Views expressed in Opinion articles are exclusively the authors’ own and do not represent the views of NK News.

The three meetings between President Trump and Kim Jong Un — Singapore, Hanoi, and, most recently in the DMZ — have made it easy to dismiss the very bumpy beginnings of North Korean diplomacy in the first year of the Trump administration.

2017 saw a series of North Korean long-range ballistic missile tests, reportedly demonstrating Pyongyang’s ability to reach the continental United States. In Septemberof that year, North Korea also conducted an underground nuclear test that Pyongyang claimed