Animavore wrote:What the fuck has NK talking to SK got to do with Trump?
http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/05/opinions/ ... index.html(CNN)Kim Jong Un, to general surprise, announced in his New Year's Day speech that he was prepared to "melt the frozen north-south relations," to allow contacts with South Koreans and to discuss North Korean participation in the Winter Olympics to be held in February in South Korea.
US President Trump has tweeted that this would not have happened had he not been "firm, strong and willing to commit our total 'might' against the North."
He may be partly right. The single most important factor driving the North Koreans to this decision was probably economic distress.
For CNN to give Trump even a shred of a hope of a possible shadow of credit for anything is a flat out admission.
https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... mp/544769/North Korean leaders perceived past American presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as “very gentle,” Thae told me this week during his first visit to the United States since seeking asylum in South Korea in 2016, and just ahead of Trump’s trip to South Korea. Now they don’t seem to know what to make of the man at the helm of the United States: “When Trump came up with ‘fire and fury,’ that kind of [phrase] was never used by any American.” Such unprecedented rhetoric, he argued, is probably one reason why Kim Jong Un has not gone ahead with his plans to test-fire a missile toward the U.S. territory of Guam. Thae noted that North Korea hadn’t conducted a nuclear or missile test since Trump declared that the United States would, if necessary to protect itself or its allies, “totally destroy North Korea” and the “Rocket Man” who runs it.
Nevertheless, he thinks that so far, “the unpredictability of Mr. Trump [has] worked, to some extent, to prevent a further escalation of the crisis.”
