The summit meeting between President Donald Trump and the Supreme Leader of North Korea Kim Jong-un was a historic meeting of two leaders of opposing ideologies. Donald Trump is the first sitting US president to meet with a North Korean leader. The thought that a president of the United States and a North Korean leader would shake hands in a friendly manner was unimaginable before. This summit meeting which was never going to happen in view of the hostility between America and USA, but it did happen to everyone’s surprise. This meeting of two unpredictable leaders should not be trivialised in anyway.
At least a start has been made and ice broken between staunch adversaries. That North Korea’s weapons programme has become a threat to neighbours such as Seoul and Tokyo - and potentially even for the US mainland. Usually before any summit meeting ground work and planning is done by the officials and experts from both side and come to an agreement on all the major issues. Then the leaders of both the countries meet amidst great fanfare to sign the treaty or agreement. Here what happened was the other way round the leaders met first to sus and bond with each other and come a broad agreement (they signed three comprehensive documents") with vague details about future elimination of nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula and other outstanding issues such as human rights and sanctions.
President Donald Trump is taking a huge gamble, based on the very assumption that the force of his personality, and the deal-making skills in which he has supreme confidence, will make all the difference. Skeptics doubt that anything basic has changed. Speaking of the meeting, Trump said the meeting had gone "better than anyone could have expected". Kim Jong-un said “we're prepared to start a new history, and we're ready to write a new chapter between our two nations”. Analysts' opinions are divided on the outcomes to be achieved at this meeting. Some see it as a propaganda for Kim, others consider this meeting to be the beginning of peace on the Korean Peninsula. If after this summit peace comes it will be worth the effort.
Baldev Sharma
Rayners Lane, Harrow
