The most famous and powerful woman in North Korea isn’t Kim Jong Un’s wife, Ri Sol Ju, but Kim Yo Jong—Kim’s only sister. As deputy chief of the propaganda and agitation department of the KWP, an alternate member of the Politburo, and a member of the central committee and the Supreme People’s Assembly, Yo Jong works at the apex of the North Korean political system. The thirty-one-year-old is powerful not because she holds these influential posts in the party but because she hails from the Paektu bloodline. A granddaughter of North Korea’s founder and long-time leader Kim Il Sung (1912–1994), Kim Yo Jong became a superstar the moment her plane landed at South Korea’s Incheon International Airport in February 2018, the first member of the ruling family to set foot in South Korea since the Korean War.
Korean and foreign media recorded every moment of her public appearance. It was hard to imagine that her main job was running information warfare campaigns on behalf of her brother and ensuring his grip on power. No one had seen a member of the Kim family quite like her: elegant, poised, and with a killer smile. As the media focused on her looks, the tailored black overcoat, and the fact that she tilted her head ever so slightly upward, Yo Jong became a symbol of a new North Korean leadership.
Kim Yo Jong understands how dangerous it is to walk the halls of power. Her aunt Kim Kyong Hui, who was Yo Jong’s grandfather’s doting daughter and Yo Jong’s father’s beloved sister, married Jang Song Thaek. Just two years after Kim Jong Un became Supreme Leader, he ordered Jang’s execution. By killing his uncle, Kim Jong Un solidified his hold on power. It was a powerful reminder that no one stands in the way of the Supreme Leader. Having watched all of this in real time, Kim Yo Jong understands that her power flows from her brother’s largesse.
Kim Yo Jong was acutely aware of her mission: to charm South Korea (and the rest of the world) in order to pave the way for Kim Jong Un’s meeting with South Korean president Moon Jae-in. The ultimate goals: relief from international sanctions on North Korea and recognition of Kim Jong Un as a dynamic and a reform-minded leader—something like a very young Deng Xiaoping.
The Supreme Leader was ready to make his move. His charge to his sister was simple but powerful: Tell Moon I want to meet him because I really want to focus on economic growth. I am willing to give up my nuclear arsenal and negotiate face-to-face with Donald Trump. This was the first sortie in an unprecedented campaign of what the Soviets used to call maskirovka, or a camouflage, deception, and disinformation operation.
The days of saber-rattling were over, at least for the moment. Kim Jong Un needed to completely rebrand his image on the world stage. Otherwise, harsher UN sanctions would really begin to erode North Korea’s hard-currency earnings. Without dollars or euros, Kim couldn’t sustain his regime. Although the ideology of Juche was still pervasive in North Korea, the reality was totally different.
North Korea depends on China for 90 percent of its fuel and food. Never mind that Kim spends huge amounts of money on his nuclear weapons and missile programs—nearly $100 million on missile tests alone between 2011 and 2017, according to South Korean estimates.1 Overall, the estimated $1.3 billion spent on missile programs in North Korea since 2011, when Kim came to power, could buy 4.6 million tons of corn—enough to feed North Korea for four to five years.
By late 2017 and early 2018, UN sanctions were beginning to bite. Resolution 1718 had been passed in 2006 after North Korea detonated its first atomic bomb, and sanctions hardened as Pyongyang conducted successive tests. In September 2017, the UN passed Resolution 2375 after North Korea conducted a hydrogen bomb test. And while each of Kim’s generals knew they could be demoted, purged, sent to a reeducation camp, imprisoned in a gulag, or even executed by antiaircraft guns, Kim couldn’t help wondering if the stresses from the sanctions could lead party elites to begin to doubt his leadership. What would happen if twenty, thirty, or a hundred worried colonels and generals began to plot his ouster? Kim Jong Un needed a new strategy, and he calculated that the Winter Olympic Games would be the perfect launchpad for his reinvention of himself.
Kim was often caricatured in the West as a “boy general” with little experience, someone who spent time caressing his nuclear warheads. He was known mostly for executing his uncle, who had been instrumental in his ascendance; for assassinating his older half-brother in broad daylight in a Kuala Lumpur airport; and for ordering the death of his minister of defense because the man was caught dozing off in a meeting.
Those who said Kim wouldn’t be able to hold on to power were wrong. He is savvy and fully understands how and when to manipulate the levers of power. Unlike his father and grandfather, Kim is unafraid to rock the boat. Just how far he can rock it without capsizing it is the great unknown.
