Wednesday’s news that North Korea was considering calling off Kim Jong-un’s planned June meeting with President Trump reflected a pattern by the unpredictable regime: diplomatic outreach, followed by erratic behavior and, in many cases, an outright rejection of peace overtures. By 2009, after months of provocative behavior, Pyongyang said it would permanently pull out of nuclear disarmament talks and restart its nuclear program, and it expelled United Nations inspectors from the country. Spurning outreach from WashingtonAfter the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush declared North Korea, along with Iraq and Iran, part of an “axis of evil,” but toward the end of his term his advisers softened that approach. Advertisement Continue reading the main storyIn 2008, Washington dropped North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and agreed to send the North economic aid in return for Pyongyang disclosing and disabling its nuclear facilities. But by December that agreement had collapsed, after North Korea refused to allow for a system of verifying its compliance with the deal.

Source: New York Times May 16, 2018 07:30 UTC