Leon Sigal on 38 North is convinced the American media is misreading Kim Jong un and President Trump:
Shocked that a Trump-Kim summit meeting could soon take place? Worried that it could collapse? No wonder. You’ve been misled by coverage of U.S. diplomacy with North Korea in the news media.
For months that coverage had all but ignored the possibility of negotiation. Never mind that the Trump administration’s stated policy was “maximum pressure and engagement.” Reporters in Washington and abroad focused on any signs of political, economic, and military pressure while all but ignoring diplomatic efforts underway offstage for fifteen months. South Korean and Japanese media followed their lead.
Once the possibility of a summit meeting became obvious, the very idea became the object of withering disparagement in the U.S news media. South Korean reporting was somewhat more optimistic and Japanese reporting more ominous, reflecting the proclivities of their governments.
Certainly the verbal fireworks have been a distraction. But I wonder if Leon understands all the implications of his concluding paragraph:
Trump and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, seem aware of the Kims’ desire to end enmity and have taken steps to address it. What better way to start than to sit down at the negotiating table with Kim Jong Un or to say, as the President has, that he is prepared to negotiate an end to the Korean war and to normalize relations – something his predecessors never did. Ultimately, he may have to find a way to forge an alliance with Pyongyang alongside the one with Seoul. How else to assure Kim that he will be secure enough to consider yielding his nuclear arms?
Normalizing relations with North Korea would require accommodation by Trump Evangelical supporters with a regime which has, by most reports, treated its citizens very poorly. That will require some tap-dancing by the Trump Administration, or we’ll discover that we’ve been misled concerning civil liberties in North Korea by successive American administrations, as well as investigative reporters.
Or we’ll discover the Evangelical segment of the United States has really descended into unexplainable moral depravity.
