President Trump talked tough on North Korea in an interview with the Financial Times, his language setting the stage for Friday's meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The Voice of America reports that one line of thought is that Trump may be willing to offer Beijing incentives on a range of trade and security issues in exchange for help with the North. Meanwhile, a flurry of North Korean developments were making headlines:
- The highest-ranking North Korean defector in recent decades has a stark warning about Kim Jong Un: "Once he sees that there is any kind of sign of a tank or an imminent threat from America, then he would use his nuclear weapons," Thae Young Ho, who bolted in 2016, tells NBC News.
- A story in the New York Times suggests that it might be too late to prevent Pyongyang from joining the ranks of advanced nuclear powers. It points to the discovery of a classified ad, traced to North Korea, offering the sale of 22 pounds of lithium 6 per month; lithium 6 is needed to make a hydrogen bomb, and the ad suggests the North has excess supplies.
- A blogger at Forbes thinks the Times might be overstating the importance of that classified ad. It is far from proof of nuclear strength in the North, he writes.