Markus Garlauskas, the former US National Intelligence Officer for North Korea and Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Asia Security Initiative, was quoted on his discussions during a CSIS webinar on North Korea on August 28, 2020. He argued that a US-DPRK summit prior to the presidential election was unlikely but that Pyongyang may be tempted to engage in provocative behavior, such as revealing new strategic weapons, prior to or after the elections.
We have to remember that at the beginning of this year, the North Korean party newspaper said that Kim announced there was going to be a new strategic weapon unveiled, and that he was no longer bound by his pledges to refrain from ICBM and nuclear testing. And just because we haven’t seen either of those phenomena come to pass, either an ICBM or nuclear test or a new strategic weapon being unveiled, doesn’t mean that it isn’t really a serious plan of Kim Jong-un.
