Letting the Korean Breakthrough Run Its Course

After dramatic diplomatic maneuvers by South Korea and an unexpectedly warm response from North Korea, the United States finds itself in a position that many thought would never come again: planning for a discussion with Kim Jong Un that includes denuclearization.

Yesterday, a delegation of special envoys from Seoul agreed to hold working-level consultations with Pyongyang in late April, establish a hotline between Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae In, the president of South Korea, discuss denuclearization with the United States, and pause nuclear and missile tests during the dialogue. Moreover: to one South Korean negotiator, Kim said that he understood that the U.S.-South Korean joint exercises “must resume in April on the same on the substance of the meeting. But if these terms hold, they would represent a major concession for a regime that has hysterically claimed that these exercises were a prelude to invasion. The Kim regime may have taken a step even beyond the freeze-for-freeze proposal in which joint exercises, as well as nuclear and missile tests, would all be reciprocally frozen. Instead, it seems to have offered a freeze for free.