The killings of his uncle and his older brother had shocked the North Korean elites, as no previous North Korean leader had ever killed a close relative. Yet this brutal show of force had an unintended benefit beyond striking fear into the elites: according to veteran North Korea watchers in South Korea’s intelligence community, the masses welcomed Kim’s purge because those targeted had been symbols of their oppression.2
Assured of his own power within North Korea, and having successfully countered the United States with the development of advanced nuclear weapons and the demonstration of ICBM capabilities, Kim Jong Un now felt it was time to turn the page.
The only person Kim Jong Un can trust entirely is his younger sister, Kim Yo Jong. Although North Korea experts differ in their speculations about what would happen if Kim Jong Un suddenly died, it is entirely possible, even probable, that Kim Yo Jong would replace him. Unless the North Korean military decides to eliminate Kim and his entire clan—nearly unthinkable, although not impossible—Yo Jong is the only one in the Kim dynasty who can assume the mantle. Detractors say that the military and party leadership would never accept a woman as their Great Leader, but in the pantheon of North Korean politics, the Kim family has a virtually untouchable aura.
Kim Yo Jong’s own personal aura was certainly burnished by her performance at the Olympic opening ceremony in February 2018. Although she was accompanied by a coterie of North Korean officials, the South Korean press had zero interest in covering any other members of the North Korean delegation.3 Though at times Yo Jong was photographed looking stern and supremely confident, befitting her status, more commonly she was pictured with a warm smile and an open demeanor, and that was what made her a movie star—so much so that many South Korean men said that if they could, they’d marry her in a heartbeat.
When the opening ceremony began and the VIPs were being seated, President and Mrs. Moon stood to greet Kim Yo Jong and Kim Yong Nam, the then nominal head of state. Conscious that the world was recording her every movement, Kim Yo Jong was deferential to the president, bowing ever so slightly as she shook Moon’s hand.
“Mr. President, it’s a real pleasure to meet you,” she said.
“It’s very nice to meet you. Thank you for coming to the opening ceremony,” replied Moon.
Then she shook hands with South Korea’s First Lady.
The cameras caught these moments, but they also captured U.S. vice president Mike Pence, seated one row above Kim. Pence and his wife looked tense, surely thinking about how they would react if Kim Yo Jong suddenly turned to them and said hello. But she did not acknowledge them. And Pence didn’t acknowledge her either.
Kim Yo Jong would meet with President Moon a total of four times during her three-day stay in South Korea. At a luncheon at the Blue House the day after the Olympic opening ceremony, she delivered an official letter from her brother and conveyed his invitation to Moon to visit Pyongyang. Moon smiled and said, “Let’s work together toward creating the right environment,” but he seemed positively inclined. The “Olympic thaw” had begun, and Kim Yo Jong was leading it.
On June 12, 2018, seven and a half years after he succeeded his father as Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un walked onto a stage in Singapore and extended his hand to U.S. president Donald J. Trump. Neither seemed to mind that just six months earlier, the two had been trading increasingly vicious denouncements. After the summit, Trump hailed his meeting with Kim as a “total success” and announced that he had bonded with the North Korean leader.
From the summer of 2017 until early 2018, however, the world media had been abuzz with daily breaking news on the growing threat of war on the Korean Peninsula. Americans were genuinely frightened by a North Korea that could fire a nuclear-tipped ICBM. No state had ever threatened the United States the way North Korea had. North Korean propagandists posted crude videos on YouTube of mushroom clouds engulfing the White House and of the Capitol blown to pieces. It was as if some installment of the Die Hard movie series was playing out in the real world.
On August 8, 2017, a gruff Trump said that any attack launched by North Korea would be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”4 Pyongyang reacted swiftly with its own threat to create “an envelope of fire” around Guam, and added, “It is a daydream for the U.S. to think that its mainland is an invulnerable Heavenly Kingdom.”5
When Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, opined that the administration was willing to talk with Kim Jong Un, Trump famously tweeted, “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time to negotiate with Little Rocket Man [Kim Jong Un] … Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done.”6
Everyone wondered what the plan was behind Trump’s North Korea strategy. The U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy was being blindsided right and left by the president’s tweets. In Trump’s maiden speech before the United Nations General Assembly on September 20, 2017, the American president announced that while America was very powerful and patient, “if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”7 No U.S. president had ever uttered such threats before, not even at the height of the Cold War.
Not to be outdone, Kim shot back that “the entire United States is within range of our nuclear weapons; a nuclear button is always on my desk. This is reality, not a threat.”8
Trump, who couldn’t resist having the last word, subsequently tweeted, “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”9
So, what happened? How, after all these threats from both sides, did Trump and Kim wind up meeting in Singapore?
For Kim, a summit with a sitting U.S. president would provide a legitimacy that he sorely lacked on the international stage. For Trump, it was an opportunity to demonstrate his foreign policy bona fides and his negotiating skills against a determined and skilled adversary. The “Great Negotiator” was about to meet with the “Great Leader.”
