President Trump's Strategy with Kim Jong-un for North Korean Denuclearization

PRESIDENT TRUMP AND KIM JONG-UN. What next? Here are some ideas from experts about what the President should do now that negotiations with Kim seem to be on hold. • • • DID THE ABORTED SUMMIT HURT KIM AT HOME??? Washington Times reporter Guy Taylor says 'yes.' On Sunday, Taylor wrote an article based on comments from ex-US Ambassador Joseph Yun, who was US special envoy on North Korea from 2016 to 2018. Yun says there is no question now that the Hanoi summit outcome was 'bad news' for Kim Jong-un. • Guy Taylor says : "President Trump and Kim Jong-un’s failure to reach an agreement in their second summit was 'really bad news' for the North Korean leader, according to Yun, the former top State Department official who had an instrumental role in opening the current nuclear diplomacy with Pyongyang." • Mr. Trump’s decision at the Hanoi summit to reassert the US position that 'we cannot move on sanctions until there is much more progress on denuclearization' has altered the 'power dynamics' going forward, says Ambassador Yun : “This is really bad news for Kim Jong-un,” Mr. Yun told reporters in a round-table discussion Friday at the US Institute of Peace (USIP), where he’s an advisor. “The North Korean leader is not associated with failures. There is no failure in their vocabulary for the leader. So, very bad news for Kim Jong-un. It’s almost like he’s in time out, you know? He’s stuck, doesn’t have any sanctions relief. He doesn’t know where this is going. So, I think this really does change the power dynamics of negotiations.” • The comments came as North Korean state media, which refers to the nation by the acronym DPRK -- Democratic People’s Republic of Korea -- admitted for the first time last Friday that the February 28-29 summit in Hanoi ended without an agreement. Guy Taylor noted that : "After more than a week of general silence on the matter, Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of Mr. Kim’s ruling Workers’ Party, published a commentary Friday asserting that Washington was to blame for the fruitless meeting. 'The public at home and abroad that had hoped for success and good results from the second DPRK-US summit in Hanoi are feeling regretful, blaming the US for the summit that ended without an agreement,' said the commentary, according to several reports. • Reuters noted that Rodong went on to use fiery rhetoric toward Japan, accusing Tokyo of being 'desperate to interrupt' relations between Pyongyang and Washington and of 'applauding' the breakdown of the summit. Japanese officials had expressed skepticism last week about the future of US-North Korea diplomacy amid the current distance between the Trump administration and the Kim regime on the core matter of whether Pyongyang is prepared to abandon its nuclear weapons. Yun said : “I think for Japan, coming back to the traditional position is a good one. I would imagine prime Minister Abe is pretty happy.” • President Trump so far has offered a hopeful message about future talks, although the diplomacy is struggling to keep its momentum amid reports of ongoing ballistic missile and nuclear activity in North Korea. • Yun told reporters at USIP on Friday there is no question that Kim pushed for a commitment of some form of sanctions relief from President Trump but left Hanoi in frustration : “You know, he spent, what, 60 hours on the train riding down [from North Korea to Vietnam]. And then he had to spend two more days [after the summit] cooling his heels before riding back 60 hours. I mean, I certainly would not want to be his negotiator Kim Yong-chol or, you know, anyone else riding the train with him for 60 hours.” Yun also suggested that the generally warm reception of President Trump’s handling of the summit received from both sides of the political aisle in Washington may have added to the North Korean leader’s frustration. • Guy Taylor states : "As US special envoy on North Korea at the start of the Trump administration, Mr. Yun is widely credited with having played an instrumental role in reopening the so-called New York channel to Pyongyang -- a direct communication line with officials in the Kim regime -- through which he helped secure the release of now-deceased American student Otto Warmbier, who had been held in North Korea for 15 months. • Yun, who served during the Obama era as principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said the lack of an agreement in Hanoi likely also frustrated South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has been pushing for warmer relations with Pyongyang. Yun's assessment is that : "This is also very bad news for Moon Jae-in. You know, he had really banked on getting something out of it to allow inter-Korean dialogue to deepen and this is a problem. I think, on the day that the summit did not result in an agreement, the South Korean stock market fell by 2%, which seems, you know an overreaction." Taylor says : "The South Korean president appeared to have hoped for an announcement of US sanctions relief that could boost South-North projects such as an impending industrial park, tourism exchanges and a possible rail link across the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two nations. In the wake of Hanoi, Mr. Moon replaced his unification minister, who played a major role in detente with North Korea over the past year, with a longtime confidant." • On the question of China, Yun said : “And then, China...I think, you know, they’re more concentrated, obviously on the upcoming trade talks [with the Trump administration]. But I think this comes back to what they’ve been insisting to the US, which is, ‘Washington, you’re not going to make immediate huge progress, so do what we say.’ ” • • • JOHN BOLTON OFFERS HIS VIEW. The Washington Times' Guy Taylor reported this : "President Trump and his top advisors expressed optimism through the weekend that diplomatic efforts on denuclearization talks with Pyongyang can be revived, despite reports of North Korean ballistic missile and nuclear activity." • National Security Advisor John R. Bolton sought to tamp down the media buzz around the prospect that a North Korean missile launch could be imminent after the release of commercial satellite imagery appearing to show cranes at work rebuilding a key test site that Pyongyang previously promised to destroy. Bolton said : “There’s a lot of activity all the time in North Korea, but I’m not going to speculate on what that particular commercial satellite picture shows.” Bolton appeared on last Sunday's talk shows, giving a cautious, wait-and-see message in response to reports of activity at the Tongchang-ri rocket launch site. President Trump has been offering that same advice. While there are reports that suggest ongoing enrichment activities by the North Korean regime have added to Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons arsenal in the last year, Bolton said US intelligence sees “unblinkingly” what the North Koreans are doing and stressed that the administration has no “illusions about what their capabilities are.” • But, Bolton stressed during an interview on ABC’s This Week that President Trump remains “confident in his personal relationship with Kim Jong-un” and open to a third summit. Other unnamed Trump administration officials say the idea of another summit feels increasingly distant because working-level talks with the North Koreans have yet to resume. One senior State Department official spoke on condition of anonymity : “Both sides are going to have to digest the outcome of the summit.” In the interim, the official said, the administration’s maximum pressure through sanctions policy will “be maintained and, if the President decides, the sanctions will be increased.” • Frank Aum, formerly of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, where he was a Visiting Scholar, served from 2010-2017 as the senior advisor for North Korea in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He is now a senior North Korea analyst at USIP. Aum said on Friday : “It just remains to be seen what happens over the next few months. It’s disappointing that there weren’t any road maps that were set from Hanoi -- no working-level negotiations or a process for [them] that was described. I anticipate that it will be a continuation of the sort of ad hoc meetings that we’ve seen over the last year and a half, where we hear all of a sudden that Pompeo is going to Pyongyang, right, or maybe Biegun [current US special envoy for North Korea] is doing some track two dialogue." • BUT, Yun, who joined Aum at the Friday discussion with reporters hosted by USIP, said the real difference between Washington and Pyongyang remains “the definition of denuclearization.” The US view is that denuclearization means total abandonment of all nuclear weapons and materials by the Kim regime in a manner verifiable by international nuclear inspectors, according to Yun. He suggested that the North Koreans still view denuclearization as something to include a potentially sensitive drawback of America’s overall military posture across East Asia : “For them, it’s denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and corollary to that is that all nuclear threats from the US and [South Korea] must be removed, as well as threats from the region that are posed against North Korea. To me, that smacks of a little bit of Japan and also Guam.” • • • WHAT IS NORTH KOREA DOING? President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last week that he would be disappointed if North Korea is resuming rocket activity, but he also seemed to question the veracity of what he described as a very early report on the matter. Guy Taylor explains : "An article from 38 North, a website specializing in North Korea security issues, said commercial satellite imagery appears to show that efforts to rebuild some structures at Tongchang-ri started sometime between February 16 and March 2. That suggests North Koreans were active at the site while Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump were meeting in Hanoi on February 27 and 28. A high-level source familiar with the US-North Korean negotiations suggested that the reports were overblown. He told the Washington Times that the activity was likely 'nothing more than routine maintenance,' but the stakes around the developments are high....