Not surprisingly the two South Korean national security and foreign policy experts on the program didn't expect that to happen. One of the experts felt that Pompeo was trying to elicit from Kim Jong Un a public commitment to denuclearization in the domestic political context of North Korea, that would provide greater evidence of Kim Jong Un's true intentions so he could gain American trust. According to most American oriented observers, the trust issue only works one way, it is the North only that can't be trusted. The Supreme People's Assembly meets on the same day that President Moon Jae In will be present in Washington D.C. for his summit with Donald Trump. Pompeo's recent negative comments about South Korean desires for joint economic initiatives with North Korea were yet another attempt to sandbag the upcoming US- South Korean summit ostensibly softened with Pompeo's hollow expression of empathy for how the Korean people feel and his patronizing condescension toward the Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung Hwa. This wasn't discussed in the Channel A News broadcast but was evident in other Korean language reports. Earlier in the program, the expert guests speculated that the failure at Hanoi was due to the incompetence of Kim Jong Un's translator and failures by Kim Yong Chol, and Kim Hyuk Chol. Both seem to have disappeared from view since the Hanoi debacle. Nothing is left to be desired on the US side apparently. The US offered nothing at Hanoi, but made unprecedented demands not reflected in the joint statement from Singapore.
Channel A News is a conservative broadcaster hostile to the Moon administration, and harping on every error, big or small, his administration makes in an attempt to rehabilitate the conservatives who were devastated in the last off cycle elections and whose previous presidential leadership is now in prison for corruption and abuse of power. The conservative party response in the National Assembly has basically been to boycott all legislative initiatives from the Moon administration and to attack the foreign and defense ministries at legislative hearings whenever possible. The Channel A experts talked about a wrinkled South Korean flag (Tegukki) displayed at a meeting with Spanish diplomats as bringing shame on South Korea and placing Foreign Minister Kang Kyung Hwa's leadership in question.
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