to get him to relinquish his nuclear weapons program, even if that meant potentially igniting a military exchange. The threat of a conflict was so palpable that the situation made a false alarm in Hawaii about an incoming ballistic missile threat in mid-January entirely plausible. (For thirty-eight torturous minutes, the people of Hawaii thought that they were under attack. They sent text messages to say goodbye to their loved ones and some parents frantically tried to put their children into storm drains to protect them.) Moreover, the administration’s withdrawal of its nomination of Victor Cha, an academic and former Asia adviser to President George W. Bush, as ambassador to South Korea—reportedly over a disagreement about the “bloody nose strike” and Trump’s intention to withdraw from the free trade agreement with South Korea—inspired reams of newsprint devoted to arguing the illogic of a military strike and highlighting the immeasurable cost in lives.
As Trump and Kim, through their rhetoric and actions, boxed themselves into what seemed like an inexorable decline toward military conflict, no one—perhaps not even Kim or Trump—could have predicted the dramatic changes that would occur in 2018.
On a warm spring day in late April 2018, the international media captured the dramatic presidential motorcade carrying South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in to the first inter-Korean summit since 2007; he would be meeting for the first time with Kim Jong Un. Kim’s father had attended the two previous summits; this would be Jong Un’s first. The sirens announced the procession as it wove effortlessly through what on a typical day would be the congested streets of Seoul toward Panmunjom, a small border town that has served as a buffer zone between the divided Koreas since 1953, when an armistice ended the military operations of the Korean War. The sparse stillness of the facilities in the Demilitarized Zone, which extends 1.2 miles into North Korea and the same distance into South Korea, and is bisected by the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), belied its history as a locus of simmering tension, one of the most heavily fortified and tense 150 miles in the world.
Cameras positioned north and south of the MDL aimed their lenses at the two conference facilities that stand on either side of the MDL—the Tongilgak in the North and the Peace House in the South. President Moon waited for Kim to appear from the Tongilgak, the atmosphere taking on an almost matrimonial air, with dark-suited groomsmen flanking the South Korean president, the anticipation making hearts pound at the realization of this historic moment. The doors finally opened and Kim walked out, his face at times obscured by the tall, athletic-looking bodyguards who surrounded him.
When he broke away from the group and walked over toward Moon, he seemed almost vulnerable in a way that was only possible without the soft filters of North Korean media, the outlandish and blustery rhetoric, the missiles in the background, or the military generals at his side. As he strode purposefully toward Moon, his gait was confident, but his slight breathlessness and heaving at the end of his short walk betrayed his nervousness, his years of heavy smoking, and his considerable girth. With his plump features and his paunch, enshrouded in his signature, loose-fitting dark Mao suit, Kim looked paradoxically both younger and older than Moon, who was nearly twice Kim’s age, but telegenic, trim, and dapper in his fitted suit, with his full head of salt-and-pepper hair and his angular, chiseled face.
If Kim was aiming for effect, he succeeded. That moment when he stepped over the MDL at Moon’s invitation and set foot in South Korean territory—the first time for a leader of the North since the era of Kim Il Sung—was all about him. As cameras clicked furiously to capture the moment, Kim and Moon duly posed. When Moon said that someday he would like to visit the North, Kim invited him to step over to the North’s side of the MDL. This was not in the script of this highly orchestrated event, but a surprised Moon warmly accepted and stepped over the line, the entire gesture delighting the press, drawing admiring oohs and aahs.
Over the course of the summit, the two men sipped tea under the trees as they conversed privately. It was an odd juxtaposition on many levels. Moon was the son of poor North Korean refugees; his father worked in a prisoner-of-war camp and his mother sold eggs to make ends meet. As a student activist leader, he protested South Korea’s