I would love to give you a deep dive into all the possible meanings of last night’s statement from the official news organization of the North Korean government. But I don’t think I have time. Let me see how the morning goes.
There is some great commentary on Twitter. The short version is that North Korean statements are hard to figure out, and some aspects of this statement have been made before and then ignored by the North Korean leadership. North Korea is playing a complex game in courting South Korea and trying to split them from the US, setting themselves up to look like the good guys when John Bolton starts the war drums, and generally flummoxing Donald Trump before the summit. Kim is a sharp player.
Here is the meat of the statement:
KCNA has finally pushed out the official English version of its statement. Here are the bits everyone is excited about: pic.twitter.com/O2xSdc8NJ6
— Martyn Williams (@martyn_williams) April 20, 2018
And here are some of the people whose accounts you might want to look into for more (including Martyn Williams, above):
At @thedailybeast, I argue that Kim Jong-un's decisions to dismantle Punggye-ri and stop ICBM tests are borne of strength—not weakness (and he's still not denuclearizing) https://t.co/UKGiwoJAAi
— Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) April 21, 2018
Does anyone, on either side of the political aisle, actually think that the DPRK would give up its nuclear capability without receiving in exchange commitments that the US would not be willing to give?
If the answer is "no" — what happens when this (inevitably) becomes clear?
— Alex Wellerstein (@wellerstein) April 21, 2018
Wellerstein’s tweet is the start of a very thoughtful thread.