Second summit or something more substantial?
After a few months of relative stasis, engagement with North Korea has shifted into high gear — on two fronts. A top military figure from Pyongyang arrived in Washington last night after a first trip got canceled two months ago. Neither side announced the arrival of General Kim Yong Chol, the first such visit to DC in a generation:
A top North Korean general was paying a rare visit Friday to Washington, where he is expected to meet President Donald Trump to finalize a new summit aimed at denuclearization and easing decades of hostility.
Kim Yong Chol, a right-hand man to leader Kim Jong Un, is the first North Korean dignitary in nearly two decades known to have spent the night in the US capital, little more than a year after Trump was threatening to wipe the totalitarian state off the map.
Kim was supposed to visit in November to meet with Mike Pompeo in New York. That got called off as both governments accused each other of negotiating in bad faith. Kim will meet with Pompeo later today, according to AFP, although privately rather than with the normal pomp of a diplomatic mission.
Presumably this meeting will attempt to plan the next summit between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump, a summit that both leaders have publicly embraced, although it’s almost certainly going to be a venue for pursuing the complete, verifiable, and irreversible nuclear disarmament (CVID) that Pompeo insists must take place before sanctions are lifted.
