Definitely comes off like North Korea retreading through many of the same tactics they used in the late 80's, mid and late 90's, and 00's.
Hey, maybe NK does want serious de-escalation! Or maybe a faction within their government does. Or maybe they want it but have particular ideas about what that would mean.
They've got a closed political system and it's really hard to predict these things which is why you'd need to invest a lot of time and effort into diplomacy to hash these things out and OH WAIT WE FIRED ALL THE DIPLOMATS.
Dealing with NK is sort of like dealing with Republicans. They have these innocuous terms for odious shit. Sort of like how crisis pregnancy center really means “right wing lie factory”.
It’s clear from reading the early NK press releases that Kim was looking for the same deal that th US has rejected on multiple occasions, but dumb ass Trump doesn’t understand that “demilitarization of the Korean Peninsula” actually means “America packs up all its ships and soldiers in South Korea and Japan and maybe Guam and don’t bring your ships ‘round the South China Sea anymore either”
Now, I bought a Samsung fridge, and know that South Korea deserves to be invaded forfoisting that piece of shit on the American people, however, I don’t think most Americans agree. Trump so eagerly wants this deal, that there is some concern that he might agree to it (although good luck getting the Senate to ratify).
Theoretically, John Bolton is smart enough to know better, but he just wants to bomb shot, and doesn’t care how we get to that point.
Edit: I knew he was kristofferson
