This flies in the face of the so-called "freeze-for-freeze" process China has long championed, which would have seen North Korea halt its weapons tests with the US and South Korea simultaneously stopping their joint military exercises.
It is also very far from China's ideal nuke-free, US military-free Korean Peninsula, and Dr Graham said this may have been part of the point.
"Kim Jong-un wants to make it clear that he is making the running here on his own terms," he said.
"One obvious way to do that is to separate his position from that of Beijing on the freeze-for-freeze formula."
Dr Graham said North Korea has form in this area: Mr Kim's father, Kim Jong-il, reportedly made similar comments at an earlier inter-Korean summit in 2000.
According to his South Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-il said US troops must remain for the sake of "stability and peace in East Asia."
"The obvious logic arising from that is that North Korea also seeks some sort of balance against China. That's what I think the Chinese are most frustrated about," Dr Graham said.
North will want 'strategic independence' from China
Photo: North Korea and China have been close since the days of Kim Il-sung and Mao Zedong. (Getty Images: VCG)
While North Korea's alliance with China protects it against foreign military intervention, Dr Graham said the North has never been shy about maintaining "strategic independence" from China.
"Pompeo’s meeting with North Korean counterpart called off at last minute"
The president was right to walk rather than accept a bad deal, but look out ahead.
By Nicholas Kristof Opinion Columnist Feb. 28, 2019
President Trump and Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Thursday. Evan Vucci/Associated Press
President Trump was right to walk away from his summit with Kim Jong-un rather than accept a bad nuclear agreement, but the outcome underscores that he was bamboozled last year at his first summit with Kim. Whatever genius Trump sees in the mirror, “the art of the deal” is not his thing.
At this meeting, Kim apparently sought a full end to sanctions on North Korea in exchange for closing only some nuclear sites. That was not a good deal, and Trump was right to walk rather than accept it.
President Reagan famously marched out of a 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, rather than accept an arms control agreement with Russia that he regarded as flawed. A year later the Russians returned with better terms and a deal was made — and we can all hope that something similar will happen this time.
Still, there are significant risks ahead. The most important is that North Korea may return to testing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, for that would mark a huge escalation of tensions and renewed concerns about brinkmanship and war.
Unfortunately, North Korea is an otherwise unimportant country that gets attention only when it behaves provocatively. So its leaders have learned that their best leverage is to fire missiles, detonate warheads, or start up nuclear complexes.
While Trump was right to walk in this case, he also seems to have played his hand poorly in the run-up to the summit. In particular, he signaled that he eagerly wanted a deal and that “fantastic success” was likely, all of which probably led Kim to raise demands in the belief that Trump would fold.
With normal presidents, summit deals are largely agreed upon ahead of time. As one veteran diplomat put it, presidents pull rabbits out of hats, after diplomats have worked diligently ahead of time to stuff the rabbits into the hats. But Trump has never had much patience for that meticulous diplomatic process, instead placing excessive faith in breakthroughs arising from personal relationships — and his faith was clearly misplaced this time.
The North Korean side had refused to hash out the summit outcome in advance with the highly regarded U.S. special envoy, Stephen Biegun, presumably because Kim thought that he could outfox Trump in person in Hanoi the way he had in Singapore nine months ago.
The collapse of the latest talks also underscores how misguided Trump was at that earlier meeting .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/opinion/trump-kim-summit-north-korea.html?module=inline . He didn’t understand that Kim uses “denuclearization” to mean something different than the meaning in the United States, and he gave Kim the enormous gift of legitimacy that comes with a summit, without getting anything comparable in return.
[YouTube of embed] Video 26:23 From North Korea, With Dread
In 2017, Nicholas Kristof traveled to the world’s most isolated country. He found a nation furious with Trump, and primed for nuclear war — in kindergartens, amusements parks and the halls of government. Jonah M. Kessel/The New York Times
In particular, Kim seems willing to reach a bargain on continuing his moratorium on testing warheads and missiles and on freezing production of nuclear fuel at his complex on Yongbyon, and those are worthy goals if the price is not too high. A reasonable price would be relaxation of sanctions on inter-Korean projects, such as South Korean manufacturing, tourism and rail projects in North Korea.
Those inter-Korean initiatives also have value in that they may over time help normalize North Korea, give it a stake in the outside world, and undermine the regime’s authority.
That kind of limited deal should be an aim of diplomacy going forward, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in — who helped start the peace process between North Korea and the West — is well placed to pursue it, with American backing.
On Trump's lack of preparation, while the heading on this article comes across as overly cynical in my mind (as the North would benefit from peace, too) the article undoubtedly gives some insight into the North's thinking. Pyongyang Is Playing Washington and Seoul https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=140382716
shermann7, Trump, Kim and the North Korean nuclear missile melodrama [...] North Korea Begins Dismantling Key Facilities at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station [...] Infrastructure Improvements at North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Research Facility https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=144264798
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
