between president trump and north korean leader kim jong-un goes forward. they re happening along the dmz on the north side of the border and into north korean territory exactly where this surprise summit took place over the weekend between north korean leader kim and president moon. the u.s. is trying to figure out whether pyongyang is really willing to denuclearize. it s a high powered team. on the u.s., it s led by the u.s. ambassador to the philippines. he s a former u.s. ambassador to south korea. a real old state department hand when it comes to north korea, korean american son kim. on the north korean side, the vice foreign minister, cho son wi. she commented last week that vice president pence was a political dummy and nearly blew the summit out of the water.
lae get the two leaders in the room and put a kind of framework together, i think that can be done in two weeks, it s not going to be perfect, butlet f l face it, you have two leaders here who are like moths drawn to a flame. the publicity is so overwhelming, i think it s very attractive for both of them. i think it s going happen. what should the expectations be for the summit? if you re looking at something like the iran deal which took two years of negotiations, what are the expectations for what can get done in two weeks between these two leaders? they ought to be very, very low. the expectations ought to be low enough to walk underneath a door. it s going to be a basic kind of let s get together, let s hear the president of the united states say we don t want to change the regime, let s hear the leader of north korea, the chairman, i guess he s called, to their party, say that he wants to ultimately get rid of his nuclear weapons. the difficulty, of course, is the timeline inv
janice, how is a north korea excuse me, how has south korea reacted to the president and this whiplash we re seeing on whether the meeting is on or off? well, as we know, south korean president moon jae-in was embarrassed and that was his own word, by what happened with the letter when president trump made it known that he wanted to call off the summit but didn t notify his allies in advance of it. you add 24 to 36 hours to that, and moon jae-in is hugging kim jong-un in the dmz and there s the appearance of a real rapport in the sense that this process could move forward. we learned later that it was kim who had requested that meeting with moon jae-in. he wanted to say that he wanted to go forward with the summit, that he was committed to it, but he had some serious trust issues, and of course trust is going to be an issue. the u.s. and north korea have been enemies for decades.
their delegation is led by choe son hui, who is a vice foreign minister. she speaks fluent english. she, too, is experienced, and it s thought she has a direct line to kim. once again, the american delegation is trying to flesh out what kim jong-un means by denuclearization. we heard at the surprise summit from president moon when he met kim jong-un that kim believes in complete denuclearization and peace, but critically, ayman, president moon did not spell out how kim defined denuclearization, and also there s the issue of verification. now, we saw last week the north koreans blowing up a nuclear site but, you know, explosives at the edge of tunnels, the destruction of a few wooden buildings in front of foreign
him today that we know of? that s essentially it, katie. i don t think we expect to see him for the rest of the day. the white house called a lid, meaning we don t want to see any more official movements or statements from the president, although he could always be active on twitter as he so often is. no doubt about that. good to see you in person, phil. admiral james is the dean of the fletcher school at tufts university, also a former supreme allied commander at nato and nbc and msnbc s chief international security and diplomacy analyst and he joins us now. admiral, good to see you. good seeing you. our big question is, can a summit like this get pulled off in just a matter of two weeks? so, i ll ask you. you re the expert. i think it can. i ve attended innumerable summits over the years, including both in nato and the pacific. sometimes they have a herkkey je jerky quality toward the end but if the objective is to sympathy