The North Korean and American summit which began on February 27 and ended on February 28, 2019; it occurred in Hanoi, Vietnam. The previous summit on June 12, 2018, went pretty smoothly and marked a historical moment in world history. But what is the exact purpose of the second summit? What happened and what were the end results?

To summarize what happened at the first summit, North Korea and the US came to an agreement on the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and to promise new relationships between Washington and Pyongyang. There was also an agreement to pull out some American troops that were stationed and trained at South Korea. This was a huge leap towards a new age and to a new beginning with better relationships. People were hoping that the recent summit would go also well, however, it didn’t go as well as expected.

The second summit was focused on some different points. One of the points was that Kim Jong-un offered permanent dismantle on nuclear material production in exchange for a lifting of all sanctions, which was later changed to “partial lifting”. The main sanctions he wanted to get rid of was the export limit of petroleum imports. Petroleum is used in transportation fuels, asphalt and road oil, plastics, and etc. Although it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, by removing these sanctions, it could eventually amount to billions of dollars from the sanction relief which may be funneled into programs that we are trying to stop. The two leaders were actually scheduled to have lunch together, but it didn’t work out as neither of them appeared to have lunch. It was a piece of very abrupt news and the reason is still unknown, however, Trump has stated that things are still going well with North Korea and Kim. Unfortunately, this also led to the summit ending and the two leaders returning to their homes. Although it isn’t a good or bad thing, the fact that nothing could be agreed on was a shame. Mr. Walls (staff) said, “It’s to bring down the tension between America and North Korea as well as North and South Korea. However, one of the frustrations on this summit is that it is infuriatingly vague.”

The main reason why this was such a shame was that many countries were waiting and looking forward to what is going to happen. If things had gone well, maybe the relationship between the US and China might have been better as China said they will wait for what are the results of the summit. China has also added on, saying that they hope that Trump and Kim will continue on with this dialogue to solve the problems that they are facing. South Korea has also mentioned how it was really regrettable that nothing could be agreed on and that no problems were fixed. However, they are still hopeful as there seems to be no hostility and there is still a good relationship between Trump and Kim. Hopefully, this means that there is still a chance of problems being solved. President Trump has stated that sometimes a person needs to walk away but this walk away isn’t a bad hostile one, it’s a friendly walk away. Hopefully, things can be resolved before everything is too late.