Trump wanted to show his detractors that, unlike any previous occupant of the Oval Office, he would be able to convince Kim Jong Un to dismantle his nuclear weapons. It was Trumpian to the core: follow your instincts, even if your advisors tell you otherwise.
The first hint of a thaw had come with Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s speech in January 2018. These annual speeches are generally much like the long, turgid, self-congratulatory speeches Soviet leaders used to make during the Cold War; even so, intelligence analysts in Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington spend a lot of time assessing these speeches in an effort to gather insights into Pyongyang’s strategy for the coming year.
But in January 2018, Kim Jong Un delivered a very different message. He appeared in a light gray suit and a matching tie rather than his usual Mao suit. Unlike his earlier speeches, when he had looked ill at ease as he read his lines, now Kim appeared to own the podium. And as he began his speech, he bowed and wished his countrymen a happy New Year. This was unprecedented—neither his father nor his grandfather had ever bowed in such circumstances. After all, they were living deities; how could gods bow before mere mortals?
In the speech he attacked the United States and South Korea, as expected, but simultaneously reached out to Seoul. “A very special achievement that was accomplished last year by our party, our country, and our people was the historical completion of our nation’s nuclear weapons capabilities,” he said.10 He announced that he was certain the United States would never be able to attack the fatherland because North Korea now had a range of weapons to deter it, including nuclear ones.
Kim listed North Korea’s usual spectacular achievements in all fields despite the burden of international sanctions, and he castigated South Korea for playing along with the rest of the international community. Yet he also stressed the importance of celebrating the two major events coming up in the new year: the seventieth anniversary of the founding of North Korea and the hosting of the Winter Olympic Games in South Korea.
If I were to comment on the opening of the Winter Olympic Games in the near future in South Korea, this is a good opportunity to display our brethren’s status, and we sincerely wish that the games will be successful. In this light, we stand ready to send a delegation and discuss necessary steps; to this end, the officials of the North and the South could meet rapidly.11
It was a carefully crafted speech that highlighted the “peaceful” intentions of North Korea as a “responsible nuclear power.” So long as enemy forces didn’t impinge upon the nation’s independence and sovereignty, Kim remarked, “we will not use nuclear weapons nor threaten any state with nuclear weapons.”12
Within three hours, a spokesman for the South Korean Ministry of Unification welcomed Kim’s desire to send a delegation to the Winter Olympic Games. South Korea was ready, said the spokesman, to discuss all related measures as soon as possible.
The Olympics would be a perfect stage to kick off Kim’s peace initiative, since he was 100 percent certain that Moon would be a willing partner. While South Korea had spent billions of dollars preparing for the games, all Kim had to do was to send his sister with a high-powered delegation. Of course, athletes would go. But since only two North Korean athletes had prequalified, the highlight of the Pyeongchang Games wouldn’t be the snowboarding and skiing competitions; it would be Kim Yo Jong.
The seed for inter-Korean détente had been planted soon after Moon Jae-in became president in May 2017. He promised during the campaign that he would continue the “sunshine policy,” or policy of active engagement, begun by previous progressive governments. Moon’s choice for director of the National Intelligence Service was Suh Hoon, who had served former president Roh Moo-hyun as deputy director for operations and played a key role in setting up the second inter-Korean summit in October 2007.
As head of the NIS, Suh began communicating with his counterpart in Pyongyang through discreet channels even as North Korea tested missiles and carried out its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on September 3, 2017 (Pyongyang claimed it was a hydrogen bomb). The contacts with the North Korean Reconnaissance General Bureau—Pyongyang’s main intelligence agency—that Suh had cultivated as deputy director a decade back began to pay dividends.
As far as Pyongyang was concerned, they couldn’t have hoped for a better team in Seoul to work with. After ten years of conservative leaders in Seoul, someone was now going to pick up the phone when Pyongyang called.
In his first speech as head of South Korea, in July 2017, Moon outlined his vision for a completely different approach to inter-Korean ties. Moon pledged that as his government pursued denuclearization, it would also provide a security guarantee to the North Korean regime. Reminiscent of one of Ronald Reagan’s favorite phrases in describing U.S.-Soviet relations, Moon said that “it takes two to tango. This is only possible when North Korea fully stops its nuclear provocations and comes out to the forum of bilateral and multilateral dialogue on denuclearization.”13
Moon explicitly asked the North to consider taking advantage of the Winter Olympic Games scheduled for February 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, just a hundred kilometers from the DMZ.
