Biden's North Korea problem

How do you go from calling someone a "thug" to shaking hands with him and chatting amiably about the weather? This is Joe Biden's problem with Kim Jong-un. North Korea is going to have to be dealt with during Biden's first four years but all Kim Jong-un will remember is that the new US president once called him a thug. Difficult to forget and forgive. Which is probably why Pyongyang has given absolutely no sign so far of wanting to react to Biden's back-channel attempt to make contact. Of course Trump called him Little Rocket Man but Kim Jong-un probably quite liked that. "Thug" he won't like. Nor will he like Biden's apparent talks offer which came with a proviso that a meeting could only take place if the North Korean leader pledged to start reducing his nuclear stockpile down to zero. As I have written a thousand times, Kim Jong-un, like his father and grandfather before him, is not interested in giving up any of his nuclear bombs whoever is president in the White House. Having got away with it with Barack Obama and then Donald Trump he is not going to hand a diplomatic gift like that to the new White House incumbent. I don't think Chairman Kim is any longer interested, if he ever was, in the game of quid pro quo: he gives up his treasured nuclear bombs in return for total lifting of sanctions and massive financial help for his deprived and poverty-stricken nation. Having spent billions and billions on building a pretty impressive array of medium and long-range ballistic missiles and a significant stock of nuclear bombs (at least 50), why on earth would he agree to denuclearise, as the Americans like to call it? What would be the reasoning? You could argue that for the sake of his country and his people a leader might consider doing a deal to transform his state into a hotspot for tourism and US franchise fast-food chains. But this is Kim Jong-un. He has a dynasty legacy to worry about. He likes his people to be obedient not happy. So even if he were to consider talking to Biden, he is not going to be in the business of trading nukes for hamburgers. He gets all the hamburgers he wants anyway. He agreed to talk to Trump because I think he was genuinely scared to hell that the crazy man would launch an attack and destroy everything he and his daddy and granddaddy had done to make North Korea a nuclear-armed pariah state. Is he scared of Biden? No, I don't think so. Is that good or bad news for the rest of us? Bad, I fear.