MILITARY/NORTH KOREA/NUCLEAR/SOUTH KOREA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump won few specific new commitments from Kim Jong Un to surrender his nuclear weapons after a day of talks, but kick-started a new phase of personal diplomacy aimed at pushing the North Korean leader toward a rapid and verifiable disarmament. In a two-page document signed by both leaders here on Tuesday [6-12-18], North Korea committed again to ‘complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,’ while the U.S. offered unspecified security guarantees in return. Speaking to reporters after their summit meeting, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Kim had pledged to start denuclearization ‘right away,’ but that there hadn’t been time to codify details in Tuesday’s agreement…Some of the biggest developments weren’t in the document signed by the two leaders. Mr. Trump said he would cease ‘tremendously expensive’ and ‘provocative’ joint military exercises with South Korea as long as productive talks continue with the North, a move he thought Mr. Kim would welcome. Mr. Trump said that reducing the number of U.S. forces in South Korea isn’t part of the negotiation, but that he would eventually like to bring home the 28,500 U.S. troops based in South Korea to save money.”
– Michael R. Gordon, Jonathan Cheng and Michael C. Bender, “Trump, Kim Begin New Phase of Diplomacy,” The Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2018 3:05 pm