Center for East Asia Policy Studies

It’s a favorable environment for North Korea to continue to drag things out at the moment.

We are not at that point, that point of no return, but I just don’t think that [Secretary of State] Pompeo can sell this [summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un] as a ‘win’ unless there is something that is tangible, agreeable and interactive, if you might say, between the United States and North Korea. Short of that, we are just spinning our wheels. He [Pompeo] can’t come back empty-handed. But the question is what he would consider sufficient for his purposes to justify this trip.