Trump Claims Kim Jong Un ‘Misses’ Him. But He Faces a Very Different North Korean Leader This Time Around

No United States leader has handled relations with North Korea quite like Donald Trump.

The former president went from threatening Kim Jong Un with “fire and fury” if the North Korean leader continued testing missiles, to becoming his pen pal, meeting him in a series of unprecedented summits, and boasting that the two had fallen “in love.”

Now, that unlikely friendship will be put to the test. The former president is set to return to the White House at a moment of acute alarm among the US and its allies about Kim and the threat posed by his regime.

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Whether Trump is interested in deal-making – and what kind of deal – is another question.

Some observers have raised concern that he may seek to water down US demands in favor of getting a coveted deal – or else could ramp up tensions again.

“Trump can be unpredictable… and his style during his first term is not an entirely accurate indicator of future behavior. We will have to see if Trump 2.0 still wants to cap and eventually roll back North Korea’s nuclear weapons program,” said Duyeon Kim, a Seoul-based adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

“The worst scenario is if Kim convinces Trump 2.0 to scrap denuclearization and even be okay with North Korea advancing its nuclear weapons capability indefinitely,” she said.

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