[But] Bolton, who in the past has advocated for regime change in Pyongyang and is known as the administration official with perhaps the most hard-line views on North Korea, stressed Sunday that Mr. Trump still believes it is 'a positive sign' that North Korea has not carried out a nuclear detonation or ballistic missile test since he met with Mr. Kim at the Singapore summit in June....national security advisor [Bolton] declined to speculate on whether a sudden North Korean missile or rocket launch would scuttle the prospect of further talks, but he said Mr. Trump is 'determined to avoid the mistakes prior Presidents have made.' ” Bolton said : “One mistake that prior administrations made repeatedly was assuming that the North Koreans would automatically comply when they undertake obligations. The North Koreans, for example, have pledged to give up their nuclear weapons program at least five separate times....They never seem to get around to it, though. So that’s one reason why we pay particular attention to what North Korea is doing all the time.” • IS NORTH KOREA SIMPLY BUYING TIME? Gatestone Institute's Dr. Peter Huessy, President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting firm he founded in 1981, as well as Director of Strategic Deterrent Studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, and also for 20 years, the senior defense consultant at the National Defense University Foundation, weighed in last week with an article titles "North Korea: How the Discussion Was Changed." Peter Huessy suggested in the article that "North Korean leadership wants only to survive, keep its nuclear weapons, and work to secure sufficient funds to take care of its ruling elite -- and wait for the day that US forces leave the peninsula." • Huessy says : "The rationale for the summits between US President Donald Trump and North Korea's Chairman Kim Jong-Un may well be misunderstood by the critics of the American administration. By meeting with the North Korean leader, the administration is seeking to change the 'accepted' narrative about the Korean peninsula and Western Pacific, just as it has with respect to the Middle East. Whether the administration can be successful is an open question, but changes already secured in the Middle East give support to the administration's strategy and goals." • Dr. Huessy explains how President Trump has changed the Middle East narrative : "In the Middle East, for instance, the 'Peace Process' tail has, for decades, wagged the Middle East dog -- with the Palestinian Authority (PA), previously the PLO, having near veto power over US policy in the region. So central was this to America's thinking that former US President William Jefferson Clinton said in 2010, if Israel simply provided the Palestinians with a state, most terrorism would go away -- as if the grievance of Moslem terrorists about not yet having a Palestinian state explains their wholesale murder of fellow Moslems, to say nothing of Christians, Israeli civilians and Americans, murdered in literally countless Islamic terror attacks. President Trump has rejected this Middle East framework or narrative. He declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, moved the US Embassy there, ordered the closure of the PLO office in Washington, quickly decimated ISIS, and cut significantly the funding for United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA)...[which] has still some 75 years later not settled 'Palestinian refugees.' Now decades later, the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of these refugees, as well as Arabs drawn from throughout the Middle East, are kept in slums and barrios from which a ready pool of terrorists can be drawn. President Trump then also put together an informal alliance of Gulf states, particularly the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to be joined by Israel and the United States, to challenge Iran, which, as the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism, was finally the primary focus of United States concern. The administration withdrew from the Iran 'nuclear deal' (JCPOA); Iran was not living up to its obligations under the agreement, anyway. Contrary to promises of changed Iranian behavior, Iran, since the 2015 JCPOA, has aggressively increased its funding for terror, including to Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, increased its funding and arms shipments to the Islamic jihadis in Yemen, and has accelerated its ballistic missile programs while making significant strides in nuclear weapons technology capability, as just recently outlined in a February 25 report by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS)." • Dr. Huessy then applies this Trump strategy to the North Korea negotiations : "The administration has similarly sought to change foreign policy conventional wisdom about the nuclear threat from North Korea. To do this, the administration first had to cement the US relationship with its ally, the Republic of (South) Korea, and underscore (not hide) the central role of China in the ongoing hostile policy of North Korea in the region. Second, President Trump had to assert that the US was in the business of deterring North Korea, not the other way around. Trump's comment about having a really big "nuclear button" was not just macho bragging, but a statement of fact : no longer would the US tolerate North Korean attacks near or on the US, Japan or South Korea -- whether bombings, cross-border commando raids, sinking Navy vessels, shelling villages or grabbing American ships. such as the USS Pueblo. The Trump administration was sending a very strong message that the US would no longer be silent in the face of North Korean threats to turn Seoul or Los Angeles into a sea of fire....Third, the administration needed to seek an immediate end to North Korea's practice of testing ballistic missiles over South Korea and Japan, as well as testing nuclear weapons, and threatening Hawaii, Guam or the US mainland with 'merciless' strikes. Fourth, the US secured the deployment in South Korea of a THAAD missile defense battery while also increasing by $60 million annually South Korea's support for American troops. The administration now can point to the additional South Korean support when going to the American people and asking, for its own military forces, greater defense spending, which over the past two years has been significant. That quid pro quo underscores the commitment the administration has made to the US-South Korean alliance. Fifth, having cemented the US-South Korean alliance, a message was sent to North Korea that nothing is going to undermine that relationship and American soldiers are going to remain on the peninsula, contrary to the recurring demands of North Korea and China that all US troops leave. Sixth, the administration has suggested an alternative economic vision for North Korea, which, situated between three economic powerhouses -- China, South Korea and Japan -- could become (certainly in relative terms) economically far better off than it is today." • Thus, with a new Trump Asia-North Korea strategy in place, we now have to wait to see if critics are right -- a deal with North Korea is not possible -- AND, whether the North Korean leadership wants only to survive, keep its nuclear weapons, and work to secure sufficient funds to take care of its ruling elite -- and wait for the day that US forces leave the peninsula. • BUT, Dr. Huessy's argument is powerful : "The security implications of a permanently nuclear-armed North Korea, however, are sufficiently serious to support the administration's initiative to denuclearize the peninsula. In January 2019, the special US envoy of the United States to North Korea, Stephen Biegun, announced in a speech at Stanford University that North Korea had indeed pledged to give a full inventory of its nuclear enrichment facilities at the upcoming summit. Apparently, North Korea changed its mind. Indeed, why would North Korea bargain away its nuclear weapons capability if they believe that precisely that capability is what guarantees the survival of its regime? It only makes sense for North Korea to give up its nuclear capability if they are, in fact, not to protect the North's sovereignty or guarantee its survival, but for some other purpose. What if instead, for example, North Korea regarded its nuclear program as the very leverage necessary to bargain concessions from the US and South Korea? What if the goal were to secure an extremely important concession -- the removal of US military forces from the Korean peninsula, a goal long-sought, put on the table before North Korea even acquired nuclear weapons? So far, however, with the exception of a 'halt' in military exercises, the Trump administration has correctly resisted making any such 'concessions.' This self-restraint comes despite concessions demanded regularly by angry North Korean officials at meetings with American officials, especially apparently at the most recent meeting with the United States Secretary of State. As China expert Michael Pillsbury explains, the Chinese and North Koreans are flummoxed by President Trump. These two nations had regularly expected minor and reversible 'concessions' by the North would be reciprocated by the US and allies with massive food and energy assistance, as well as sanctions relief, as has occurred in the past....At the recent summit in Hanoi, however, that changed. North Korea, for the first time, did explicitly agree to dismantle its nuclear enrichment facility at Yongbyon, but in return for all sanctions that are 'harmful' to the people of North Korea (mainly those imposed by the United Nations) being eliminated. This has been described as a 'small deal' proposal, but nonetheless it was an actual trade heretofore never put on the table. What the North seems not to have counted on was the US countering with a requirement that ALL North Korean nuclear facilities and weapons be dismantled -- 'a very big deal' -- implying the American intelligence community knows that the North has considerably more nuclear facilities than those put on the table at Hanoi." • Dr. Huessy says