Why Should Anyone Still Trust Kim?

What is the objective of negotiating with North Korea at all? How you answer that question may depend on whether you believe North Korea cheated on the first Agreed Framework with Bill Clinton. Even before Clinton left office, the evidence that North Korea cheated by trying to build a uranium bomb was too compelling for any responsible president to ignore, yet during the last decade, true believers in diplomacy with Kim Jong Il invested themselves in denying that evidence and blaming George W. Bush for North Korea’s nuclear bomb. Suddenly, the true believers are very quiet, and it isn’t just because the election is over. It’s also because a steady stream of new revelations has repudiated their arguments to the extent that even their own president has rejected them. John Bolton was right all along: Kim Jong Il probably started cheating on Agreed Framework I almost as soon as he signed it, and George W. Bush ought to have known that Agreed Framework II would fail for the same reason.