TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Hours after marking the return of three Americans held captive in North Korea for more than a year, President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore to discuss the nation’s nuclear weapons program.
In an agreement signed last month by Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the leaders pledged to formally end the Korean War by the end of this year and “confirmed the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.”
The U.S.-North Korea summit in June could represent another important step in fulfilling the promise enshrined in that agreement. A Florida State University expert is available to discuss the implications of the summit and the likelihood of meaningful progress toward denuclearization.
Annika Culver, associate professor, Department of History (850) 597-1808; [email protected]
Culver specializes in Japan and Northeast Asia-related topics. She has received the William F. Sibley Memorial Translation Prize for her work translating Japanese texts into English, and she has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Japan Foundation, the Association for Asian Studies, the Institute for Advanced Study, the D. Kim Foundation, the Kajima Foundation and the United States International Educational Exchange program. Culver has taught courses on the history of North Korea, its unique role in centuries of geopolitical struggle and its enduring wariness of foreign powers.
“We should remain cautiously optimistic toward the recent development of a seeming entente between the two Koreas and the opening of dialogue between President Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. While the upcoming summit with U.S. President Trump will be historic, it should not upstage efforts by the two divided countries vying hard to maintain agency over what should be a Korean-controlled process in terms of unification amidst talks of denuclearization.”
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