WHAT DO THEY KNOW ABOUT KOREA?:

The agreement signed by Trump and Kim therefore came as a shock, which only got worse as Trump rambled on during the ensuing press conference. The sole goal of this summit was the dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear weapons, and the key gauge would have been a commitment to doing it "completely, verifiably and irreversibly" and a date to do it by -- for example 2020, when Trump's term ends.

Instead, the agreement merely reaffirmed the terms of a joint declaration by Kim and President Moon Jae-in after their summit in April, and only holds Kim to working "towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," which could mean anything. In short, it represents no progress and achieves nothing. Already, when faced with criticism over the vagueness of the inter-Korean declaration, Cheong Wa Dae officials said specific agreements would be made between the U.S. and North Korea. That is what the public believed, and that is why they have been let down. Over the last few months, Trump has made increasingly bombastic vows to scrap North Korea's nuclear weapons as soon as possible, but now there is no deadline to be found anywhere, and instead Trump is talking about real estate development on North Korea's coast.

Worse, the denuclearization pledge was listed third on a list of four bullet points, behind promises to improve U.S.-North Korea relations and establish a peace framework on the Korean peninsula.

The joint statement that was produced by six-party talks on Sept. 19, 2005 states that all of the participants in the negotiations unanimously agreed to the goal of complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. North Korea pledged to rejoin the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and abide by International Atomic Energy Agency rules. But the latest U.S.-North Korean agreement did not even match the toothless terms of 13 years ago, which North Korea at any rate reneged on at the earliest opportunity.

Trump's comments during the press conference made things worse.

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