Trump-kim meeting: Good or bad idea?

North Korea has outplayed a diplomatically naive US president with the agreement to hold a summit, analysts say, and has no intention of giving up its atomic weapons. Donald Trump hailed the planned meeting with Kim Jong Un as “great progress” on the road to denuclearisation. But analysts warn that agreeing to a sit-down so early in the process gives Pyongyang something it desperately wants without extracting meaningful concessions in return. “North Korea has been seeking a summit with an American president for more than 20 years,” pointed out arms control specialist Jeffrey Lewis, of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. “It has literally been a top foreign policy goal.”

The US needs to talk to North Korea, he tweeted, but Kim was not seeking the meeting “so that he can surrender North Korea’s weapons”.

“Kim is inviting Trump to demonstrate that his investment in nuclear and missile capabilities has forced the United States to treat him as an equal.” No sitting US president has ever met any of the North’s leaders, much less gone to Pyongyang.

Kim’s father Kim Jong Il invited Bill Clinton to come after the first North-south summit in 2000, but Clinton demurred; he visited the North only after leaving the White House to secure the release of detained Americans. Jimmy Carter, another former president, also carried out a similar mercy mission, and other trips to try to broker peace.

If the summit goes ahead — and Trump’s White House is marked by a tendency to perform sudden about-faces — it will certainly be historic, and not to be sniffed at, argues John Delury of Yonsei University in Seoul.

“Engaging (North Korea) is very hard work,” he said. “This is the beginning, not the grand solution. But it’s a very good start.”

Trump’s sudden decision to meet Kim was “a major strategic gamble”, said Evan Medeiros, the former Asian affairs director of the National Security Council under president Barack Obama.

There had been no clear indication Kim was willing to abandon his nuclear weapons, he said, adding the North had long been “a skilful manipulator”.