How Kim Jong Un Seized Control of the Nuclear Crisis

Kim Jong Un just made two extraordinary moves. First, a man who hasn’t encountered another head of state and rarely interacts with foreign officials, who hasn’t traveled abroad since becoming North Korea’s leader and whose most prominent international contacts include a Japanese sushi chef and Dennis Rodman, played statesman by hosting top South Korean officials for dinner and hours of meetings in Pyongyang. Second, a man who has come to embody the North’s steely determination to become a full-fledged nuclear-weapons power at any cost appeared to signal that he’d be open to giving up that arsenal for the right price.

North Korea “made it clear that it would have no reason to keep on Tuesday. According to South Korea’s account, the North Koreans expressed willingness to negotiate directly with America on “denuclearization” and “normalizing” U.S.-North Korea relations,” to suspend nuclear and missile tests during the talks, and to hold a summit in April between Kim and Moon along the border between the two Koreas. As of this writing, North Korea had yet to confirm that it has made these commitments—if it does, this would be the first time Kim Jong Un has even signaled his nuclear program itself is negotiable.