We have seen hundreds of takes on John Bolton’s recent book and what happened during the tumultuous two years of US-DPRK interactions. Like most things North Korea, what you take from it is largely what your priors are. Some people wring their hands and share Bolton’s conclusion that denuclearization is impossible because North Korea can never be trusted. Others point to the willingness of Kim Jong Un to engage and the opportunities lost from internal sabotage in the US and an administration lacking coherence and focus. What many seem to agree on is that they do not want to give Bolton money for this book. With that in mind, we picked out some quotes from the book and leave it to you to draw your own inferences - noting that as with any autobiography, it is full of self-serving biases and interpretations.

Its a sad day today as the stalled progress in inter-Korean reconciliation in the last two years took a very visible turn for the worst today with the [seeming] destruction of the inter-Korean liaision office at Kaesong. This marked more than a year of complaints we have heard from North Koreans about the lack of progress and endless delays by South Korea on various projects. For South Korean, hemmed in by sanctions and cautiousness, there has also been frustration that they have not been able to advance relations.