The top leader of the DPRK, Kim Jong-un, seems to be the one breaking the ice between the North and the South of the Korean Peninsula, meeting Moon Jae-in, the South Korean leader, and together pledging to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. How do we interpret this meeting between Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in? Jonathan Pollack, a long-time DPRK expert and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, answered Robert Lawrence Kuhn’s question. 

“The meeting was well-prepared, that’s obvious, I don’t want to say it was entirely scripted, but Moon got out of it more or less what he wanted. If we really try to look at the communiqué, it’s a pastiche of every past agreement - unfulfilled agreement - between the two Koreas, going back to 1972. It’s trying to establish a set of parameters and guidelines, within which they can elevate their relations again. They did not talk as much about the economic dimension because of course North Korea is under severe UN sanctions. So, there are implications that they want to go down this path - with the proviso that the two Koreas would reach a notional peace agreement and normalize their relationship in a variety of spheres; for example, they would restore railroad lines between north and south. While none of these ideas are particularly new, the peace agreement might be a little different - but I could give you a set of documents with these kinds of goals that have never been fulfilled. And at the very end of these agreements, there was a reference to supposedly the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula - that’s the terms that North Korea uses. Now, whether that really means what it says is questionable. Here again I would say that the United States looks at those words and figures that “complete” means complete – but that’s really not what Kim Jong-un has in mind. He wants acceptance of the DPRK from the United States as a nuclear weapon state.”