I am ready to meet with Chairman Kim Jong Un of North Korea at any time at any place, if the conditions are met and if it will provide an opportunity to transform the tension and confrontation on the Korean Peninsula. We can place on the dialogue table all issues of interest between the South and the North, including the nuclear issue and the peace treaty, and discuss peace on the Korean Peninsula and inter-Korean cooperation.14
The South Korean leader was sending a very clear message to Kim Jong Un: Meet me halfway. Let’s break the patterns we’ve established as the world’s last Cold War frontier. Give the Americans what they want—a denuclearized North Korea—and we both get what we want: Koreans taking charge of our nation’s fate, Koreans united against the great powers, Koreans who can reunify the fatherland. It’s our turn, Moon was telling Kim; make it happen.
At a pace that no one expected, President Moon would end up holding three meetings with Kim in 2018: in April, May, and September. For the September meeting, Moon made his first trip to Pyongyang. Kim Jong Un choreographed every single moment of the three-day South-North lovefest.
Standing on the tarmac of Sunan Airport, Kim Jong Un and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, awaited Moon’s arrival. As South Korea’s 747 Air Force One opened its door, President Moon and his wife waved to the hundreds of North Koreans handpicked to welcome them. North Korea’s ceremonial guards gave Moon a twenty-one-gun salute. As he walked down the long red carpet, Moon shook hands with some of the welcoming crowd. At the end of the row of carefully chosen North Koreans shouting their welcome, President Moon bowed his head 45 degrees—a sign of deep respect in Korean culture. North Korean television repeatedly showed this particular clip to demonstrate that Moon was paying homage to the Supreme Leader and his people.
Smiling, Kim and Moon shook hands and hugged each other three times. The two leaders set off from the airport in different cars, but as they approached the center of Pyongyang, the two leaders’ vehicles formed a motorcade. Tens of thousands of Pyongyang citizens lined the streets shouting and cheering as the two leaders passed.
The following day, Kim and Moon announced the Pyongyang Declaration, which highlighted a new military cooperation agreement. And on September 20, 2018, in a stadium filled with 150,000 North Koreans, Moon gave a speech—a first for a South Korean leader. Accentuating Korean nationalism and the oneness of Koreans, Moon declared, “Our people are outstanding. Our people are resilient. Our people love peace. And our people must live together.”15
“During my stay in Pyongyang, I have witnessed the city’s remarkable progress,” Moon went on. “Deep in my heart, I have recognized what kind of country Chairman Kim and his compatriots in the North want to build.”16
After more meetings, luncheons, and a state dinner, Moon and Kim took a cable car to the top of Mount Paektu, at the northeastern tip of the Korean Peninsula. Mount Paektu is known in North Korea as the birthplace of Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il—a total fiction—but it has a wider significance across the peninsula as the birthplace of the mythical figure Dangun, who founded Korea five thousand years ago. There TV crews filmed Moon and Kim holding hands.
As noted earlier, Moon’s September visit to North Korea was the third of three meetings between the two Korean leaders that year. The first one had taken place on April 27 in Panmunjom. At precisely 9:00 a.m. on that day, Kim Jong Un walked down the stairs of Panmungak, the official building on the northern side of the dividing line between the two Koreas. President Moon stood waiting on the southern side of the concrete strip that cuts across the demilitarized zone, hundreds of TV cameras recording every moment. Smiling and extremely conscious of how he would be portrayed by the South Korean and world media, Kim Jong Un walked toward Moon, and the two shook hands across the slightly elevated concrete barrier that divides the two Koreas.
As Moon caught Kim’s hand he said, “It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Chairman Kim! Welcome!”
“It has taken such a long time to cross such a short distance!” Kim replied.
“How long will it take for me to visit the North?” Moon asked.
“Come across now!” Kim answered. Then, holding hands, the two crossed onto the North Korean side of the 38th parallel. As Kim crossed back into the South Korean zone, the men hugged each other, smiling as if they’d won the lottery.
The pageantry was complete. Traditional and contemporary South Korean military honor guards welcomed the two leaders as they walked down the red carpet toward the Peace House for their first meeting. Kim suggested that they take a group picture with their respective delegations.
The first meeting between the principals included Moon’s intelligence chief, Suh Hoon, and chief of staff, Im Jong-seok. On Kim’s left was his sister, Kim Yo Jong, whom the TV cameras captured taking notes. President Moon remarked what a star she had been during the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games, and Kim Yo Jong smiled and blushed. Kim Jong Un told Moon that “I won’t interrupt your early morning sleep anymore [by testing weapons]” and also that “I am willing to go to the Blue House at any time” if invited. Moon, of course, told him he would be most welcome.17
Why did Kim meet with Moon in April 2018? Three key motivations spurred Kim to extend his hand to Moon: (1) to send a clear message to Donald Trump that he was a worthy negotiating partner; (2) to demonstrate to the United States that North Korea didn’t want an outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula; and (3) to show the world and his own people how confident he was in the world arena, demonstrating the difference between his reign and his father’s.18
But most of all, it seemed as if Moon’s, Kim’s, Trump’s, and even Xi’s interests were all in alignment for the first time. Each looked at the summit through his own prism and concluded that the benefits far outweighed the risks.
