Dig enough and you soon discover the news outside the US is radically different from what’s reported within the US. Certainly the US media is either downplaying or ignoring South Korean reports that Kim Jong Un may be ready to give up North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. From Gareth Porter at antiwar.com:
Media coverage of and political reactions to Donald Trump’s announcement of a summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have been based on the assumption that it cannot succeed, because Kim will reject the idea of denuclearization. But the full report by South Korean president Moon Jae-in’s national security adviser on the meeting with Kim last week—covered by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency but not covered in U.S. news media—makes it clear that Kim will present Trump with a plan for complete denuclearization linked to the normalization of relations between the US and North Korea, or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
The report by Chung Eui-yong on a dinner hosted by Kim Jong UN for the 10-member South Korean delegation on March 5, said the North Korea leader had affirmed his “commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” and said he “would have no reason to possess nuclear weapons should the safety of its regime be guaranteed and military threats against North Korea removed.” Chung reported that Kim expressed his willingness to discuss “ways to realize the denuclearization of the peninsula and normalize [U.S.-DPRK] bilateral ties.”
But in what may be the most important finding in the report, Chung added, “What we must especially pay attention to is the fact that [Kim Jong UN] has clearly stated that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was an instruction of his predecessor and that there has been no change to such an instruction.”
The South Korean national security adviser’s report directly contradicts the firmly held belief among US national security and political elites that Kim Jong UN would never give up the DPRK’s nuclear weapons. As Colin Kahl, former Pentagon official and adviser to Barack Obama, commented in response to the summit announcement, “It Is simply inconceivable that he will accept full denuclearization at this point.”
But Kahl’s dismissal of the possibility of any agreement at the summit assumes, without saying so, a continuation of the steadfast refusal of the Bush and Obama administrations for the United States to offer any incentive to North Korean in the form of a new peace treaty with North Korea and full normalization of diplomatic and economic relations.
To continue reading: South Korean Report on Summit Discredits US Elites’ Assumption
Brought to you from the same people who paid Tehran $150 billion. After all, what could go wrong.
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