The CRINK Challenge: Implications for North Korea and Global Security

But for both of you, I'd like to just start with, um, you know, the... after the sort of press readouts from the recent Trump-Xi summit, where there was, uh, a statement about North Korea in there.

At least the US readout said that the two leaders discussed denuclearization of North Korea.

Um, but then the Chinese readout just said they discussed North Korea.

Mm-hmm.

So just to get us started, I'd love to hear both of your thoughts on why that was in the US readout, and what do you think they discussed about North Korea? So you wanna, start with you, Edward, since you are, you came the furthest away to join us here on The Impossible State.

Thanks, Victor, and, and thank you very much for, for inviting me.

I think what's interesting about the US readout is the wording that's used here.

We see denuclearization of North Korea.

I mean, it makes me question whether actually what was discussed was the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, similar wording that we saw in the Singapore Summit, um, statement between Trump and Kim Jong Un in 2018.

What's interesting from my perspective is that Beijing, in its foreign policy statements and foreign ministry statements, now does not mention denuclearization of any kind at all.

At all.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, we've seen a s- a real shift to mentioning quite vague phrases such as promoting stability, promoting continuity, um, you know, in, in, um, in its own way, right? Referring to, to, to North Korea and the Korean Peninsula.

But denuclearization has been completely abandoned as a term.

And I think this shift is really important because when we consider the idea of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, at least from Pyongyang's perspective, that doesn't just mean North Korea abandoning its nuclear weapons as we know.

It means, well, the US security umbrella, um, has to go.

So I think that the readouts that we saw, it was interesting that it wasn't a joint statement.

Mm-hmm.

And from Beijing's perspective, it wasn't just the Korean Peninsula on which views were exchanged, the Gulf situation as well.

Um, again, Beijing said views were exchanged on this.

And I think for China, it wants to be clear that these issues are not being neglected.

I think for the US as well.

The US wants to make clear that the North Korean issue, the Korean Peninsula issue, is not being neglect- ne- neglected, at least in rhetoric.

Mm-hmm.