Through the Panmunjom Declaration, Moon and Kim announced that the Korean War was over and that a new era of peace was dawning on the peninsula. The communiqué covered the gamut of improvements in inter-Korean ties, from reuniting separated families to denuclearization. The declaration was highly symbolic, though details were limited. On the nuclear issue, both leaders agreed that:
South and North Korea confirmed the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. South and North Korea shared the view that the measures being initiated by North Korea are very meaningful and crucial for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and agreed to carry out their respective roles and responsibilities in this regard. South and North Korea agreed to actively seek the support and cooperation of the international community for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.19
Moon and Kim also announced that they were going to turn the DMZ into a peace zone and that the Northern Limitation Line, the maritime boundary between the two Koreas, was going to be transformed into “a maritime peace zone in order to prevent accidental military clashes and guarantee safe fishing activities.”20
The Blue House then surprised the world by announcing that a second summit would be held on May 26, 2018, at Panmungak on the North Korean side of the DMZ. The main reason for the second meeting was to ensure that the first-ever meeting of one of the Kims with a U.S. president would come off in June 2018 as planned.
Before, during, and after the April and May meetings, debate continued on whether Kim could possibly be serious about denuclearization in exchange for security guarantees. Still, those in favor of sustained dialogue with the North contended that symbolism matters. As one North Korean watcher said, “[Kim] has already created powerful, novel symbols of both his nation’s and South Korea’s yearning for peace. The recent Moon-Kim summit in Panmunjom powerfully showed values dear to their cultures: respect, filial piety, harmony and order.”21
The South Koreans’ concerns about possible problems with the Kim-Trump summit were not unwarranted: on May 24, a little under three weeks before Trump was scheduled to shake hands with Kim, he abruptly canceled the meeting after the North Korean press labeled Vice President Pence a “political dummy” and threatened a “nuclear showdown.”22 But, ever the reality TV showman, Trump announced on June 1 that the summit was on again. Trump was keen on meeting Kim for numerous reasons, but one of the most important was to amplify his made-for-television branding as the “Great Negotiator.”
Trump has always believed that he has the Midas touch. During an interview on Meet the Press with Tim Russert on October 24, 1999, Russert asked Trump what he would do about the burgeoning North Korean nuclear threat if he was president. Trump replied,
First I’d negotiate and be sure I could get the best deal possible.… These people in three or four years are going to have nuclear weapons.… The biggest problem this world has is nuclear proliferation. And we have a country out there in North Korea which is sort of whacko, which is not a bunch of dummies and they are developing nuclear weapons.… If that negotiation doesn’t work then better solve the problem now [with a preemptive attack] than solve it later.… You want to do it in five years when they have warheads all over the place, every one of them pointed to New York City, to Washington … is that when you want to do it?… You’d better do it now. And if they think you’re serious … they’ll negotiate and it’ll never come to that.23
Leaving aside Trump’s rhetoric and his self-proclaimed negotiating prowess, the “maximum pressure” strategy did seem to have paid some dividends. Barry Pavel of the Atlantic Council gave credit to the Trump administration for implementing “an unprecedented and relentless pressure campaign that undoubtedly played a role in changing the North Korean leader’s approach.”24
After a closed, one-on-one session with Kim Jong Un and a broader meeting with their respective delegations, Trump declared that his meeting with Kim had been “over the top.” In a joint statement signed by both leaders, it was noted that “President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”25 In remarks to the press corps, Trump said that “the meeting worked out for both of us far better than any of us expected” and that he felt he had a “special bond” with Kim Jong Un. Trump was asked about the brutal nature of the North Korean regime, which he had castigated on numerous occasions, but he demurred and said, “It’s a rough situation, but it’s rough in a lot of places.” Trump’s fondness for authoritarian rulers is well known—his constant admiration for how strong Vladimir Putin is at home is merely one example. So when he was asked how he could trust a brutal dictator who runs a police state, Trump avoided a direct answer, replying, “I’m given what I’m given.” He added, “His country loves him. His people, you see the fervor. They have a great fervor.”26
Although Trump insisted that there had been no discussion about pulling U.S. forces from South Korea, he emphasized, “We’re not gonna play the [U.S.–South Korean] war games. You know, I wanted to stop the war games, I thought they were very provocative. But I also think they’re very expensive. We’re running the country properly, I think they’re very, very expensive.”27 During an earlier press conference, Trump had been asked a similar question, and at that time he answered,
We have done exercises working with South Korea for a long time. We call them war games. I call them war games. They are tremendously expensive. The amount of money we spend on that is incredible. South Korea contributes, but not 100 percent, which is a subject that we have to talk to them about also. That has to do with the military expense and also the trade. We actually have a new deal with South Korea.… Under the circumstances we are negotiating a comprehensive and complete deal. It is inappropriate to have war games. Number one, we save money. A lot. Number two, it is really something they very much appreciated.28
Not once, however, did Trump mention the fact that North Korea had not agreed to stop its own military exercises. Nor did Trump mention what Kim gave up in return for the U.S. pledge to cease the joint exercises with South Korea. Moreover, for a U.S. president to state on the record that the joint military exercises were “provocative” to the North was unprecedented. After all, American troops were stationed in South Korea as a critical symbol of America’s commitment to South Korean defense. Joint exercises with the Republic of Korea’s (ROK) armed forces—the very capable and most Americanized of any allied forces who fought with the United States during the Korean and Vietnam wars—were essential to maintaining interoperability.
