North Korea is it has been, for decades, a passenger on the short bus of nation-states. It's a remnant of the Cold War, a vicious, oppressive Stalinist dictatorship run by a stunted little gargoyle with bad hair from a long line of stunted little gargoyles with bad hair. North Korea's people are starving; they face rifles and machine guns if they try to leave, but their dictator, Kim Jong-Un, is spending the nation's few remaining reserves on a military buildup, including nuclear weapons.

You can always spot these kinds of regimes by looking at one thing: Look at the borders, and see which way the guns are facing. Free nations face outward, to keep people from coming in uncontrolled. In repressive regimes like North Korea, the guns face in to keep people from fleeing.

Now, North Korea has broken the silence they have maintained since President Trump resumed office. Interestingly, it's not the dictator himself who made a statement, but rather his iron-jawed sister, Kim Yo Jong, who released a statement about the terms in which North Korea would meet with the American president. Thumbnail: Only if nukes are off the table.

Kim Jong-Un’s powerful sister opened up about relations with the second Trump administration, warning the U.S. not to try to restart talks centered on getting North Korea to give up its nuclear program. 

Kim Yo Jong, in remarks blasted out by state media, said relations between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are "not bad" but added Pyongyang would view any attempt to pressure North Korea to denuclearize as "nothing but a mockery." 

She said that North Korea’s nuclear arsenal has sharply increased since Trump and Kim last spoke, and the pair would not meet for a summit again if denuclearization was on the table.

Denuclearization would likely be precisely what is on President Trump's mind. North Korea hasn't shown a lot of conventional prowess, after all, leading to the joke, "Know how to make a North Korea ship sink? Put it in the water."

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Nukes, though, those are a little different. Delivery is the problem. The weapons themselves are technology out of the '40s and '50s. They've been refined somewhat since then, but the original designs are still bad, very bad. And as I've pointed out when discussing other rogue nations, all they have to do is find some way to get one where they want it before torching it off. They don't need a missile or a nuclear-capable bomber for that. All they need is a rattletrap old freighter and a nuke in a cargo container.

Nuclear weapons aren't like most other weapons, and a dangerous, unstable regime like North Korea having them should concern the whole world, even if North Korea does frequently come across as the nation-state version of The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.

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Kim Yo Jong wields a lot of power in North Korea. Maybe even more than her brother. But despite her rather pompous pronouncement, it seems unlikely that President Trump would be interested in meeting with the leaders of this rogue state unless denuclearization was on the agenda.

President Trump, speaking on Monday, let his priorities be known:

He underscored the U.S. alliance with South Korea. 

"Although the evils of communism still persist in Asia, American and South Korean forces remain united in an ironclad alliance to this day."

Of all the nations in the world, South Korea should be the most concerned about North Korea's nukes. During the Biden administration, it's a safe bet they were worried as to whether the United States really had their backs anymore. President Trump's return to office may have caused some consternation in North Korea, but in South Korea, there were probably more than a few sighs of relief.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.

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