South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a luncheon at in Ryanggang province, North Korea, September 2018. 
Pyeongyang Press Corps/REUTERS

Upon returning from the Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June, U.S. President Donald Trump declared the North Korea problem “solved.” Many experts did not share his optimism. Pyongyang, they argued, had done nothing to indicate that it was committed to “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization.” And nothing since then—up to and including the recent meeting between U.S. and North Korean officials on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York—has indicated otherwise. Trump, in other words, was fleeced. 

The president’s North Korea critics are right: Pyongyang has taken

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