Trump's DMZ meeting with Kim kicked diplomacy back into gear | By S. Nathan Park for CNNOpinion
S. Nathan Park is a Washington-based attorney whose commentary on the Korean Peninsula has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, The Atlantic and Foreign Policy. The views expressed in this commentary are solely his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.
The Twitter invitation was abrupt, even by Trumpian standards. On June 29, while visiting Japan for the G20 summit, President Donald Trump tweeted:"If Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello!" Less than 48 hours later, Trump and Kim Jong Un would indeed shake hands at the Joint Security Area in Panmunjom. By taking a few steps across the military demarcation line, Trump kicked the stalled US-North Korea diplomacy back into gear. S. Nathan ParkStill, Washington's foreign policy circles, for the most part, criticized the meeting. Apparently, the summit was problematic because there were no working level talks leading up to it.
With 20 steps, Trump made history in North Korea 02:26The narrow conception of denuclearization, only counting off how many nuclear facilities and warheads were disabled, misses the fundamental truth about North Korea's nuclear program. The Kim regime developed its nuclear weapons because it feared the US would attack North Korea. The key for denuclearizing North Korea, then, is not for the US to merely demand North Korea dismantle its nuclear program.
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