"My Machiavellian mind tells me that the Chinese have worked out a deal with the Russians and the North Koreans that if North Korea comes back to the six-party talks, the main issue will not be denuclearization, it will be counterfeiting".
I think because the Korea summit did not really clear up anything on denuclearization, it actually heightened even more the importance and the expectations surrounding the Trump-Kim meeting.
The two leaders made history by briefly setting foot in each other's countries and vaguely agreed to work toward "denuclearization," but it remains to be seen exactly how much Kim is willing to budge when it comes to North Korea's nukes.
For its part, the U.S. says it has ended controversial military exercises in the region but now wants to see concrete signs that North Korea is working towards complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization before it will lift economic sanctions.
When pressed to explain what exactly "complete denuclearization" means or what it would entail, Trump said only that the process would be done as "fast as can be done scientifically [and] mechanically".
As such, any discussion about disarmament rather than denuclearization is unlikely, and if it does happen it will only come in relation to a comprehensive settlement that will include terms that allow Kim and his family to rule in perpetuity.
If the U.S. administration believed that heightened sanctions and pressure would force Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons, "it will count as (its) greatest miscalculation, and it will block the path to denuclearization on the Korean peninsula forever - a result desired by no one," according to the statement.
Less than a month out from the scheduled June 12 sit-down, North Korea abruptly announced Wednesday it might pull out of the talks if Washington continued to insist on its denuclearization.
North Korea claims the proposals are "gangster-like" and said that it wants economic sanctions lifted first before it would consider denuclearization.
The editor, Deng Yuwen, now a freelance writer, said he doubted that North Korea would agree to join talks on its denuclearization.
North Korea said it would move to the next phase of the denuclearization process, abandoning and dismantling its nuclear weapons programs, only when it has been awarded all the energy and political benefits it had been promised.
