As I correctly predicted, nothing terrible has happened so far: All the mass media particularly in Japan reported a war is coming, which turned out to be a “fake report”. Pyongyang neither did a new “nuclear test” nor launched a ballistic missile to the Pacific.

Instead, the Washington Post just leaked the Trump administration had decided to urge Kim Jong-un to rather diplomatically negotiate on the issues of both ballistic missile and nuclear weapon under the condition that USG doesn’t want a regime change in Pyongyang. From the viewpoint of a former Japanese career diplomat in charge of DPRK issues, it clearly shows us the fact that USG is now willing to talk with Kim Jong-un. I suspect a surprise announcement will be jointly done by Washington D.C. and Pyongyang within a couple of days to kick off an intensive dialogue towards their common future.

To make it happen, not Trump but Pence has to show up on the arena. US President Trump just follows instructions given by those who really own the country. As far as I’ve been confidentially informed, it’s US Vice President Pence who matters. He’s the very key man who’s empowered to make decisions on off-balance-sheet assets of the United States.

Whether the real ownership of the country is serous or not will be definitely shown by an event to be done within a couple of days: If US Vice President Pence would skip his plan to make a short visit to Japan for the first round of the economic dialogue with Japan and pay an unannounced visit to Pyongyang instead. If so, the world order would be dramatically changed like a surprise visit paid by Jimmy Carter to the capital of DPRK in 1994. To enable him to do so effectively, US intelligence agencies seem to make tremendous efforts to guide foreign mass media especially in Japan, so that the people on the street in the neighbor countries of Pyongyang simply believe a war is coming.

We would soon face an unbelievable reality in the Far East. The US-DPRK alliance would be established, which would lead us to make another one between Japan and US completely obsolete. Based on that, Japan would be forced to decide whether she would protect herself only by her own means or seek other alliance partners. An American source recently suggested that Japan should build up a new system of collective security with her junior partners in the neighborhood without US.

To wrap up, I’d say Pence would shake hands with Kim Jong-un on around 18 and 19 April. Stay tuned.