Trump Becomes First Sitting President To Meet A North Korean Dictator, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Three Generations Of The Kim Family Had Never Been Photographed As Equals Beside An American President

The Filing

SINGAPORE. President Donald Trump made history Tuesday by becoming the first sitting American president to meet face to face with a leader of North Korea, greeting Chairman Kim Jong Un with a handshake before a row of alternating American and North Korean flags and bringing a decisive end to seven decades during which the United States had withheld that particular backdrop from the Kim family.

The summit, held at a luxury resort on Sentosa Island, produced a joint statement in which both leaders committed to work toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a phrase administration officials praised for its flexibility, noting that it specified neither a definition of denuclearization, a timeline, a verification process, nor a consequence for ignoring it.

In a press conference following the talks, the President announced that the United States would unilaterally suspend its joint military exercises with South Korea, adopting Pyongyang's longstanding description of the drills as war games and characterizing them as provocative. The decision, which officials in Seoul and at the Pentagon later said they learned about from the President's remarks, was hailed within the administration as a goodwill gesture that cost the United States nothing it had been unwilling to keep.

"He's got a great personality, he's very smart, he's a great negotiator," the President said of Mr. Kim, whose government operates a network of political prison camps. Trump added that the two men had developed a very special bond over the course of a single afternoon, and at one point screened for the chairman a Hollywood-style promotional video depicting a luminous future for North Korea, complete with gleaming towers and beachfront development.

The following morning, the President informed the nation by social media that the matter was closed. "There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea," he wrote, resolving the question of the North Korean arsenal by declaring it resolved. A source within the administration confirmed that the country's stockpile of warheads and its active enrichment facilities would remain precisely where they had been, but were henceforth to be understood as friendly.

At press time, North Korean state media was distributing footage of Chairman Kim and the President of the United States standing shoulder to shoulder as equals, a piece of propaganda the regime had been unable to manufacture for itself across three generations of trying.

Who Benefits

§Donald Trump, who returned home claiming a historic diplomatic breakthrough, a foreign policy triumph, and, by his own later suggestion, a credential worthy of a Nobel Prize.
§Kim Jong Un, who received the single most valuable image in the regime's history (a North Korean leader treated as the peer of an American president) without surrendering a warhead, a centrifuge, or an inspection.
§The North Korean government, which obtained decades of sought-after international legitimacy in exchange for a joint statement vague enough to commit it to nothing.
§The Kim dynasty, whose long-running project of being recognized on the world stage was completed by a handshake in front of the cameras.
§The government of China and the government of Russia, both of which gained from a visibly weakened U.S.-South Korea alliance after the President suspended joint military exercises on the spot.
§North Korea's nuclear weapons program, which continued unimpeded, now operating under improved diplomatic cover and a presidential declaration that it no longer posed a threat.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment