On 8 November, Secretary of State Pompeo and his sometime-North Korean counterpart, Kim Yong Chol, had been slated for another meeting in New York to lay the groundwork for a second Trump-Kim summit sometime early next year.

It appears that it was Pyongyang, however, that pulled the rug from underneath by abruptly cancelling the meeting – South Korean media are reporting that it was unclear whether the DPRK delegation even arrived in Beijing to fly out to New York, meaning that it was likely premeditated.

Our knee-jerk reaction is to jump to conclusions about the direction of U.S.-North Korea relations