Trump-Kim Summit Ends Without Agreement

The summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam ended without a signed agreement Thursday. Neither side could come to agreement, with Kim reportedly wanting the removal of all sanctions and Trump wishing to implement more accountability on North Korea’s denuclearization efforts.

Trump claimed that while Kim had agreed to close the major nuclear site Yongbyon, he was unwilling to destroy others, including secret sites. North Korean officials pushed back on his claims, saying Kim had agreed to close other sites and had only requested partial, not full, lifting of sanctions.

The lack of a signed agreement at the end of the meeting was a disappointment for the White House, which had hoped to build on the momentum from last year’s summit in Singapore, in which Kim said he was open to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Many, however, accused the North of being disingenuous, especially after the country was revealed to have been building more nuclear weapons and missile sites even after the Singapore summit.

Trump has made peace on the Korean Peninsula a central foreign policy goal for his administration, which has largely been preoccupied with domestic issues such as immigration and investigations into alleged Russian collusion during the 2016 election. The failure of this week’s summit to achieve a further step in the denuclearization process, while a blow to Trump, is unlikely to be the end of peace talks and diplomatic efforts for rapprochement between the two countries, but will likely shift focus from the issue for now.