After their forty-five-minute one-on-one meeting, Trump and Kim took a short walk together. A second round of talks was held with key staff members, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Chief of Staff John Kelly, and National Security Advisor John Bolton on the U.S. side. While Kim Yo Jong was in Singapore for the duration of the summit, she didn’t attend the extended meeting. The North Korean delegation included Kim Yong Chol, head of the Unification Front of the KWP and former director of the Reconnaissance General Bureau; Ri Su Yong, vice chairman of the Central Committee of the KWP; and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ri Yong Ho.
The summit ended with a four-point joint statement but no agreement on a denuclearization road map. “Having acknowledged that the U.S.–DPRK summit—the first in history—was an epochal event of great significance in overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries,” the statement said, “President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un commit to implement the stipulations in this joint statement fully and expeditiously.”29
In a subsequent interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, Trump was asked how he could trust Kim to actually denuclearize as he promised. Trump replied, “Yeah, he’s de-nuking, I mean he’s de-nuking the whole place. It’s going to start very quickly. I think he’s going to start now.”30
Trump was very sure of his achievements. In January 2019, Trump tweeted, “No more Rockets or M’s [missiles] being fired over Japan or anywhere else and, most importantly, no Nuclear Testing. This is more than has ever been accomplished with North Korea and the Fake News knows it.”31 And while the first Singapore summit no doubt was meaningful simply because it took place, any road toward actual denuclearization will be infinitely more complex and riddled with hurdles. For Kim Jong Un, the promise of denuclearization was used only as bait to get Moon and Trump on board the Pyongyang peace train. For North Korea, denuclearization must be symmetrical, with the withdrawal of the U.S. nuclear umbrella over South Korea—not unilateral disarmament, as demanded by the United States.
In the end, Kim got a measure of respect from the international community, and however small or fleeting it was, it counted as a victory, since international respect was the one commodity no previous North Korean leader had ever had. He also bought time to string along South Korea, leading it deeper into the peace initiative and diluting international sanctions. As one observer noted,
The summit definitely bolstered Kim’s image in the international arena, and while many other countries and international organizations will want to see the details of the plan for denuclearization, many governments and businesses are looking to North Korea for signs of change and opening—which could lead to pressure for sanctions relief. China will certainly be interested in taking an active role. And South Korea will continue to work hard to dial up investment and development plans, as well as other forms of humanitarian and cultural engagements.32
Kim came out of the Singapore summit the winner in terms of luring South Korea and the United States into a denuclearization rabbit hole. The value to him of his newfound image as a “responsible and a reasonable leader” was incalculable. As Kim celebrated his diplomatic coup on the way back to Pyongyang on a Chinese airplane—his personal Soviet-made jet was too unreliable for a long flight—it certainly was clear to him that making it work with Trump was going to hinge on pushing denuclearization as far into the future as possible. He had no intentions of giving up those nuclear weapons.
