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PacNet #14 – US-DPRK Agreement: Limited Progress, But No Breakthrough (Yet)

The recent "food for freeze" agreement between the United States and North Korea has been described (accurately) by the State Department as reflecting "important, if limited, progress" and (inaccurately) by the media as constituting a "breakthrough" in the seemingly endless march toward Korean Peninsula denuclearization. The good news is the agreement makes a future breakthrough once again possible after more than three years of stalemate (which began when the Six-Party Talks broke down, during the Bush administration, in the fall of 2008). The bad news is we are not any closer today to actual denuclearization than we were three years ago and have a long uphill slog ahead of us, something that the Obama administration readily admits.