Part of Donald Trump’s appeal to voters that helped launch him back to the White House was his criticism of the Democrat’s foreign policy, including the return to isolating North Korea further from the global stage.

Over the past few weeks, the United States government has claimed to have evidence of North Korean soldiers being sent to Russia for training with the expectation they will be deployed to fight against Ukraine. As the United States and its allies have moved to isolate the North Korean regime from the rest of the world, it has been pushed closer to adversaries of the US that have been met with the same fate. The sending of troops to support the Russian war effort is only one example of increased cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow.

When Donald Trump was president, he hosted a handful of meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jung-un, who he christened with the nickname Rocketman. The meetings between the two heads of state were unprecedented in recent US history, where presidents of both major political parties have treated the North Korean regime as a pariah. The impact of these diplomatic efforts has been debated, with some viewing it as a way to white was the regime. However, others, including South Korean leaders, saw the possible benefits of engagement at the state level in the quest to bring lasting peace on the peninsula.

South and North Korean relations improved during the Trump years, with the people of both countries supporting efforts to bring their shared peoples together once again. However, in recent years, the situation has worsened, and as tensions between the US and Russia rise, the peninsula is seeing the same phenomena take place.  The division of the Korean Peninsula along the 54th parallel is part of the ceasefire agreement signed between the armies to bring the Korean War to an end. After the contract was signed, the idea was that there would be a peace process that would lead to reunification. Still, the Cold War politics created immense challenges for such an event to take place, and the people on each side of the border were ripped further apart.

Donald Trump did not mention North Korea much during the campaign, but if he surrounds himself with similar advisors, one can assume that he may take a similar approach and attempt to build on the efforts of his past administration.

How many times did Donald Trump and Kim Jung-un meet?

The two leaders met twice between 2017 and 2020. The first meeting, in Singapore in 2018, marked the first time heads of state from the two countries had met. At that time, the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, referred to the meeting as a “miracle,” as it offered hope for a warming of relations and a greater chance of achieving peace. The second meeting occurred in Hanoi in 2019. There were no major breakthroughs that came out of the talks, and now the North Korean has expanded the country’s nuclear arsenal.