Anchor: University of Chicago Professor Bruce Cumings, who has written some of the world's most widely read texts on Korean history, is emerging as an unlikely cheerleader of President Donald Trump's diplomacy toward North Korea.  During a joint interview with KBS World Radio and the Korea Times, he said Trump is being held back by some of his most senior officials.  
Kurt Achin has more.

Report: Renowned Korean history Professor Bruce Cumings of the University of Chicago tells KBS World Radio the failure of the Hanoi summit in February was less the fault of President Donald Trump, and more to blame on U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

[Sound bite: Professor Bruce Cumings – Dept. of History, University of Chicago]
“Because it looks quite clear that the deal that was supposed to be signed in Hanoi was nixed after Trump got a load of what Bolton and Pompeo had to say.  I don't see how Trump can go forward with a third summit or some kind of deal with North Korea till he gets his advisors on board.”

At the time, President Trump said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un demanded all sanctions be lifted against his country, but not enough denuclearization steps were on offer.  Cumings says the actual deal on the table, in which some sanctions would be lifted in exchange for shutting down the North's main plutonium reactor at Yongbyon, would have been a good step forward.

He suggests it may be time for the U.S. president to cut his national security adviser loose.

[Sound bite: Professor Bruce Cumings – Dept. of History, University of Chicago]
(Kurt Achin: Plainly spoken, does Trump need to get rid of Bolton?)
“I would be an advocate of getting rid of Bolton, who I think is a very dangerous person.  Bolton has been calling for the overthrow of the North Korean government going back into the late 1990s and early two thousands.  And I think he really means it.  He's a guy who thinks, of course we need to get North Korea's nuclear weapons out of its hands, but after that we need to get rid of the regime itself.  Now that doesn't help us at all with the North Korean leadership.”

Cumings was in the South Korean capital for a government-sponsored conference on Friday celebrating the centennial of Korea's March first independence movement.  He says even after all these years, history does not sufficiently recognize the importance of that movement, which was peaceful and preceded other self-determination movements around the world.

Cumings says President Trump has not gotten enough credit for positive changes on the Korean Peninsula.

[Sound bite: Professor Bruce Cumings – Dept. of History, University of Chicago]
“He's the most volatile and unpredictable president we've ever had, but so far his influence on the Korean peninsula has been good.  He looks at Korea with, I said 'innocent eyes' in one interview.  There's nothing innocent about Trump but he doesn't really know the history.  But he wants to make an impact.”

Cumings praised Trump for the suspension of what both he and Trump describe as provocative joint war games, and said North Korea's restraint from nuclear and ballistic missile testing should not be undervalued.  If such testing by the North were to resume, in Cumings' words, “all hell would break loose.”
Kurt Achin, KBS World Radio News.

Anchor leadout: The full-length interview with Cumings will first air on the Monday edition of Korea24 on KBS World Radio.