North Korea analysis: Has Kim Jong-un’s summer of missiles undermined Trump’s nuclear talks?

Korea’s summer began with the hope of resuming stalled nuclear talks, after a grand handshake and a historic step by Donald Trump, the first ever sitting US president to set foot on North Korean soil to meet the pariah state’s leader, Kim Jong-un. But it ended last week with a gleeful Kim and his generals inspecting a newly tested “super-large” multiple rocket launcher – Pyongyang’s tenth in a volley of new weapons launches in just four months.

The latest testfire on Tuesday came hours after Choe Son-hui, the North’s first vice minister of foreign affairs, suddenly raised the possibility of Pyongyang resuming disarmament negotiations with the US at the end of September, after months of diplomatic…

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