Where new talks between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un might go

SEATED BEHIND the Resolute desk, Donald Trump mused on March 31st about everything from ticket touting to a possible third term as president. The musician Kid Rock, an old friend, stood beside him in a bejewelled American flag-themed outfit. It would have been easy to miss Mr Trump’s remarks about another pal: Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s dictator. “I got along with him fantastically,” he said. “A very smart guy.”

Mr Trump has thus far focused his diplomatic efforts on Ukraine and the Middle East. But North Korea looms as unfinished business from his first term. “There is communication,” Mr Trump said. “We’ll probably do something at some point.” A fresh approach to North Korea is urgently needed. But an ill-considered one risks causing a broader crisis in East Asia.

Mr Trump and Mr Kim have met three times before. Their initial summit in Singapore in the summer of 2018 marked the first ever meeting between the leaders of America and North Korea. But the follow-up meeting in Hanoi the next spring fell apart spectacularly. A final rendezvous in the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea produced striking imagery, but no progress. A North Korean diplomat who recently defected says one of the senior officials who organised the talks was jailed and another one executed.

Why did the Hanoi summit collapse? The two leaders came with misaligned expectations. Mr Kim offered the shutdown of his primary nuclear-weapons development facility, Yongbyon, in exchange for sanctions relief; Mr Trump insisted on complete disarmament. Both men thought they could resolve differences through sheer force of personality, and eschewed working-level preparations. Moon Jae-in, then South Korea’s president, also fuelled Mr Kim’s belief that Mr Trump would accept a limited offer. Mr Trump may have been willing, but senior officials in his administration opposed it. “We weren’t able to go all the way to the top of the mountain, but we saw it,” Mr Moon, an advocate of engagement with the North, wrote in his memoirs.

The road up the mountain looks different this time. Mr Kim starts in a stronger position. North Korea has a far larger nuclear arsenal than it did in 2018; it tested more missiles in the three years from 2022-24 than in the three decades preceding Mr Trump’s and Mr Kim’s first meeting. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which relinquished its share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal in exchange for vague security guarantees in 1994, will have only strengthened Mr Kim’s determination to hang on to his nukes. That war has led to a partnership with Russia that is helping Mr Kim weather American-led sanctions.

Mr Trump, for his part, will be freer to carve his own path. Gone are aides like John Bolton, a former national security adviser, who sought to guide the president down more conventional trails. Allies in the region will have less say this time: South Korea is mired in a political crisis following the impeachment of Yoon Suk Yeol, the disgraced former president; Abe Shinzo, Japan’s former prime minister, had influence with Mr Trump, but its current leader, Ishiba Shigeru, does not.

America remains officially determined to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear programme completely. But Mr Trump has proved willing to cast aside many shibboleths of American foreign policy. He has already taken to referring to North Korea as a “nuclear power”, hinting at an openness to accepting it as a nuclear state.

Summitry that ends with no deal would leave Mr Kim more embittered. But the greater risk is that Mr Trump accepts a bad one. Mr Kim could, for instance, offer to dismantle his intercontinental ballistic missiles. That would largely remove the threat to the American mainland, allowing Mr Trump to claim that he Made America Safe Again. He may not care that South Korea and Japan, America’s allies in the region, would still face threats from North Korea’s short- and mid-range missiles.

Or America and North Korea could agree to issue a declaration that would formally conclude the Korean war, frozen by an armistice for 70 years. Mr Trump could use it to bolster his campaign for a Nobel peace prize. North Korea might suggest that in such a situation America no longer needs the troops it has stationed in South Korea. Mr Trump, who has long spoken of withdrawing those forces, might agree. A chronic crisis on the Korean peninsula could be replaced by an acute one.■

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