Oh Dear. We’ve Had Yet Another Scheduling FUBAR with North Korea.

North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un instructs his top agronomists in the fine points of potato horticulture last Saturday. He was supposed to meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that day, but somehow their schedules got crossed up and Kim didn't make it.Yonhap News/Newscom via ZUMA

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

Our relationship with North Korea is getting stronger all the time thanks to President Trump:

North Korean officials did not turn up to a Thursday meeting with the U.S. military about repatriating the remains of the war dead, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the situation. The two sides had been expected to meet at the Korean Peninsula’s demilitarized zone and discuss the return of U.S. troop remains from the 1950-1953 war — an arrangement that the State Department had announced after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Pyongyang last Friday and Saturday.

….On Thursday, however, Department of Defense and United Nations Command officials were left waiting in the DMZ’s Joint Security Area. The expected North Korean officials never arrived, according to the official who requested anonymity as he was not permitted to talk publicly about the event. “We were ready,” the official said. “It just didn’t happen. They didn’t show.”

This is so unlike North Korea. Maybe Trump needs to pick up the phone and make a personal call to his friend Kim. Or send Dennis Rodman to straighten things out. I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding. Probably they were using Outlook and our guys were using Google Calendar and they failed to synchronize or something. It happens.

They want to control the story. Our readers don’t let them.

Powerful forces are working to control the narrative, rewrite history, and keep you in the dark. That’s why the Mother Jones newsroom is fiercely independent, not backed by billionaires or bending to political whims.

But we can’t do this work without you.

Our nonprofit newsroom is funded by our readers. Each donation helps strengthen our work, so we can continue to investigate and publish, no matter what an authoritarian-minded administration wants the media to say.

Stand with us. Make a gift today.

They want to control the story. Our readers don’t let them.

Powerful forces are working to control the narrative, rewrite history, and keep you in the dark. That’s why the Mother Jones newsroom is fiercely independent, not backed by billionaires or bending to political whims.

But we can’t do this work without you.

Our nonprofit newsroom is funded by our readers. Each donation helps strengthen our work, so we can continue to investigate and publish, no matter what an authoritarian-minded administration wants the media to say.

Stand with us. Make a gift today.

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate