Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s nuclear weapons – and a tiny village caught in the middle

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, with a striking symbol of a boring anti-Western block, gave a mark on a global scene for the first time on a global scene shared with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin this month.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of soldiers have patrolled with high alarms on both sides of the DMZ for 70 years, and their countries are still technically a war, both claiming that the entire Korean Peninsula is the only legitimate government.

“We’ve always lived with uncertainty,” 64 -year -old village leader Han Hyeon says. The first generation moved to Yugok-ri as a child as a part of the inhabitants. However, it is the suffocating daily existence of the South Korean military forces, which disturb the peasants the most.

“We have suffered for more than 50 years. Now, we have no hope. No intervention from soldiers, no control point, Han says Han, the interview was watched by two South Korean soldiers a few meters away.

Military control has been a constant feature of life since it was founded by Yugok-Ri’s authoritarian President Park Chung-Hee in 1973 as a strategic facade village to show the rural development of South Korea and the economic progress in the north.

With a driving distance of more than two hours from Seoul, it is in the civilian control line, a environment protected by a military control point that the public cannot pass unless it is allowed by South Korea’s defense force. Even the family of the inhabitants should request access. This Masthead was given a special approval to visit Yugok-Ri to talk to the locals about the border life.

Outside the village, a South Korean military guard, which is permeated by a rugged protrusion, is directly looking at the northern region. The guard also maintains an asset on the agricultural lands of the natives, where soybeans, pepper, rice and tomato.

In the first days of the settlement of Yugok-Ri, the North Korean side was developed and a neon sign on the mountain boasts free education and health services. The villagers would use hand speakers to trade with their neighbors at the border, who boasted the food they ate on that day.

“They lived better than us, but we won with food, Cho says Cho. Orum I don’t see them as foreigners. You can see North Korea from the hill. It allows you to ask for merger again. ”

Geopolitics varying at any future Trump-Kim meeting hanging

On the roadside of the driving to reach Yugok-Ri from Cheorwon County, the new tense banners show the ban on the Lee government for the balloon launches used by activists and defective groups to distribute Kim anti-Kim regime brochures to the border.

It is another example of the honor measures implemented at Lee’s clock since he took office for a five -year period in June, and while reversing the harsh approach of Conservative Salafist Yoon Suk Yeol, nuclear disarmament of North Korea maintains its policy target. These efforts include the return of the six North Korean fishermen rescued in the southern waters and the government’s annual report to end the publication of human rights violations in North Korea.

However, Pyongyang rejected it over and over again. Kim Yo-Jong, the sister and spokesman of the North Korean leader, described Seoul’s dialogue as “illusion and pipe dream ve and described Lee himself as“ a big figure that can change the tide of history ”.

This month, Lee admitted that North Korea’s attitude was “cold”.

“Although there is no special progress, we are constantly making efforts,” he said.

Lee took the reins of the country at a time when the possibility of a united Korea, a target that was buried in South Korea’s constitution, was undisputed.

In January 2024, Kim Jong-un officially abandoned North Korea’s vision of peaceful unification, overthrowing his dozens of propaganda efforts for this purpose by his father and grandfather, and instead condemned South Korea as the “real enemy ..

This year, who shrugged the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea, and directly intervened in the world affairs, first by sending unity to Russia’s war against Ukraine against Ukraine, and then stepping into the global spotlight at the military parade in Beijing.

“This is a diplomatic bright day for North Korea, Rac Rachel Minyeoung Lee, a senior man in Stimson Center, a former North Korean analyst and a US thought -tank.

By attending the parade, Lee said, kim He wanted to send a very clear message to abroad and abroad, not only a player of North Korea, but also a leader in China and Russia to build an alternative global order ”.

Together with Xi and Putin, the appearance pointed out that the only thing Kim wants more than anything from the international community is accepted: the official recognition of North Korea’s nuclear energy status.