this is significant because IF the question is 'trading an end to sanctions for denuclearization,' then the definition of what exactly constitutes the North Korean nuclear capability is what is up for discussion, not that the nuclear weapons must be retained by the North to secure its survival. It should now be clear to North Korea (and China) that the US troops in South Korea and Japan, and the US military presence in the Western Pacific, are not on the table for discussion. The Trump administration took office after eight years of "strategic patience," which led only to more North Korean missiles, nuclear bombs and weapons shipments to terror states. The proponents of these policies -- having failed miserably -- now lecture the Trump administration about what America's North Korean policy should be. They seem, however, unwilling to see that the very nature of the discussion has now been changed -- to a necessary focus on North Korea's nuclear capability and not on the US military presence or ostensible US 'hostile policy' in the region. • The entire article is available at < https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13840/north-korea-discussion >. • • • SHOULD HUMAN RIGHTS BE ON THE TABLE WITH NORTH KOREA? Another Gatestone Institute article, published on Tuesday, raises the human rights issue with respect to North Korea. The article is written by Gordon G. Chang, author of Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World and a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow. A word is in order about Chang because he is controversial to some -- Chang is an American born in New Jersey to a Chinese father and an American mother of Scottish ancestry. His father is from Rugao, Jiangsu, China. Chang went to high school in New Jersey, graduated from Cornell University, where he was a member of the Quill and Dagger society, and graduated from the Cornell Law School in 1976. He is a regular contributor to The John Batchelor Show, The Glenn Beck Program on Fox News, and CNN. In 2010, he argued that China does not have a lot of economic leverage over the United States. Chang continues to maintain that China is on the brink of collapse and that the people are one step away from revolution. Chang also argues that China is a "new dot-com bubble," adding that the rapid growth by China is not supported by various internal factors such as the decrease in population growth as well as slowing retail sales. He has noted that China achieved its 149.2% trade surplus with the United States through "lying, cheating, and stealing" and that if China decided to realize its threat that had been expressed since August 2007 to sell its US Treasuries, it would actually hurt its own economy which is reliant on exports to the US. Chang also often criticized South Korea's pro-North Korean measures during President Moon Jae-in's term. Chang harshly criticized Moon Jae-in, calling him "dangerous" and arguing that Moon should be considered "North Korea's agent." Chang also asserts that Moon Jae-in is "subverting freedom, democracy, and South Korea." • With that said, Gordon Chang has a novel view about how to treat North Korea. Chang suggests : "American leaders have been wrong. The best way to get what we want from North Korea, whether it be 'denuclearization' or anything else, is to reverse decades of Washington thinking and raise the issue of human rights loudly and incessantly. The same is true with regard to North Korea's sponsor and only formal ally, the People's Republic of China." • Chang says it is time "to let Kim know that America no longer cares about how he feels or even about maintaining a friendly relationship with him. That posture, a radical departure from Washington thinking, is both more consistent with American ideals and a step toward a policy that Kim will respect." He raises the Otto Warmbier case : "US President Donald Trump believes he faces a dilemma: that his efforts on behalf of the parents of Otto Warmbier -- the University of Virginia student whom North Korean authorities detained, brutalized and killed -- undermine his ability to take away nuclear weapons from Kim Jong-un....The President at CPAC summed up his perceived predicament this way : "It's a very, very delicate balance." • BUT, Chang asks if it really is a "delicate balance"? He notes that President Trump and his predecessors have thought they should not vigorously raise human rights concerns while negotiating on various matters with the ruling Kim dynasty of the DPRK. Chang says : "The US has deterred a general attack on South Korea since the armistice of July 1953, but apart from this achievement, American policy toward North Korea has been an abysmal failure. A destitute state has held the most powerful nation in history at bay, while getting away with, among other things, building weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and proliferating WMD technology and ballistic missiles. Given the imbalance in power, something is clearly wrong with Washington's policy. " • Gordon Chang quotes Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, who told Gatestone, "For almost thirty