Even if Kim Jong-un supposedly gave his word to seek denuclearization he could still very easily blame the ROK and the US for some made up reason to scrap any denuclearization deal that is made:
This AP file photo shows South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha. (Yonhap)
South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha expressed confidence in North Korea’s commitment to abandon its nuclear weapons program, saying the regime’s leader gave “his word.”
This month North Korean leader Kim Jong-un conveyed in a verbal message to U.S. President Donald Trump that he is committed to denuclearization and would stop all nuclear and missile tests. He also invited Trump to a summit, and the U.S. president accepted the offer.
“He has given his word,” Kang told U.S. broadcaster CBS in an interview filmed Saturday and aired Sunday. “But the significance of his word is quite weighty in the sense that this is the first time that the words came directly from the North Korean supreme leader himself. And that has never been done before.” [Yonhap]
The U.S. policy of trying to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons “is probably a lost cause” and the best that could be hoped for is a cap on the country’s nuclear capability, the Director of U.S. National Intelligence James Clapper said on Tuesday.
However, underscoring conflicting views in the Obama administration, the State Department said U.S. policy was unchanged and continued to be to seek the “verifiable denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula.
President Barack Obama has repeatedly stated that the United States will never accept North Korean as a nuclear-armed state.
Clapper made clear at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York he did not think that the policy the administration has stuck to, in spite of repeated North Korean nuclear tests, was realistic.
“I think the notion of getting the North Koreans to denuclearize is probably a lost cause,” Clapper said at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York. “They are not going to do that – that is their ticket to survival.” [Reuters]
