A former United States ambassador to South Korea said Thursday the now canceled North Korean nuclear summit was a "bad idea" and ill-fated.
"I don't think we should be totally surprised that the meeting has been postponed," Thomas Hubbard told CNBC.
Hubbard served as U.S. ambassador to the Philippines from 1996-2000 and U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 2001-2004.
"Fundamentally, it was probably a bad idea in the first place," he said. "The gap between the United States and North Korea is so long-standing, is so great, that somehow the idea that the two leaders could get together with only minimal preparation and solve the problem was probably doomed from the outset."
President Donald Trump announced Thursday morning he was canceling the June 12 summit after North Korea released a statement that was critical of the U.S. and Vice President Mike Pence.
Hubbard suspects the Americans and the North Koreans were simply not on the same page when it came to denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, an outcome the U.S. and its allies are striving for.
"The North Koreans have indicated that they're prepared to talk about denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, but they mean something much broader involving the presence of U.S. forces in South Korea, involving our own strategic assets in the region," Hubbard said. "I think we had a difference in our definition of denuclearization."
Hubbard noted Trump's cancelation of the historic meting, which was to take place in Singapore, served as "a shot across the bow to the Chinese" in the wake of two meetings Kim had with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump suspects Kim's recent change in posture toward the summit might have been a result of the second of those meetings.
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