years, human rights was sacrificed on the altar of very serious political, security, and military concerns, and yet no significant progress has been made on nukes or missiles." Therefore, states Chang, it is, as Scarlatoiu suggests, time for "a different approach." • The old approach -- that building friendly relations must come first -- has been followed by all US Presidents, starting with George H. W. Bush. Unfortunately, states Chang : "The Kims, through three generations, have run a militant state and do not respond in the same ways as leaders of democratic societies. Because democracies are inherently legitimate, their presidents and prime ministers often fail to realize the vulnerability resulting from the illegitimacy -- and insecurity -- of despots such as the Kims. In the illegitimacy and insecurity of the Kims there is power for others. Suzanne Scholte, chair of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, told Gatestone that when North Korea's most senior defector, Hwang Jang Yop, left the North in 1997, he warned, in Scholte's words, that 'human rights was the regime's Achilles heel and most important issue.' In an email message this month, Scholte wrote : 'Perhaps the worst aspect of not addressing the human rights concerns in North Korea is that it feeds into the lies of the Kim regime to justify its nuclear weapons program...The regime justifies diverting resources from its citizens to develop nuclear weapons with the lie that the United States is their enemy and wants to destroy them.' When we do not talk about our vision for a better future for North Korea's people, we inadvertently bolster Kim family propaganda." • So, advises Gordon Chang : "The way to get what we want from North Korea is to expose that lie and thereby separate Kim Jong-un from regime officials and supporters. 'If you are an elite member of North Korea society, you wake up every morning with a simple choice : slavish devotion to Kim Jong-un or seeing your family murdered in front of you before your own brutal execution,' Scholte noted. Therefore, holding out the prospect of human rights and prosperity for North Koreans gives them 'another option,' in other words, 'a peaceful way to bring change in North Korea.' " • AND, according to Chang : "There is one more reason to raise human rights to disarm the Kim regime. Kim Jong-un knows how inhumane his rule is -- he has, after all, had hundreds of people executed -- so if we do not talk forcefully about, say, Otto Warmbier, Kim will think we are afraid of him. If he thinks we are afraid of him, he will see no reason to be accommodating. It is unfortunate, but outsiders cannot be polite or friendly: Kim logic is the opposite of logic in free societies." • • • DEAR READERS, Gordon Chang gives a real-world example of what happens when US policymakers signal to aggressive leaders that they are afraid of talking about human rights : "In February 2009, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously proclaimed that human rights issues could not take precedence over other matters. Human rights, she said, 'can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis.' The rhetorical concession, meant to pave the way for cooperation, in fact had the opposite effect. China's leaders were 'ecstatic' about Clinton's downgrading of human rights. 'In their eyes, America had finally succumbed to a full kowtow before the celestial emperor,' wrote Laurence Brahm, an American with close ties to Chinese leaders at the time. Within a few weeks of Mrs. Clinton's ill-conceived pronouncement, the Chinese felt bold enough to harass two unarmed US Navy reconnaissance vessels in international waters, in both the South China and Yellow Seas. In one of those incidents, Chinese boats tried to saw off a towed array sonar from the Impeccable, an act constituting a direct attack on the United States. Moreover, China's leaders did not prove to be helpful on the matters Clinton had listed." • What is interesting about Gordon Chang's proposal -- basically that "It is time to let Kim Jong-un know that America no longer cares about how he feels or even about maintaining a friendly relationship with him. That posture, a radical departure from Washington thinking, is both more consistent with American ideals and a step toward a policy that Kim will respect -- echoes the strategy used by President Trump to bring Kim to the negotiating table in the first place. • ABC News summarized the back-and-forth barbs in a June 2018 article titled "From 'fire and fury' to 'rocket man,' the various barbs traded between Trump and Kim Jong-un." You can read the entire article at < https://abcnews.go.com/International/fire-fury-rocket-man-barbs-traded-trump-kim/story?id=53634996 >. BUT, today e'll jut hit the highlights. President Trump called Kim “Little Rocket Man,” saying that continued threats against the US would be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” On April 24, 2017, during a lunch with ambassadors at the United Nations Security Council, President Trump touched on how the group's policy toward North Korea needs to change : "The status quo in North Korea is also