Secret, direct talks underway between US and North Korea
The United States and North Korea have been holding secret, direct talks to prepare for a summit between President Donald Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un, a sign that planning for the highly anticipated meeting is progressing, several administration officials familiar with the discussions tell CNN.
Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo and a team at the CIA have been working through intelligence back-channels to make preparations for the summit, the officials said. American and North Korean intelligence officials have spoken several times and have even met in a third country, with a focus on nailing down a location for the talks.
Although the North Korean regime has not publicly declared its invitation by Kim Jong Un to meet with Trump, which was conveyed last month by a South Korean envoy, several officials say North Korea has since acknowledged Trump's acceptance, and Pyongyang has reaffirmed Kim is willing to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
Also at The Hill.
See also: How the USB Taught North Korea to Love K-Pop
Related Stories
North Korea has switched from the UTC+08:30 offset, which it has used since 2015, back to UTC+09:00 (Korea Standard Time), matching South Korea in a "first practical step" towards reunification:
North Korea has changed [its] time zone to match the South after last week's inter-Korean summit, according to state media. At 23:30 local time (15:00 GMT) on Friday the country's clocks moved forward 30 minutes to midnight. The reset is "the first practical step" to speed up Korean unification, the official KCNA news agency said.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump says he has a date for his meeting with the North's leader, Kim Jong-Un. "We now have a date and we have a location, we'll be announcing it soon," Mr Trump told US journalists outside the White House on Friday, adding that he was expecting "very, very good things" to come out it. Mr Trump will host South Korea's president Moon Jae-in at the White House on 22 May to discuss the upcoming meeting.
Related: Massachusetts Commission Considering a Potential Move to the Atlantic Time Zone
President Trump Tweets about Nuclear Talks with North Korea
U.S. and North Korean Representatives Holding Secret Talks to Plan for Summit
Kim Jong-un Crosses Into South Korea for Summit
South Korea to Remove Loudspeakers at Border
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @07:12PM (15 children)
Trump will successfully make peace between N and S Korea, a plan they themselves desperately want, and we will be sold the lie that Trump is a peace making wonder boy. It'll be Obama's Nobel Peace Prize all over again!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Virindi on Sunday April 08 2018, @07:19PM (2 children)
At least then he would have done SOMETHING, even if that something was merely not screwing up an easy win (I don't really believe this is the case but whatever).
The Peace Prize was awarded for doing absolutely nothing but winning an election.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @07:34PM (1 child)
Not for winning an election, but for being diplomatic and having brown skin. While I think the prize was quite a farce it won't be nearly as big as Trump getting recognition for, umm, well anything really. I could believe Obama actually tried to do some good in the world, but Trump is just a lying scumbag who embodies all of the absolute worst traits in America. Lust (cheats on his wife), Gluttony (fat ass), Greed (duh), Sloth (fat ass, but not 100% sloth), Wrath (all the temp tantrums), Envy (can't stand anyone else getting more attention than himself), and Pride (he knows all the words, the best words).
I'm more curious what powers are pushing for these obvious publicity stunts and why. Do we have some benevolent "leadership" trying to actually make the world a better place? Or is this just a continuation of the circuses? Perhaps North Korea's blustering has finally caused enough ruckus that it is considered more profitable to fix the cause?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday April 09 2018, @12:19AM
while foreign wars are good for the American oligarchs, nuclear strikes on their factories and warehouses would ruin their whole day.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @07:28PM
It's straight out of the Kim Jong playbook: Delay, get concessions, delay some more, renege, build the next level of WMDs.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @07:29PM (9 children)
The leaders of North Korea and South Korea could separately take you aside privately, tell you that peace is all due to Trump, and you wouldn't believe it. You're blinded by hate.
South Korea has in fact already credited Trump. Clearly, previous tactics were not working at all.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @07:40PM (7 children)
Blinded by hate? Lol, sorry but I'm being way more of a realist than you are. Politics has leaders thanking leaders, politically crediting the actual diplomats and analysts would cause problems. Most any other president could handle it, but Trump would blow his stack if he wasn't made out to be the savior.
So what bug crawled inside your brain you feel the need to blow donny's little dick?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @07:55PM (5 children)
Trump hires the diplomats. Well, lots of them are held up by democrats refusing to allow confirmation votes, but aside from that assholery they are simply chosen by Trump.
Trump also tells the diplomats what to do. He can fire them if they disobey his orders. Foreign policy has been much more active under Trump, with the USA now taking much more of a leadership role.
