When I saw this story on KBS 24 live on youtube, they said that the North Koreans complained that the US hadn’t changed its position. The report said the US representative Stephen Biegun wouldn’t talk to reporters because it wasn’t appropriate to reveal their reaction publicly. They believe that Biegun went to the US embassy rather than stay at the facilities where the talks were being held. The plans of the NK delegation were not clear at the time. The speculation was that it was the old “one bundle” approach of the US v. the step by step approach. The ironic thing is that this looks similar to what Bolton and Company did to the North at the summit in Hanoi.
I’m kind of surprised because the Washington Talk on VOA Korea by the two well connected experts they had on Saturday, seemed cautious but upbeat. Most experts seemed to know the structure of a deal that could work, I wonder if any were formulated beforehand or if Biegun’s team is just playing liar's poker. “you have to come off the dime first.” “no you have to make the first offer.” “what did you bring to the table?” “what did you bring to the table?” “You have to define denuclearization and the end stage first,” “no, it’s step by step, with reciprocal trust building measures.” “no that isn’t how it works.” “Okay, bye, we see you haven’t changed a bit, why did you bother?”
Biegun clearly knows better from his presentation at Stanford that that was used to sucker the North Koreans at Hanoi. To his credit at his last major policy presentation on North Korea, his views were even less promising and really offered no daylight whatsoever for the North Koreans in terms of changing the US policy position. To be realistic Kim Jong Un's negotiating team isn't negotiating with Trump, it's negotiating with the entire US government and private establishment with vested interests in the so called San Francisco system that supports the US national security interests in the "Indo- Pacific." These people aren't negotiating, they're in the regime change business. Domestically, Trump is so weak at this point it's not likely he's capable of offering a negotiating process the North Korean's can accept, let alone make substantive concessions. This is what he found out after Singapore.
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