World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

South Korean President Moon Jae-in is meeting with North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un for the third time in a desperate attempt to salvage the possibility of reaching a rapprochement on the issue of denuclearization.  The discussions on the terms of the process of denuclearization–North Korea will not begin the process unless the US and South Korea sign a peace treaty with the North.  But the US refuses to sign a peace treaty until the process of denuclearization is almost complete.  South Korean President Moon is in the middle and the question is which way will he lean.  If he continues to support the US position, it is unlikely that there will be any progress in the talks.  If, however, he leans toward North Korea, then the US will believe that the process of denuclearization is unattainable. 

The US has historically allowed about 80,000 refugees to enter the country every year.  But that number declined in 2017 and 2018, and the Trump Administration is proposing an upper limit of 30,000 for 2019.  The change in policy comes as the number of refugees in the world has reached about 25 million.  It is a dramatic change in policy:

” The figure is a significant setback for the United States: By sharply reducing admissions, the country is not only diverging from long-standing policy on refugees, but also relinquishing its leadership role in resettlement. Just within the past few years, the country well outpaced others in admitting thousands of refugees. The Obama administration set the refugee cap for fiscal year 2015 at 70,000; by 2016, the number was 85,000. And those numbers didn’t just represent lofty estimations: The Obama administration came close to achieving both caps, admitting 69,000 people in 2015 and nearly 85,000 in 2016.

In addition, there are significant changes in who the US admits as a refugee.  According to Axios: “The number of Muslim refugees admitted into the U.S. dropped from more than 9,000 in the 2017 fiscal year to fewer than 2,000 with less than a month left in FY 2018 — an 80% drop.”