lobotero offers a sober assessment of The Joint Korean Declaration. Have to agree.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un heads a totalitarian state. Any dictator has a tiger by the tail. When one rules his people as brutally as that man, to relax his grip on the tail is death, sure and certain death. He knows that. So don’t expect much.
So what is responsible for relations that appear to be thawing? Kim Jong-un’s nuclear testing has become a liability. Look it up.
=> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-korea-nuclear-test-site-mantapsan-mountain-collapse-unusable-kim-jong-un/
=> http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2143878/north-korea-close-mountain-nuclear-test-site-after-collapse
=> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/04/27/asia-pacific/experts-skeptical-claim-north-koreas-underground-nuclear-test-site-collapsed/#.Wub-3pdryUkThere are some doubts about the matter, but the mountain under which the North Koreans were testing their nukes seems to have collapsed. If so, then the Chinese are obviously worried about radiation leaks. If we consider Japan, an earthquake, a tidal wave, and leaking nuclear reactors, and we start to get the picture. It is a similar problem.
Because Rocket Man lives in its immediate neighborhood, it would appear China may have decided that Rocket Man’s nukes are probably a greater threat to them than they are to us. So my guess (and that is all it is) is that Rocket Man is looking to get the best deal for something he is going to have to do anyway, get rid of his nukes.
What will be interesting is what Russia learns from this. Will Putin reconsider the calculus of an Iran with nukes? Is an Iran with nukes a greater liability to Russia or to Iran’s sworn enemies? Iran does not border Russia. Iran is not even close to Russia. However, the nations between Iran and Russia will not appreciate it when Iran starts testing its nukes. Will those nations have enough leverage with Putin to cause him to abandon Iran? In the near future? Probably not.
So what about Kim Jong-un? Totalitarian states are extremely ruthless and deadly, and they leave immense wreckage in their wake. Indifferent to suffering, focused solely on the acquisition and retention of power, their leaders see everything and everyone about them as just a thing to be used up and discarded. Therefore, their leaders always leave a legacy of ruin to all who must have anything to do with them. Because he perceives any weakening of his power as a personal threat, any deal with Kim Jong-un has to leave him no other choice except to abide by it or die. Are we prepared to leave Rocket Man no other choice? Are the Chinese prepared to help?
Look at the example of the two most dangerous tyrants of the last century. Why did Stalin and Hitler turn on each other so ferociously? Why was the Eastern Front such a merciless and bloody ordeal? Each tyrant knew too much about the character of the other. Each knew the other had to be destroyed. Once they seized Poland, there was no middle ground between them.
Because all he seeks is power, there is no middle ground between us and Kim Jong-un, but people seek peace, unwilling to pay the cost until men such as Kim Jong-un leave them no other choice.
Last week the two leaders of the Korean Peninsula met at the DMZ and the world was hopeful……the chance are that their negotiations could bring an end to many decades of animosities toward each other.
Below is the link to the text of the declaration which I offer for people to see that these are great proposals……the problem is it is short on specifics. If this turns out to be a good thing and peace is found it will not be this year or even next…..
The following is an unofficial translation of the full text of a joint declaration signed and issued by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the end of their bilateral summit held Friday at the Joint Security Area of Panmunjom inside the heavily-fortified Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas.
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2018/04/27/0200000000AEN20180427013900315.html
Please do not start handing out the Nobel…
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Citizen Tom 
In my opinion, NK has a nuclear weapon now. He has nothing to lose by stating he will close down his nuclear facilities in exchange for lifting trade sanctions and being friendly with SK.
The USA will never get him to agree to destroy his entire arsenal of nuclear weapons. NK will agree with UN inspections because they know if they have to ever use nuclear weapons, all they have to do is open up the facilities again, providing they are not overrun in the meantime which is highly unlikely for any army to gain quick access to a city or location that is heavily guarded, unless of course a nuclear bomb is used to force a surrender.
If the USA insists on destroying the nuclear weapons, NK will fear what we did to the last guy who agreed to give up the weapons and the USA helped provide for his downfall and death.
Regards and good will blogging.
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I too am skeptical.
And we should remember that KJI blew up a cooling tower at it Yongbyon nuclear plant, in a similar gesture.
Michael Green sums up a lot of my reservations in this foreign policy article:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/27/pyongyang-is-playing-washington-and-seoul/
“South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s televised summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Friday was spectacularly effective as pageantry aimed at South Koreans fearful of a U.S. attack on North Korea — and spectacularly empty in terms of meaningful commitment by the North to denuclearization. In fact, everything Kim put on the table was designed to reaffirm North Korea’s status as a nuclear weapons state and dilute Chinese and South Korean support for sanctions. Many veterans of negotiations with North Korea worry that Kim is now getting ready to play the United States. While the Trump administration’s tough sanctions no doubt had some role in pushing the North toward this summitry, one can also imagine exactly how this was a scenario the North itself sought from the beginning.”
Time will tell. The only wild card is Trump.
If he holds them to inspections (real ones, not the kind they had in Iraq where inspectors were redirected and not free to inspect everywhere) and the entire Yongbyon plant is demolished and his nuclear weapons and material are all removed from the country, I’ll believe it.
Until this happens everyone is just continuing to play along with this great facade which the closure of the nuclear test site will be another part of.
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@anon
Conceivably, the mountain collapse is fakery. If it is, that is a particularly bad sign, but it is the sort of thing these people do.
I think our intelligence resources (remote sensing technologies in this case) should be able to confirm the collapse of a mountain. We don’t have to take the Chinese’s word for it. Trump, given is disposition, will most likely find that maddening. I doubt he will pretend that all is well. Even if Trump wanted to kick this can down the road, the North Koreans would most likely start deploying its nukes before the next election. So Trump has to stop them now.
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