After the Singapore and Pyongyang summits, Kim could congratulate himself on having achieved two of his major goals. The first was watering down the ROK’s military preparedness, which he accomplished when Trump agreed to forgo the joint military exercises with South Korea. The second was giving Moon a major boost in domestic politics, and that paid off for North Korea: in late August 2018, the South Korean defense ministry announced that it was considering excising references to North Korea as an “enemy state” in future defense white papers.33
As soon as Trump returned to Washington, D.C., after the Singapore summit, he tweeted that the North Korean nuclear threat was over. “Just landed—a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office,” Trump said, and he proclaimed that “there is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!”34
But saying that the North Korean nuclear threat was over was simply not true. North Korea’s work on its nuclear weapons had continued before the Singapore summit, and it continued afterward. In January 2019, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, stated in congressional testimony, “We currently assess that North Korea seeks to retain its WMD capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival.”35
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo bent over backward to explain Trump’s remarks. In February 2019, he claimed in an interview with CNN that Trump hadn’t really said that there was no longer a North Korean threat. Instead, Pompeo explained, “what he [Trump] said was the efforts that had been made in Singapore, this commitment that Chairman Kim made, have substantially taken down the risk to the American people. We’re aiming to achieve that.”36
Eight months after the Singapore summit, the White House announced that a second summit was going to be held in Hanoi, Vietnam. While various administration officials attempted to temper expectations about what could be achieved at the February 27–28 summit, it was clear that after the Singapore meeting had ended with no tangible agreement, Trump was eager to demonstrate his negotiation skills.
For Kim, the Hanoi summit was another opportunity to appear as a respected world leader. To maximize publicity, and for security reasons, Kim traveled on his personal train—a sixty-hour journey. As Christopher Green of the International Crisis Group remarked, “This is legacy politics.… North Korea will want to play up Kim’s succession to the role of his grandfather, who successfully built up North Korea’s international legitimacy after the establishment of the state.”37
South Korea’s Moon was banking on a major breakthrough in Hanoi. Having invested nearly all of his political capital on inter-Korean détente, Moon, even more than Trump, was pushing for tangible progress.
U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Steve Biegun was involved in intense discussions with his North Korean counterparts prior to the Hanoi meeting. In January 2019, North Korea’s top negotiator, Kim Yong Chol, visited Trump at the White House. In a series of remarks intended to set the tone for the Hanoi summit, Trump said that the United States had been on the brink of war with North Korea when Obama was in office but that he had turned it around. In February 2019, Trump said that when he met Barack Obama on the day of his inauguration, he was under the impression that Obama “would’ve gone to war with North Korea. I think he was ready to go to war. In fact he told me that he was so close to starting a big war with North Korea.”38 Senior aides under Obama sharply disagreed with Trump’s assertions. Former deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes said, “We were not on the brink of war with North Korea in 2016,” and former CIA director John Brennan stated, “President Obama was never on the verge of starting any war with North Korea, large or small.”39
Trump’s incessant need for the limelight was on full display when he asked Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize because of his dialogue with North Korea. Trump showed his “beautiful copy” of the nomination letter given to him in mid-February by Abe—without revealing that Abe had prepared the letter after a request from the Trump administration.40
For their second summit, Kim and Trump broke the ice with a one-on-one meeting on February 27, followed by a private dinner. After his thirty-minute meeting with Kim, Trump couldn’t resist showing off and said, “Boy, if you could have heard that dialogue, what you would pay for that dialogue. It was good. A lot of things are going to be solved, I hope. And I think it will lead to, really, a wonderful situation long-term.”41
A full-dress meeting was held the next day, and expectations were running high. The White House scheduled a signing ceremony in the afternoon, to follow formal discussions, and the South Korean Blue House announced that President Moon was planning to watch the signing ceremony as it was broadcast worldwide.
Then the ground caved in.
Trump announced that he was walking away from the Hanoi summit. North Korea wanted sanctions relief and was prepared to partially dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility; Trump wanted a North Korean promise to destroy all nuclear weapons as well as other weapons of mass destruction. Trump noted, “They wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn’t do that. They were willing to denuke a large portion of the areas that we wanted, but we couldn’t give up all of the sanctions for that.”42 Secretary of State Pompeo put the best spin he could on it, saying, “The President and Chairman Kim both felt good that they had made that progress but couldn’t quite get along the line any further to make a deal that would have been bigger at this point.”43
At a press conference after the negotiations collapsed, Trump alluded to the fact that Kim had been told that the United States knew of the existence of a second North Korean uranium enrichment plant, beyond what North Korea had revealed to the Americans: “And we brought many, many points up that I think they were surprised that we knew.”44
At another point in the press conference, Trump was put on the defensive when he was asked whether he thought Kim Jong Un was responsible for the death of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who had been jailed and tortured in North Korea, then returned to the United States in a vegetative state; he died shortly afterward.