unacceptable, and the council must be prepared to impose additional and stronger sanctions on North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile programs. This is a real threat to the world, whether we want to talk about it or not. North Korea is a big world problem, and it's a problem we have to finally solve. People have put blindfolds on for decades, and now it's time to solve the problem." On June 30, 2017, during a press conference at the White House with South Korea's President Moon Jae-in, President Trump said : "The years of strategic patience with the North Korean regime has failed. Many years and they failed. It's failed. And frankly, that patience is over. Together we are facing the threat of the reckless and brutal regime in North Korea. The nuclear and ballistic missile programs of that regime require a determined response. The North Korean dictatorship has no regard for the safety and security of its people or its neighbors and has no respect for human life. And that's been proven over and over again." When on July 4, 2017, North Korea launched a missile strike, the President tweeted : "North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!" On August 8, 2017, President Trump warned : "North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening -- beyond a normal statement -- and as I said, they will be met with fire, fury and, frankly, power the likes of which the world has never seen before." erring to North Korea's statement about taking revenge. In his address to the 72nd United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York, Sept. 19, 2017, President Trump did not name the North Korean leader : "No nation on earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles. The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready, willing and able, but hopefully, this will not be necessary." On October 1, 2017, the President tweeted : "Being nice to Rocket Man hasn't worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won't fail." The President made a multi-stop, two-week visit to Asia and during his visit to South Korea, he addressed the country's National Assembly : "I hope I speak not only for our countries but for all civilized nations when I say to the North, do not underestimate us and do not try us. All responsible nations must join forces to isolate the brutal regime of North Korea -- to deny it any form of support, supply or acceptance. The longer we wait, the greater the danger grows, and the fewer the options become.” That November 9, 2017, speech and the Asia trip overall came during a time of extended silence on the missile-testing-front -- 56 days -- since Trump took office that the North Korean regime has not conducted a test. BUT, Kim called President Trump's speech the "reckless remarks by an old lunatic." And Trump responded with a funny tweet : "Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?' Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend -- and maybe someday that will happen!" When Vice President Mike Pence and North Korea's Kim Yo-Jong, the sister to North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, attended the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympic Games on February 9, 2018, there was talk of a personal meeting. But, in a statement, Nick Ayers, Pence's chief of staff, said, “North Korea dangled a meeting in hopes of the Vice President softening his message, which would have ceded the world stage for their propaganda during the Olympics," adding that Pence would have confronted the North Koreans about human rights abuses and their nuclear weapons ambitions. AND, on March 6, 2018, days before an historic announcement about a significant change, President Trump hinted that things between the two countries were allegedly headed in a positive direction : "Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea. For the first time in many years, a serious effort is being made by all parties concerned. The World is watching and waiting! May be false hope, but the U.S. is ready to go hard in either direction!....Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea. For the first time in many years, a serious effort is being made by all parties concerned. The World is watching and waiting! May be false hope, but the U.S. is ready to go hard in either direction!" On March 8, 2018, it was announced that Trump agreed to a high-stakes meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un by May on his nuclear weapons program, South Korea's national security advisor announced at the White House. He had briefed the President on a message from Kim earlier in the day. • When the White House said that President Trump "will accept the invitation," the President tweeted about the progress in the relationship : "Kim Jong Un talked about denuclearization with the South Korean Representatives, not just a freeze. Also, no missile testing by North Korea during this period of time. Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached. Meeting being planned!" • Maybe it is time for President Trump to get tough again with the "short and fat" Dear Leader, aka Little Rocket Man.