The North Korea-US summit held earlier this month in Singapore was billed as a moment of history, the day the world changed and one of the world's most frightening games of brinkmanship would be resolved.
The reality is starkly different with longtime watchers in South Korea and further afield writing off the event as a pointless endeavour used by both United States President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to look good on the homefront. As the dust has settled and delegations have left Singapore, is the world any safer after the sweeping concessions the US has made with little in return?
If the summit and its outcomes occurred under previous president Barack Obama, some have since argued, those on the centre left would be cheering. There appears to be no basis for this claim other than as a 'gotcha' Tweet. The reality is, the summit would never have occurred under another president because no other president — or State Department — would have made the concession of a meeting at all for no apparent gain.
Indeed, a joint statement which promises nothing that has not been said before should be considered a failure given it was the outcome of negotiations made at a head of state level.
Analysts have been quick to point out that president Bill Clinton's administration in 1994 achieved more by including monitoring of nuclear sites. Although this agreement eventually faltered under suspicion North Korea was cheating the system of checks, it did provide enough depth to engender cautious optimism of actual change. This month's agreement does no such thing.
The first point of the statement is telling. It reaffirms a mutual desire to 'establish new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity'. The wording itself is nothing new, with commitments to engagement floated previously. But read alongside comments from Trump since, particularly regarding US private firms establishing footholds in North Korea, could this be the moment of fruition?
North Korean media last week reported Trump had promised Kim sanctions would be dropped. While the US State Department is yet to make a statement on sanctions, it does give an indication of the closed-doors conversation the pair held in Singapore.
"That Kim was greeted like a K-Pop star rather than a K-Dictator tells us more about the motives of his attendance than any statement could."
For much of the rest of the world, concerns about Kim's regime have little to do with sanctions. The threat of nuclear strikes and obscene human rights violations are far more pressing. 'Denuclearisation', analysts have warned for months, has different meanings for the US and North Korean administrations and would need to be clearly and exactly laid out. That has not happened.
Fears over the development of nuclear warheads capable of reaching mainland US should not be assuaged by the feature of a commitment on behalf of North Korea to 'work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula'. Pledges to dismantle rocket testing sites briefly inspired confidence, but without a solid and achievable monitoring program, like that suggested in 1994, simply taking Kim's word for it is not enough.
At the same time, Trump has dumped military exercises with South Korea — to which North Korea has frequently retaliated with missile test launches — citing budget concerns and further weakening the South Korea-US relationship and stability in the region.
The reality of human rights abuses in North Korea have been a source of outrage for the global community since 2014 when the United Nations released an explosive report which found abuses to be far worse and further-reaching than previously known. Prior to the summit, Trump repeatedly shrugged off questioning, saying human rights would not be on the agenda.
This made Singapore, where protests and demonstrations are regularly shut down, an attractive locale for the summit. Five South Korean women were arrested and deported by Singaporean authorities for holding a demonstration near St Regis Hotel, where Kim was staying. Trump has since said he avoided touching human rights to prioritise 'avoiding nuclear war'. Which again raises the question, why did he not then go harder on securing a meaningful path to getting there?
Neither Trump nor Kim should be applauded for the summit. That Kim was greeted by waving tourists and locals while touring Singapore's attractions like he is a K-Pop star rather than the K-Dictator he actually is tells us more about the motives of his attendance than any statement could. This has been a PR coup for the Kim regime, which has returned home justified in the narrative that his leadership is on par in terms of global influence with that of the President of the United States.
For Trump, who has taken delight in suggestions he is deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, the summit is nothing but another substance-free television event.
Erin Cook is a Jakarta-based journalist with a focus on South East Asia, and editor of the SEA news digest Dari Mulut ke Mulut.