The Meeting Topics

What will be discussed? Not much, I am quite sure everything will have been already discussed and agreed upon. The meeting is a photo-op.

Yet what is at stake?

We can rapidly make few points that will be on the table, in order of importance.

USA possible requests to North Korea:

• Denuclearization
• ICBM
• Japanese abductees
• Human rights

North Korea possible requests to USA:

• Sanctions Issue
• Economic cooperation
• Other summits

Denuclearization. Yes, but it is actually useful to read this from 38th North. Remember Chernobyl. When you live under a regime and you are required to achieve certain objectives you try to do, no matter what. Your bosses and maybe even you, may not be qualified for what you are doing, the request ridiculous but the threat to you and/or your family are real. You make mistake, by ignorance or by fear. I have always been an advocate for all nuclear facilities worldwide to be managed only my IAEA.

NK answer to this request can be to restart a 6 parties talk with EU and an Iran-like deal. Which may include, somehow formally, the ICBM too. This will give Trump a political victory against the Iran-deal supporter. EU is fundamental.

Japanese Abductees are the real deal. In the sense that they will show how much regional cooperation NK wants. It is possible the topic won’t be on the table at all or that NK could even give all information they have about it.

Human rights. Forget about it all together.

 

Sanctions. They are hitting as you can read here but resilience of North Koreans is historical so I don’t think it burdens them too much. In addition not too strict sanctions may allow an even tighter control on system apparatus. Lifting them from one day to another (also impossible) will only create chaos which NK cannot control.

Economic cooperation. That is the deal. It could involve a lot of foreign investments channeled through a bumiputra-like scheme to control it. Installing facilities and thriving. And putting a lot of expat inside the country may well be the shield that KJU may want. Yet I think his objective was to consolidate his power and the Chinese finally sided him.

Future meetings. Necessary for the 6 party talks etc. There is a possible second meeting that may be called by Trump this time, and you can read about it here.