Tokyo • With little time to spare, North and South Korea are preparing to hash out Kim Jong Un's offer to send a delegation to next month's Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
Skeptics are calling the offer, floated by Kim during his annual televised New Year's address, a cynical tactic to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul, while optimists see it as a sign of hope that Kim has decided to dial back his defiance and come in from the cold.
But why, after a year marked by the test of his country's most powerful nuclear bomb to date and a record number of missile launches, is Kim starting off 2018 by proposing talks across the Demilitarized Zone?