What’s behind North Korea’s ‘diplomatic sprint’ toward Trump

North Korea is rapidly realigning its principal relationships.  

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as the regime calls itself, is in a “diplomatic sprint” toward Beijing and Moscow while putting distance between itself and long-time customer Tehran. What is Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un hoping to accomplish with these moves? 

“The entire goal for the North is to be recognized as a nuclear state and therefore to secure regime stability,” Kim Jong-won of the Institute for National Security Strategy told the Korea Times.

American recognition of North Korea would bolster the Kim family’s legitimacy and standing, and Kim Jong Un thinks — or at least he hopes — that Trump might break precedent and embrace Pyongyang.

In his first term as president, Trump made history by meeting Kim in 2018 and setting foot on North Korean soil at Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone in 2019. Ultimately, neither leader got what he wanted from the reconciliation process, a failure evident at their February 2019 meeting in Hanoi. After that summit, many reported that Kim felt humiliated by his inability to bend Trump.

Kim has evidently gotten over that: He is now making a new play for hearts and minds in Washington.

“We have no reason not to get along with the United States if it respects our country’s current status, as defined in the North Korean constitution, and drops its hostile policy toward North Korea,” Kim reportedly said in late February at the Ninth Congress of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. “The........

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