthrough, these dreams are certainly about to come true very soon.

It has even been suggested that the architects of this supposed breakthrough should be considered as candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize.

These flood of naivety and self-imposed amnesia might sound comical, but there are good reasons why the Moon administration is working so hard to manufacture this optimism and to maintain it at a sufficiently high level.  [NK News]

You can read more at the link, but the Moon administration is building this hype like I have previously posted about, to influence President Trump during his upcoming summit with Kim Jong-un.  They need to get Trump on board with the Great Charade of 2018 and get him to also pretend that things are going to be different this time and that the North Koreans really do mean to denuclearize.

Rebuilding Kim’s image with the Inter-Korean Summit was part of this effort.  The upcoming demolition of the nuclear test site will be the next dramatic optic of little substance that will happen before the Kim-Trump summit.  If President Trump sticks to his demands of denuclearization with strict inspections before dropping sanctions than the Great Charade of 2018 will likely implode and Moon will likely blame Trump for its failure instead of the real source of the peninsula’s problems, Kim Jong-un.

I had no idea that the name of the infamous aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was actually someone’s name:

Gov. Eddie Calvo’s former spokesman Troy Torres was arrested in connection with conspiracy to distribute drugs after police found methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia in a residence, police said Saturday.

Torres, 37, of Mangilao was arrested Friday after the Mandaña Drug Task Force and SWAT raided a house on Chrysanthemum Street in Latte Heights, according to Guam Police Department spokesman Sgt. Paul Tapao.

Torres, along with the two others he was arrested with — John Vincent Aguigui Salas, 35, and Enolagay Aliga, 27, both of whom were arrested in connection with illegal possession of a Schedule II controlled substance, according to Tapao — were released Saturday afternoon, according to the Department of Corrections. [Pacific Daily News]

You can read more at the link, but the Enola Gay airplane actually took off from the island of Tinian which is a short distance north of Guam in the Mariana Islands chain.  I wonder if her parents named her after the plane?

John Kelly strongly — and successfully — dissuaded Trump in February from ordering the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, @NBCNews reports. This fits with accounts I heard about Trump throwing papers in the Oval, yelling about S.Koreahttps://t.co/JYqiqQHaqj pic.twitter.com/QBo6xHWu5K

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) May 1, 2018

Rescue authorities clean up the scene where a bus collided with a passenger vehicle, killing eight and injuring 11, on a road in Yeongam County, South Jeolla Province, on May 1, 2018. (Yonhap)