Korea

The North Korea Crisis Is Coming to a Boil. It's Time for Fresh Thinking.

Presidents Donald Trump and Moon Jae-in met for the first time in Washington. It was a pairing of opposites. President Moon is a serious person: son of refugees, served in the South Korean army, jailed for opposing the military dictatorship and human rights lawyer. President Trump is, well, Donald Trump.

Their ideologies differ as well. The South Korean leader is a man of the left, critic of the Republic of Korea’s corporate-dominated economy, proponent of labor rights and advocate of engagement with North Korea. America’s president has few fixed beliefs on anything, including the Koreas. He dismissed the value of the U.S.-South Korea alliance while talking of both bombing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and meeting its leader, Kim Jong-un—but then effectively turned policy over to his hawkish secretaries of defense and state.