What’s next for North Korea? Stanford scholars discuss the diplomacy of denuclearization
In anticipation of President Donald Trump’s second face-to-face meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later this week, Stanford scholars discuss what unfolded since the leaders’ first summit in June 2018 and what direction they should take to ensure complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
As President Donald Trump prepares to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this week for continued negotiations about denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Stanford scholars say that for progress to be made, the two leaders must come to a shared understanding of what that actually entails.While the first summit in June 2018 was considered a historic milestone, the leaders’ joint statement promising “to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” was ambiguous, says Stanford scholar Gi-Wook Shin. Trump and Kim’s second summit – planned for Feb. 27 and 28 in Hanoi, Vietnam – is an opportunity for the two leaders to tangibly address how to advance a goal that, once achieved, would be a historic breakthrough, he said. Here, Shin, along with other Korea and foreign policy scholars, including Siegfried Hecker, Yong Suk Lee, Colin Kahl, Allen Weiner and Thomas Fingar, discuss what to expect from the upcoming summit.