In addition to entering the international system, the North does not recognize the help of sanctions and the end of the US -led efforts as a way to force them to completely purify nuclear weapons. In India and Pakistan, he sees a model that develops nuclear weapons other than a global prohibition, but is not isolated from the international community.

Many analysts have for a long time warned that it could trigger a arms race in Asia and forced South Korea and Japan to reconsider their non -nuclear stances, while an enemy and unreliable regime.

North Korea has nuclear weapons unconditional. The US and South Korean experts estimate that they have 50 to 90 nuclear war titles and tested intercontinental ballistic missiles to reach the US mainland.

Lee from South Korea accepted this fact and pointed to a change in Seoul’s approach. Despite heavy sanctions, Pyongyang is currently able to produce 10 to 20 nuclear weapons annually, and said a forum in Washington last month.

The world is now waiting for the final joker card: Kim and US President Donald Trump’s potentially re -starting negotiations about North Korea’s nuclear program.

Kim North Korean nuclear issue depends largely on the active attitude and will of President Trump’s active attitude and will.

Trump is willing to meet with Kim, a desire he re -expressed last month while hosting Lee at the Oval Office. In 2018, he held three meetings with Kim during the presidential before the Hanoi Summit, continued to be the only US President who met a North Korean leader.

This time, Pyongyang negotiations did not ignore, but clearly demonstrated that he participated in the adoption of the nuclear weapon program – a big break from the latest talks and a situation that will limit arguments with arms control at a time when the leverage of North Korea increased significantly.

“Personally, I still have good memories about the current US President Trump, Pong said in a speech with Pyongyang’s rubber stamp, which was moved by the official state media on Monday.

“In vain, if he quit the fixation of purifying nuclear weapons and accepted the truth” he said, yok There is no reason to confront the United States and added that North Korea would never leave our nuclear weapons ”.

Kim The world already knows what the United States is doing after forcing other countries to give up and disarmed their nuclear weapons. ”

Lee from Stimson Center now has everything North Korea wants from Russia and China, and said that both countries help North Korea escape from sanctions.

It leaves a question mark on what the US should win from a new negotiation tour and the price in which North Korea will demand its weapon program.

Sidney Seiler, a former US ambassador for nuclear talks with North Korea, said, “See how much the nuclear threat has changed,” he said.

“There is no way to go back to the table and put anything that will attract us, I think we will only find unacceptable.”

For Trump, a President Nobel Peace Prize and the ceasefire agreements between Russia and Ukraine and the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas may be sufficient to restart the optics of a North Korean-ABD summit and even a mercenary nuclear agreement negotiations.

A fading dream in Yugok-ri

In the afternoon, the locals in Yugok-Ri retreated from the heat and left a handful of streets empty. Apart from their homes, dry fresh harvest pepper mounds under the sun.

Village life lacks the vitality of other rural communities (daily flea markets or festivals), but there is a modest church, a two -storey common hall with some utilitarian outdoor exercise equipment and a common kitchen.

Insulation and military control helped to remove young generations allocated for better jobs in cities, and over the years, the population fell from a few hundred peaks to about 90 after its establishment.

“This village will gradually disappear as elderly residents die, as in rural areas throughout the country, Cho says Cho. “Personally, I’m very committed to it. You don’t want to leave here once. It sounds like a family.”

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For now, the dream of merger lives among the old peasants of Yugok-Ri, a sign of the expanding generation division between young and young Koreans who showed a regular chest of chests, sees it more and more unnecessary or unwanted.

However, the village president Han has little hope that President Lee will make a permanent change, and he sees attempts as part of a prisoner historical cycle.

“When [former South Korean president] Moon Jae-in was in the office, and the reunion seemed to come at any moment. But then, when the conservatives arrived, the war could explode at any moment, and people lived in concern, Han says Han.

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Now that a liberal government has come to office again, the speakers went, but other stenosis remained.

“Input and output controls [into Yugok-ri] He just became more strict. ” I don’t think I will see a merger again in my life. Even talking about the reunion is currently feeling early. “

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