The answers you get in foreign policy, as in life, often depend on the questions you ask. The North Korea question on everyone’s lips in Washington seems to be whether leader Kim Jong Un is about to test an intercontinental ballistic missile. Here in Seoul, everyone wants to know whether President-elect Joe Biden will hold a summit with Kim. Are we barking up the right tree?
Both questions reflect the degree to which our expectations have been conditioned by the events—traumatic and dramatic—of the last few years. Kim’s extraordinary upgrade of his nuclear deterrent started in the Obama years and culminated on President Donald Trump’s watch with the successful test launch of a nuclear-capable ICBM in November 2017, bringing the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war. Six months later, Trump’s penchant for political theater led to a string of summits in Singapore, Hanoi, and Panmunjom, generating a solid framework for improving relations but no tangible progress on the details. After the last U.S.-North Korean talks broke off in Stockholm a year ago, observers spent months on edge for an October surprise of a long-range missile test or a fourth Trump-Kim summit. Neither arrived.
