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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   13030 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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The man argued with me that Trump's North Korea policy was disastrous, and I remember what North Korea was like before when they were launching missile tests every few months and nobody could solve that perpetual crisis.

NK tested both a nuclear weapon and a missile in Trump's first term, and there's a whole wikipedia article on the 2017-2018 nuclear crisis that has many wonks thinking we were on the brink of WW3. NK cyber operations have skyrocketed and is blamed for 100s of billions in theft and like half of the hacks that make it to the media.

Nobody on either side of the aisle thinks the perpetual crisis has been "solved".

Yes this was the crisis that preceded what I described. Famously it included Trump’s threat that he had a nuclear button that was bigger and better than Kim Jong Un’s, and it gave many experts and professionals conniptions that Trump’s reckless foreign policy would lead to war. Then they started holding real negotiations and talks. Now North Korea is, for all its may faults, at least conducting normal diplomacy with America instead of creating a missile crisis every other year.

My summary of your claim is: "Trump did great diplomacy in 2017-2018 and this resulted in subsequently less military provocations from North Korea."

But I don't think that holds because there have still been lots of provocations. My semi-insider understanding is they are far more in number and severity than before. For example:

  1. There continued to be major missile tests yearly until 2023, and in 2022 they flew a missile over Japan.
  2. In 2022, a North Korean drone got within 2 miles of the Blue House (where their president lives). This type of drone is more like a cruise missile than a quadcopter.
  3. In 2024, the North has officially abandoned a policy of reunification with the South and there's been all sorts of major border skirmishes. In 2024, the North launched artillery into the South.
  4. The North has been sending troops to fight in Ukraine and sending supplies to the Russians.

Everyone I know who works around North Korean security things the situation is much worse now than 10 years ago. If you are seeing less provocations in the new, I think that's just your media diet.

On June 12, 2020, the second anniversary of the Singapore summit, the North Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs released a press statement that the Trump administration efforts in the past two years were for political achievements without returns for North Korea and "Nothing is more hypocritical than an empty promise."[198][199] North Korea subsequently cut communications with South Korea, demolished the four-story joint-liaison office building it shared with South Korea on June 17, and ceased efforts for diplomatic relations with the United States.[200]

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