Did North Korea Had A Plan Five Years Ago On How To Achieve Denuclearization?

Reuters/KCNA

Joel S. Wit, The Atlantic: What the North Koreans Told Me About Their Plans

I was one of a handful of former officials to meet with them when they were just developing their current strategy. Those talks offer the best information we have about how to achieve denuclearization.

What exactly do the North Koreans mean when they say they’re willing to denuclearize? And how exactly would they do so? These are the key mysteries at the heart of the upcoming Trump-Kim summit—and indeed they threatened to derail the whole thing this week when Kim Jong Un objected to National-Security Adviser John Bolton’s vision for it. In a statement attributed to Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea chastised Bolton for his invocation of the “Libya model” of unilateral denuclearization as a template, noting that the “world knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq which have met miserable [fates].” The White House quickly walked back Bolton’s remarks.

The exchange did little to clarify how the U.S. plans to achieve denuclearization. But for a group of former U.S. government officials who have been meeting with North Korean officials over the past decade, North Korea’s own plans are anything but hidden. A series of meetings with North Korean officials in 2013, which I attended along with other former U.S. officials, holds valuable clues—and they show that the North Koreans have given a great deal of thought to denuclearization and almost certainly have a concrete plan of action for the upcoming summit, whether the White House does or not.

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WNU Editor: What Joel S. Wit is outlining in his above post is actually old news. President Obama was also correct to say five years ago that what the North Koreans were proposing was just propaganda .... doubly so when the North Koreans later admitted that they would not permit inspections. The problem with the North Korean strategy is that they have strongly believed that having a nuclear deterrent and capability to strike U.S. targets with nuclear missiles would make the U.S. acquiesce to their demands. The opposite has occurred, and now North Korea is not only experiencing full sanctions .... but also the wrath of its neighbors. And while the above writer believes the North Koreans  have a concrete plan in their hands, I have a different take. The North Korean decision to cut ties with South Korea and break the DMZ understanding while threatening the U.S. is not a plan .... on the contrary .... it shows the North Korean regime to be erratic and untrustworthy .... and yes .... very dangerous.