New Report: The United States should seize the opportunity for diplomacy with North Korea
For Immediate Release: February 25, 2019
Media Contact: Catherine Killough, ckillough@ploughshares.org, 202-783-4401
WASHINGTON D.C. -- As President Trump prepares to meet with Chairman Kim Jong Un for a second summit, Ploughshares Fund today released a new report with recommendations for continued US-North Korea diplomacy. Drawing on the lessons of past negotiations, this report urges President Trump and US lawmakers to seize a new opportunity to meaningfully advance the denuclearization of North Korea and build lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.
“Policymakers across the political spectrum have squandered strategic opportunities to deal with North Korea well before it acquired the nuclear capabilities that challenge the Trump administration today,” said report author Catherine Killough, the Roger L. Hale Fellow at Ploughshares Fund. “We must learn from these experiences to ensure we do not make the same mistakes again.”
Philip Yun, Executive Director of Ploughshares Fund, is encouraged by the prospects at hand: “If we guard against old biases and talk on a sustained basis, the Trump administration can carefully test the willingness of Kim Jong Un-- through concrete, reciprocal steps, not just words-- to trade in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.”
“We are at the beginning of a long process to resolve a decades-old nuclear crisis,” said Joe Cirincione, President of Ploughshares Fund. “We must exhaust every diplomatic means to prevent war. Even one nuclear bomb exploding on the Korean peninsula would be a catastrophe unlike anything the world has seen since the end of World War II.”
The report is available here: Begun Is Half Done: Prospects for US-North Korea Nuclear Diplomacy, February 25, 2019 (pdf)
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The following Ploughshares Fund experts stand ready to provide commentary on the summit as it unfolds:
Ploughshares Fund is proud to support many organizations working on North Korea policy, including the William J. Perry Project, Arms Control Association, Korean Americans in Action, Nautilus, 38 North, National Committee on North Korea, Center for International Security and Cooperation, and others.
Ploughshares Fund is a global security foundation based in San Francisco, with an office in Washington, DC. Founded in 1981, Ploughshares Fund supports initiatives to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons. It is the largest US philanthropic organization focused exclusively on nuclear security.