North Korea

With the recent summit, I feel this is a topic worth going over. Personally, I don't think we have anything to gain from dialogue with North Korea. I know for a fact that North Korean children are taught, at a very young age in school, to hate anything and everything American. Kim Jong Un is notorious for using the United States as a sort of boogey man to rally his government and citizens behind him, and it seems to work exceedingly well. They truly despise everything that my country is and stands for, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. If there's one country that I think would never warm up to the United States, it's north Korea. I personally think that president Trump is trying so hard to smooth things over with the hermit nation as a sort of foreign affairs publicity stunt to make himself look like the good negotiator that he insists that he is. However, even if North Korea does feign cooperation, anything they agree to isn't worth the paper that it's written on. North Korea has said many times that they would abandon their nuclear program, but they never make good on their promises. I don't think even a good president could get North Korea to change it's ways, let alone Trump. I've heard that the people of North Korea truly and wholeheartedly believe many insane things about their "glorious leader". They look at the Kim family as a sort of divine family that they follow like a cult. From what I've heard, their government is able to keep up that appearance by running an extremely thorough propaganda campaign ensuring the citizens believe this nonsense about their leader. North Korea often doesn't make good on its promises, but in one case that's a good thing; their threats of nuclear war. I think all the threats the small nation makes are simply a means that Kim Jong Un uses to rally his people and keep himself firmly planted in power. While I doubt North Korea would actually make use of their nuclear weapons, I think it would be unwise to assume they're bluffing, considering the horrendous consequences. While it's true that the North Korean people aren't fond of my country, I'm sure there are many decent and good people that live in the country, and I would hope that they realize that their leader is abusing his power and oppressing them. I try to remind myself that we are all human beings and most of the divisions that exist in the world are of our own making. It's because of this, we have the power to mend those divides and I would hope and pray that that happens.