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North Korea: Shaking Things Up

April 18, 2019
Willis Sparks

Kim Jong-un wants to remind the world—and Donald Trump in particular—that he remains an unsolved problem.

On Thursday, North Korean state-run media claimed the DPRK's military has test-fired a new type of "tactical guided weapon," its first weapons test in months.

Then the North Korean government insisted that President Trump remove Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from future nuclear negotiations and replace him with someone "more careful and mature in communicating with us." (Kim clearly didn't like Pompeo's infamous "knock-knock" jokes.)

Upshot: Kim probably calculates that his bid to lift US sanctions and attract international investment in exchange for vague promises on "denuclearization" has ground to a halt, and that he has little to lose by shaking things up. But his insistence that the US approach future negotiations with a "new attitude" and his latest bid to bang pots and pans for international attention suggest Mr. Kim still has much to learn about how to draw a positive response from Donald Trump.

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