Trump and Kim Will Talk After All—But About What?
On Friday, after the highest-ranking North Korean official to visit the U.S. in 18 years hand-delivered him a letter from Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump declared that his once-canceled summit with North Korea’s leader was back on schedule for June 12 in Singapore. Trump said he and the official discussed ending the Korean War and U.S. troop levels in South Korea: “We talked about almost everything.” But when asked whether the North Koreans had agreed to “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization”—a U.S. demand—Trump was less forthcoming. “I don’t want to say that,” the president said.
If there’s one lesson to emerge from the frenzied efforts to salvage the Trump-Kim summit in recent days, it’s that the devil is in the details of “denuclearization.” And Kim’s letter to Trump is reportedly quite short on details. It raises real questions about what the two leaders actually hope to accomplish.
The letter “expresses the North
