Remember how North Korea ended their nuclear program as a result of one Trump meeting? Yeah, that didn't happen. Despite Trump claims to the contrary, now that their meeting side-by-side with a U.S. "president" has been duly photographed and distributed worldwide, the dictatorship continues to blow off Trump's negotiators over and over and over again.
Efforts to establish either a timeline for denuclearization or even a definition of what "denuclearization" might mean have all been dismissed each time they are proposed. Instead, North Korea has a counteroffer: Lift the sanctions first. Then maybe we'll talk.
While the US is demanding full, verifiable denuclearization and says it will maintain sanctions until that happens, North Korea says it wants sanctions pressure lifted and a peace treaty before it will take further steps.
If this story sounds familiar to you, you're right. It's been happening ever since the summit, and if anything only appears to be getting worse over time. It's almost as if the North Korean dictatorship never intended to denuclearize, this whole time, and just suckered Trump into the same meeting they've been demanding of American presidents for twenty years as a cheap publicity stunt.
Meanwhile, intelligence agencies are reporting that the dictatorship is both expanding its nuclear program and attempting to hide its scope; by stonewalling Trump's team of incompetents, it looks like North Korea is primarily seeking to buy as much time as they can while the nation builds out its nuclear program into an even more dangerous world threat.