So if the diplomats are any good, thank Trump.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @12:29AM (4 children)
Then why the hell is has until now Trump continued to leave the position of United States Ambassador to South Korea vacant? Breaking with tradition, he basically ordered all of Obama's former ambassadors recalled immediately as he took office, but after nearly two years he still hasn't appointed new ambassadors to 46 countries, some of which are very important to US national interest. I could understand why he'd be slow to appoint new ambassadors to Belize, Jamaica, or Iceland, but to go for nearly two years without an official ambassador to such hot spots as South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey is positively inexcusable. I don't think the Democrats even have the Congressional clout to block Trump's desired appointments to these countries. The Republicans have 238 seats in the House to the Democrats 193, and the Senate there are 51 R's to 47 D's. With those kinds of Republican numbers in Congress, Trump could appoint someone easily, but it looks rather more like he won't.
https://thediplomat.com/2018/02/still-no-us-ambassador-in-south-korea/ [thediplomat.com]
It seems Trump already had someone lined up for the post, Victor Cha, but his appointment was later withdrawn after he expressed opposition to preventative strikes in the North. That is probably making the South Koreans very worried.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Monday April 09 2018, @12:50AM (2 children)
In the US, the House of Representatives does not vote on appointments, only the Senate. And various Senate rules require a 60-vote supermajority to call a vote, though the applicability of that to confirmations depends on what they claim the rules are this week. It is no slam dunk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @01:20AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @01:28AM
Why do you seem to be so knowledgable about Trump appointing ambassadors, but don't know the basic rules like who votes on it, how many votes are needed, etc? Is this more false flag (actually pro trump) messaging?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @03:33AM
We want good ambassadors. Good ones are people with active careers. They aren't going to want to sit on their asses waiting for a confirmation vote that may never come. The delay is actively hurting the process by making good candidates find other things to do with their careers.
At the current rate, Trump will need all 8 years to get the same number of confirmations that Obama got in 1 year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @12:43AM
Trump has negative decorum.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @03:19AM
I was thinking of believing it when I saw the headline earlier today. It would have been interesting.
I decided to hover over the links this time, and they're CIA/democrat sources.
Something else is going on. Maybe the elites are fine with having a strongman in charge when World War 3 begins.
Move 5 armies from South Korea to North Korea. It's just like when we used to play Risk after class in the Physics classroom.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by shortscreen on Monday April 09 2018, @09:11AM
That's rather optimistic. Before anyone could sell the idea that Trump is the god of peace, they'd have to work on selling the idea that peace is even a good thing. As it stands, most of the talking heads on the American political spectrum are promoting a war of one kind or another.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday April 09 2018, @12:17AM
and here I thought Vantucky was gonna get nuked when I was enjoying my days off in Portland.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @10:24AM
What's really happening :- the talks are going on in the background to get everything sorted out before Trump gets a chance to waddle in and wreck everything. Far from preparing for talks involving Trump, they're getting the talks done without him.
The 'summit' itself will be a few platitudes, a bit of flag waving and a few lackeys telling Trump that it's his triumph, followed by Huckabee Sanders looking cross-eyed and open-mouthed at anybody who dares to suggest otherwise.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday April 13 2018, @06:06PM
Regardless of whether or not Trump is a positive player in this, he is responsible for it getting to this point. Why was Obama not able to get us to this point? Bush Jr? Clinton? Bush Sr? Reagan? Carter? Ford? Nixon? Johnson? Kennedy? Ike?
I would argue that Ike managed to "end" Truman's war when he brought it to a ceasefire so I will exclude faulting him. Kennedy had much bigger issues to deal with. Johnson was too busy going to war to protect DuPont assets. Nixon had to end Johnson's war but ended up opening China, a necessary thing to bring closure to the Korean War. Ford did not appear to do much of anything and Carter was not concerned with North Korea outside of trying to reduce troop levels in South Korea. I would argue that Reagan had bigger fish to fry. Bush Sr should have dealt with North Korea but I don't think he cared, NK had no assets that we wanted to own and so why waste money putting them down. Clinton also could have worked with NK to try and end the war but he did not. Bush tried (to some extent) by giving them food aid without stipulations on internal NK policy in hopes to build better relations, this failed with Kim Jung Il died. Obama also could have worked to end the war in NK but he did not.
So lets look at Trump. Trump continued to ratchet up the pressure on NK with escalating threats and tariffs, really putting NK to the wall. With the US looking like it really wanted to get in on this fight the Chinese were forced to intervene to avoid conflict and the South Koreans had a chance to extend an olive branch.
Trump has done more than any president since Nixon to try to end the Korean War.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam