The context you need, when you need it

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

Why Trump can’t rekindle the spark with Kim Jong Un

The president badly wants a meeting with the North Korean leader. But it’s not clear what they have to talk about.

Can President Donald Trump pen a new chapter in his love story with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un?

In Trump’s first term, the two leaders, in Trump’s words, “fell in love” after exchanging letters and held three historic meetings, but failed to make much progress toward the goal of denuclearizing the heavily armed hermit state.

Now, Trump appears to be trying to recapture the magic, reportedly urging aides to set up a meeting with Kim as soon as this fall. This news comes soon after Trump’s Truth Social post on Sunday announcing he had ordered the US military to “substantially reduce” joint military exercises with ally South Korea in part because it would send “a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful” — North Korea.

Trump is trying to restart talks with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, scaling back a planned joint military exercise with South Korea and instructing aides to prioritize setting up a new meeting.

Trump’s three historic meetings with Kim were a diplomatic high point of his first term, but since Trump returned to office, the North Koreans have been rebuffing American advances.

Much has chanced in North Korea since the last time the two met: The country is wealthier, less isolated, and more militarily secure. A Trump meeting might not have the same appeal it once did.

Trump has claimed, without elaborating, that Kim has responded to this overture, but there’s been no public response from Pyongyang yet.

Trump’s outreach didn’t come entirely out of nowhere. Trump has made clear since the beginning of his term that he would like to meet with Kim again, and there was speculation that a meeting might happen when Trump traveled to South Korea for a summit last fall. North Korea’s UN Mission in New York has also rebuffed several attempts by US officials to deliver a personal letter from Trump seeking to restart dialogue.

In the midst of an unpopular conflict with Iran that seems unlikely to end in anything resembling a victory, it makes sense that Trump might be reaching back to what he sees as one of the foreign policy high points of his first term. “Kim Jong ​Un has always treated me with great respect,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “I understand him. He understands me.”

Beyond........

© Vox