North Korean State Media Admits to Summit Failure

North Korea’s state media had initially responded to the failure of the Hanoi summit with a relatively upbeat stance, presenting the talks as having made progress, and predicting more to come in future negotiations.

On Friday, the media for the first time presented the talks as a failure that ended without any deal. The paper is saying that both within North Korea and outside the country, people are generally believing that the US was to blame.

That is not an entirely unfair assessment. Though the Trump Administration is naturally blaming North Korea, most of the coverage from South Korea and other directly interested parties has suggested Trump’s demands were excessive, and that the US walked away when a limited deal might’ve yet been reached.

Analysts say that Kim Jong Un had a lot invested in the summits, and didn’t want to be seen as failing in the immediate wake of the summit. At the same time, with the talks now over, there was little point in claiming that the post-summit situation is not problematic.