Just in case you were wondering about the progress of Donald Trump's plan to denuclearize North Korea via an ambitious plan of lurching from incoherent mockery to lavish praise to ramshackle promises based on nothing at all, the answer is that North Korea is continuing to build up its nuclear arsenal and capabilities while ignoring his administration's demands.
A new study notes that known North Korean missile bases, identified via satellite images, continue to be active. North Korea denies the existence of these bases at all; experts remain concerned that Team Trump is so eager to ink a Trump-flattering deal that they will overlook it.
“It’s not like these bases have been frozen,” Mr. [Victor] Cha, the leader of the team that studied the images, said in an interview. “Work is continuing. What everybody is worried about is that Trump is going to accept a bad deal — they give us a single test site and dismantle a few other things, and in return they get a peace agreement” that formally ends the Korean War.
Cha was on Team Trump's shortlist for the South Korea ambassadorship post, but was nixed after he criticized administration policies toward North Korea. It is perhaps notable that he's using the "Everybody is worried" construct to publicly dump on Trump for being stupid enough to sign such a deal.
So that's the short version. Yup, still no progress. Yup, experts are still worried that a Trump version of "progress" would be even worse than the status quo. Yup, there's still a good possibility this idiot signs away Alaska or Hawaii in exchange for a bag of magic beans.
