Center for East Asia Policy Studies

For Kim [Jong-un], the nuclear weapons are part of his national identity...To assume that one [Trump] can go in and talk about making him rich is almost antithetical, almost offensive in a way, for somebody who has achieved and completed his grandfather's goal.

I understand why the administration is offering so many carrots, but I’m afraid Trump thinks Kim is a businessman. What he’s forgetting is that Kim isn’t looking for wealth...He has all the wealth in the country. He’s looking for legitimacy.

I think the thing that's most dangerous about the upcoming [U.S.-North Korea] summit is that people might expect things to happen too fast. This is Mr. Trump's weakness. He likes to go big, but this... will be pretty painstaking and will require years, not months. There is a lot of fear that Trump might be too excited by [about the prospect of a Nobel Peace Prize] and reaches out for peace treaties before actual verified commitments to denuclearization are in place...and so basically, a peace agreement should be the last reward, not something you give away.

There's a lot more pressure on the U.S. than on North Korea to do well in this summit because the U.S. has become the world's worst diplomat. The Trump administration has pulled the U.S. out of so many important agreements that were aimed at cooperation and peace...There are concerns that Trump may go for what is most threatening to the U.S., the ICBM capacity of North Korea, rather than the much larger arsenal of short-range and mid-range missiles that would target Japan, South Korea, and the regional partners in Asia.