North Korea has cancelled talks with South Korea scheduled for later today, and threatened to cancel next month’s summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un over joint U.S.-South Korean military drills, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap.
Why it matters: This is a dramatic change in tone from North Korea, which recently released three U.S. prisoners and began dismantling a nuclear test site as part of efforts to lay the groundwork for talks with Trump. North Korea has long viewed the drills as a rehearsal for invasion, but had remained uncharacteristically silent about exercises last month.
Trump idiotically has portrayed the dismantling of a nuclear test site as being prompted by Kim Jong Un’s fear of him, but the truth of the matter is that the site is too damaged to be used further. As to the three prisoners, Kim considered them small potatoes. What’s really going on is brinksmanship as usual. Meanwhile, John Bolton has been on the news shows saying that months of preparation were being foregone in favor of Donald Trump’s ability to “size Kim up.” If the summit goes forward it will likely be a complete joke, but then you knew that.
