On Friday, Trump directed a new threat to Kim Jong Un on
Military solutions are now fully in place,locked and loaded,should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 11, 2017
, saying the U.S. military solutions are “locked and loaded.”
But despite this public war of words, North Korea and the U.S., the AP reports, have been engaging in private talks even as tensions continue to escalate between the Pyongyang nation and current administration. While it was known that the two countries were in discussion to secure the release of an American university student, it wasn’t publicly shared that back-channel discussions had continued between the two nations.
For several months, diplomats Joseph Yun, the U.S. envoy for North Korea policy, and Pak Song Il, a senior North Korean diplomat at the country's U.N. mission, according to CNBC, had continued discussions over other American detainees in North Korea and on today’s deteriorating relationship between the long-time adversaries.
Share with us, do you think U.S. and North Korea relations will recover after the recent threats given by both countries? How will these back-channel discussions quell current tensions amid public sparrings over nuclear attacks?
Guests:
Mike Dorning, White House editor for Bloomberg news
Sung-Yoon Lee, an expert on the Koreas, and a professor in Korean Studies at The Fletcher School at Tufts University in Massachusetts