Discussions of 2nd Trump-Kim summit are premature

By Ted Gover

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have both expressed hope for a follow-up meeting to their initial Singapore encounter in June.

While Trump and Kim deserve credit for lowering the temperature between their two countries in recent months, Kim's progress on dismantling his nuclear weapons program has been insufficient, making a second summit between the two leaders premature.

Just as it was appropriate for U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's August trip to Pyongyang to have been cancelled ― with President Trump citing scant headway by the North on denuclearization ― Trump is right to keep Kim at an arm's length until certain breakthroughs are made.

Certainly, there have been positive steps of late. Pyongyang has engaged in confidence building measures, namely, stopping nuclear and missile tests over the past year, returning the remains of 55 U.S. service members from the Korean War, pledging to allow outside inspectors to dismantle its missile facilities, committing to closing the Tongchang-ri engine test site and suggesting it would scrap the Yongbyon nuclear complex.

Despite these steps and efforts to convince Washington of its commitment to getting rid of its nuclear program, the North has yet to take actions that constitute irreversible denuclearization. Furthermore, Pyongyang has not provided full disclosure of its nuclear and missile facilities, and has failed to reveal the size of its current nuclear stockpiles.

Furthermore, the Kim regime has not shared with the Trump administration a roadmap as to how it plans to dispose of its nuclear arsenal.

All of this while Pyongyang argues it is unable to live up to its denuclearization commitments because the U.S. has not reciprocated the North's self-described good faith measures.

Despite its failure to take the steps specified by Washington, Pyongyang has demanded a declaration of the end of the Korean War, the signing of a peace treaty and normalization of relations with Washington as well as the easing of sanctions.

Many analysts assert that the North's long-held desire to declare an end to the Korean War and to sign a peace treaty with the U.S. is part of its strategy to remove American troops from the peninsula, arguing that the absence of hostilities no longer justifies their presence.

In the backdrop of all of this, the Trump administration remains skeptical of Pyongyang, believing that the regime has undisclosed nuclear facilities. It has been right to call for denuclearization to be completed by 2021, signaling limited patience on the issue.

Trump would be best served by taking a hard line and denying Kim of a second summit until verifiable measures towards denuclearization are forthcoming. Otherwise, his White House is likely to encounter the same North Korean tactics that have bedeviled other administrations ― that is, ambiguity, stalling, demands for concessions, accusations and provocations, threats and ultimatums and the unilateral withdrawal from talks and agreements.

Ted Gover (amberjack_shoal@yahoo.com), Ph.D. is director of the Tribal Administration Program at Claremont Graduate University. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.