“I did speak about it, and don’t believe that he [Kim Jong Un] would’ve allowed that to happen.… I really don’t believe that he was—I don’t believe he knew about it.… He tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word.”45
After the press conference, Warmbier’s parents spoke out. “Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto,” they said in a statement. “Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that.”46 Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stated that “there’s something wrong with Putin, Kim Jong Un—in my view, thugs—that the president chooses to believe.”47
Despite the lack of any agreement, U.S. national security advisor John Bolton asserted in an interview after the summit that Hanoi was not a failure: “I consider it a success defined as the president protecting and advancing American national interest.” When Bolton was pressed about an earlier remark he had made to the effect that North Korea could be denuclearized in a year, he replied, “There is no expiration date. As I say, the president is fully prepared to keep negotiating at lower levels or to speak to Kim Jong Un again when it’s appropriate.”48
Bolton was asked if he thought Kim Jong Un was going to deliver on his promises to dismantle his nuclear weapons. His reply was very cautious: “I think he is the authoritative ruler of that country and if he were to make the strategic decision to denuclearize, we think it would happen.”49
In a rare move, North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong Ho, in a middle-of-the-night news conference, contradicted what Trump had said earlier about Kim insisting on the total lifting of sanctions in return for partial denuclearization. “What we proposed was not the removal of all sanctions but the partial removal,” said Ri. In return for partial sanctions relief, he said, North Korea was prepared to “permanently and completely dismantle all the nuclear material production facilities in the Yongbyon area, including plutonium and uranium, in the presence of U.S. experts.”50
In an effort to bolster Kim’s standing domestically and internationally after the failure of the Hanoi summit, veteran North Korean diplomat Choe Son Hui intimated that Kim’s patience was running thin: “Chairman Kim got the feeling that he didn’t understand the way Americans calculate. I have a feeling that Chairman Kim may have lost the will” to continue to negotiate.51 She also said that North Korea would “never yield” to American pressure. Will North Korea ultimately give up its nuclear weapons? North Korean expert Andrei Lankov doubts that Kim will keep his word.
[Denuclearization is for] a distant future, when U.S. forces are completely withdrawn not necessarily from only the Korean Peninsula, but maybe from the entire East Asia, maybe from the Pacific and what about Hawaii, or what about surrender of U.S. nukes and Russian nukes and Chinese nukes? When that happens, the North Korean government will probably be happy to surrender its nukes as well.52
The message Kim wants to send to the Americans is that North Korea will never take steps toward denuclearization unless and until there is rapid movement on building a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. Kim needs sanctions relief, and even though he has been able to get backing from China and Russia and from a South Korean government that is all too eager to pursue massive investments into the North, the UN remains a roadblock.
As for Trump, it had never been clear how he would have been able to put his master plan into action even if there had been some agreement. After all, North Korea has reneged on every agreement it has made with the United States since the early 1990s. Even so, with a South Korean president eager for lasting détente and a U.S. president in search of a major foreign policy achievement (especially after Trump pulled out of the Iranian nuclear agreement and reimposed sanctions on Tehran), by agreeing to these meetings Kim Jong Un was able to gain something he hadn’t had before: time. Time to water down international sanctions. Time to increase multipronged pressures on South Korea, such as convincing it to look the other way when North Korean ships violated UN sanctions. Time to provide the world with evidence of a handful of obviously decommissioned nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to demonstrate that North Korea was dismantling its nuclear program and missile sites. Most of all, Kim needed time to lock in Chinese and Russian support and to make sure Moon was going to be with him until 2022, when Moon’s five-year term comes to an end.
Even if Moon continues to emphasize the all-important U.S.-ROK alliance, Kim knows that Moon’s eagerness to establish inter-Korean cooperation during the remaining years of his term means that the Blue House will continue to pursue South-North dialogue. Should North Korea conduct another nuclear weapon or ICBM test, Kim now knows that so long as a leftist president sits in the Blue House, he has nothing to worry about. Besides, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin both want Kim Jong Un to remain in power as long as possible. So long as Xi and Putin know that Kim’s only patrons are China and, to a much lesser extent, Russia, he isn’t likely to deviate from Chinese and Russian interests, especially if Kim remains in power for two to three decades.
The U.S.–North Korea nuclear saga has been ongoing since the early 1990s, and both Trump and Kim have a vested interest in reaching what would be a historic agreement. For Trump, it would be the culmination of his quest for a decisive foreign policy victory. For Kim, a carefully crafted accord in which North Korea promises to give up certain nuclear capabilities in exchange for sanctions relief and moving toward normalization of relations will solidify his diplomatic reputation.
As Trump prepares for a high-stakes presidential contest in November 2020 and Moon tries his hardest not to derail the peace train as he heads into a crucial April 2020 National Assembly election, time is on Kim’s side. No one today believes that North Korea’s nuclear capacity can be rolled back by military force without triggering a second Korean War. In this respect, the side that blinked isn’t Kim Jong Un, but Trump and Moon.