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Opinion | Why the Trump-Kim meeting at the DMZ was all show and no substance
- Donald Trump claims to be cleaning up the ‘fiery mess’ Barack Obama left on the Korean peninsula, when in fact he was the one who started the fire. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un is playing Trump’s obsession with personal diplomacy to his advantage
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On June 30, US President Donald Trump held a historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Panmunjom at the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas, causing as big a stir with the move as the leaders’ Singapore summit did.
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It seemed a new high in Trump’s Twitter diplomacy.
Trump had extended a last-minute invitation to Kim on social media and he didn’t forget to inflate the significance of his latest meeting, calling it a “great day for the world”.
In Trump’s assessment, US-North Korean relations had been a “fiery mess” under his predecessor Barack Obama, and he deserved credit for cleaning up after Obama and restoring peace on the Korean peninsula.
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The Panmunjom meeting was indeed a breakthrough: no sitting US president before Trump had set foot in North Korean territory. The visits to Pyongyang by former presidents Jimmy Carter in 1994 and Bill Clinton in 2009 did not represent a change in US policy.
But has Trump opened a new chapter in US-North Korean relations? Did the meeting advance US interests or was it a spectacle staged for his re-election bid?
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