President Donald Trump has cancelled a planned meeting with North Korea Leader King Jung-On which cast serious doubts about peace in the Korean Peninsula.
The meeting would have been the first between a sitting US President and the leader of North Korea.
Donald Trump is upset at what he perceives to be blatant disrespect to his Vice-President Mike Pence from North Korean Minister Choe Son Hui.
What did she say?
The line that angered Trump was this; “We could surmise more than enough what a political dummy he is as he is trying to compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya that had simply installed a few items of equipment and fiddled around with them”
Basically, she is saying that Mike Pence is out of his depths and is not clued up enough to be Vice President.
She was also quoted as saying: “As a person involved in the US affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US vice-president”
This fallout will not help anyone
The irony in all of this is that Donald Trump and Kim Jung-On are seen as the two that will make or break the peace talks. Instead, it was their subordinates who ended up destroying the progress that was being made.
Upon hearing Choe Son Hui’s statement, President Trump said: “You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used”.
Now we have a tit for tat and we are back to square one.
South Korea has released a statement saying they were “very perplexed and it is very regrettable that the North Korea-US summit will not be held”.
Everyone was hoping for the best after seeing North Korea dismantle one of their Nuclear reactors in front of some journalists from all over the world. There were signs that we could see a diplomatic solution to North Korea and their nuclear ambitions.
Now we are faced with the prospect of either North Korea or the US escalating this into a limitary confrontation.