If you open any one of today’s newspapers in Korea, it is awash with stories about how much the United States and North Korea are apart in how to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue. The United States (i.e., President Trump) supposedly wants a big deal with North Korea. Kim Jong-un, on the other, wants a step by step approach, that is, a series or succession of small deals on its nuclear weapons. They (the Korean media) will say that South Korea and the United States do not see eye-to-eye on this issue: South Korea presumably wants the United States to take the North Korean offer of dismantling its Yongbyon nuclear site, consisting of plutonium processing facilities to produce the fissile material which is necessary to produce nuclear weapons. South Korea is urging the United States to allow partial lifting of the economic sanctions which the United States and the United Nations have imposed on North Korea over the last two to three years to make North Korea stop producing and testing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. This is supposed to be the small deal that North Korea wants to make.

1. Why did the Hanoi meeting fail?
2. Where do we go from here?
3. So what is left and likely to happen?