History was made with a handshake on Tuesday morning Singapore time as President Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un met and signed an agreement last night at the conclusion of their historic summit.
The agreement calls for a denuclearized Korean peninsula in exchange for security assurances from the U.S. government, which also agreed to suspend joint military exercises with South Korea. But the agreement does not get into much detail as to what exactly “denuclearization” means for North Korea or any timetable for how long that might take.
Perhaps more notable than the non-specific agreement, was the sight of both men behaving so cordially to each other after the bellicose back and forth. The man with the bigger nuclear button and so-called “Rocket Man” were seemingly fast friends.
What’s the immediate result of the summit? What should our expectations be moving forward? And what actually goes into the process of denuclearizing a country?
Guests:
Sung-Yoon Lee, an expert on the Koreas and professor in Korean Studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University
Abraham Denmark, Asia program director at the Wilson Center in D.C.; former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for East Asia (2015-2017), where he worked with the Secretary of Defense and other U.S. leaders in developing North Korea national security strategies
Celeste Arrington, political science and international affairs professor at George Washington University in D.C., where her speciality is on the Koreas and Japan