Thank you, Mr. President

Kudos to President Trump and his administration for the breakthrough: Three Americans are free from the prison that is North Korea, a meaningful achievement on its own terms that just might suggest better things to come from Kim Jong Un. We mustn’t get ahead of ourselves, though. North Koreans have taken and released Americans many times before, including 11 times under the presidency of Barack Obama.

This time, stars might, just might, be aligned. That’s because of an aggressive shift of posture by Trump, which has led to forthcoming high-stakes talks, along with a new climate of friendliness between Kim and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in.

The just-freed men — Kim Dong-chul, Tony Kim and Kim Hak-song — were captured in October 2015, April 2017 and May 2017, respectively. The first is a businessman accused of espionage; the second, a university professor; the third, an agricultural expert.

It was the American government’s responsibility to try to get them back. The President and his team succeeded.

Now comes the harder part. When Kim released two prisoners in 2014, including the American then held the longest time in the country, North Korea’s vice-foreign minister related the following to a South Korean official, according to The New Yorker:

“Kim Jong-un is going to be around for a long time. So, if President Obama doesn’t talk to us, we will just wait for the next President.”

The next President is here, and that hope has been met.

There’s a remote chance that the Trump-Kim talk will result in meaningful and verifiable steps toward denuclearizing the totalitarian regime. And there’s a better chance that Kim, whose nuclear weapons are his insurance policy against regime change, is playing this President like he played the last one: for time.