Adam Mount

I think there's been a missed opportunity here for the US, we never fully committed or backed the inter Korean peace process, there would have been some real benefits for us if we did so but essentially what happened is the North Koreans split negotiations into two separate tracks and kind of played us off each other.

If the handshake is the start of a process that can transform North Korea and North Korea relationship with the outside world, it was necessary, but it is an image that will be seen by the relatives of North Korean political prisoners, defectors who escaped to freedom, despots around the world considering their own nuclear programs. It is an image that can never be taken back.