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North Korea: Shaking Things Up

North Korea: Shaking Things Up
Willis Sparks
By Willis SparksApril 18, 2019
Willis Sparks
Willis Sparks is a senior editor for GZERO Daily. He is also a Director in the Global Macro practice at Eurasia Group, where he has worked since 2005. He has made speeches on international politics on every continent except Antarctica. Willis holds degrees from Brown University, the Juilliard School, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. He also holds an honorary degree from the Moscow Art Theatre School. A native of Macon, Georgia, Willis has worked as a stuntman at New York's Metropolitan Opera. As a child, he declined an opportunity to spend an afternoon riding the Great American Scream Machine, a rollercoaster, with Ronald McDonald, for money. He has never regretted that decision.
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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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