US hands big, legitimate victory to North Korea

The US has handed a big, legitimate victory to North Korea. Photo: AP

While many experts believe that the summit between the two US and North Korean leaders took place too soon without adequate diplomatic preparation, some other experts commented that President Trump's decision to publicly cancel the summit not only gave Pyongyang an atmosphere of legitimacy, but also helped the Northeast Asian country maintain its nuclear program to basically ensure the safety of the North Korean regime.

On Twitter, Vipin Narang, a nuclear strategy expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), commented: “This is a bad day for the US. At that time, North Korea maintained its nuclear arsenal, broke maximum pressure by eliminating China, weakened the US-South Korea alliance, and made Mr. Trump 'fall into the trap', because when he announced the cancellation of the summit, he made the US the guilty party."

Meanwhile, David Santoro, director and senior fellow for the nuclear policy program at the Pacific Forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), shared: “If Kim Jong-un is wise, he will remain silent. He has won, by maintaining his nuclear weapons and being in a better position to focus on economic development, because regional actors (like China or Russia) are unlikely to take a hard line on Pyongyang.”

But as long as Mr Kim's safety appears to depend on nuclear weapons, North Korea remains eager to meet the US leader, and Pyongyang appears not to have given up hope.

Just hours after the US announced the cancellation of the summit with North Korea, a senior North Korean official expressed the country's desire to maintain its commitment to the summit.

“If you are North Korean, you want to meet the leader of the free world because it symbolizes that you are a real country, not a feudal, backward society,” said Robert Kelly, a political scientist at Pusan ​​National University.