[Update 4:06 p.m.: Vice President Mike Pence told Senators that military "war games" with South Korea have been suspended, but regular readiness and exchanges will still go ahead, despite Trump's comments in Singapore, per Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Co. So, maybe a one-and-three-quarters freeze?]
It's just a few hours since President Donald Trump's historic sit-down with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and, depending on where you're sitting, it was a monumental success, little more than a shallow PR stunt or somewhere in between.
The actual joint statement that was signed doesn't exactly help things either way -- it sounds good, but it's pretty vague. Observers noted that it's not unlike an agreement from back in 1993 that didn't exactly pan out well.
The 1993 and 2018 versions of US-North Korea diplomatic deals. The 1993 talks about a “nuclear free” Korean Peninsula. The 2018 talks about “work toward complete denuclearization” of the peninsula. Would it be different this time? pic.twitter.com/KFeO3lri4E
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas2) June 12, 2018
But outside of the actual provisional agreement, there was a significant concession on each side. In April North Korea promised to halt nuclear and missile tests. Then, overnight, Trump made the surprise announcement that the U.S. would suspend joint military exercises with South Korea, which he called expensive and "very provocative."
Related: The Downsides of Officially Ending the Korean War Too Early
If those two moves sound at all familiar, it's because in August of last year Code and Dagger reported that Russia and China had floated them as a compromise to ratchet down tension between the U.S. and North Korea. (These were the days when a cross-armed Trump threatened North Korea with "fire and fury" if it endangered the U.S.)
"Russia together with China developed a very smart plan which proposes 'double freezing': Kim Jong-un should freeze nuclear tests and stop launching any types of ballistic missiles, while [the] U.S. and South Korea should freeze large-scale drills, which are used as a pretext for the North’s tests," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said then, according to the state-funded outlet Russia Today.
Related: If North Korea Was Selling Missile 'Expertise,' Who Was Buying?
At the time, two former CIA officials and an ex-Pentagon advisor told Code and Dagger it would be a bad idea to go along with the plan. From that previous report:
Trump's announcement suspending the military drills reportedly took South Korea by surprise. The U.S. ally's military put out a short statement saying it was still trying to determine Trump's intention.
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