Last week I asked Japan Times readers which is the case for North Korea's "denuclearization": "The third time is real" or "What happens twice will happen three times." Despite all the somehow positive statements or optimistic news articles so far, Tokyo is still puzzled by the latest inter-Korean summit.
Yes, media reports on the April 27 extravaganza in Panmunjom seem encouraging. The summit might have cooled tensions there. South Korean officials even said Kim Jong Un had pledged to give up his nuclear weapons if the United States agreed to formally end the Korean War and promised not to invade. Really?
Has the third inter-Korean summit meeting bore any fruit? Watching from Japan, it remains to be seen. How often have we been cheated by Pyongyang? Actually, it is at least the seventh, not the third, time for Tokyo to see such inter-Korean "agreements" and, most ominously, they have never been implemented.