Chess, not checkers: The diplomatic background for the Hanoi meeting

Some of the "right wing" blogs point out that Trumpiboy plays 3D chess, not checkers.

You may have missed one reason why the meeting of Trumpieboy and Littlerocketman was in Hanoi, and this had implications beyond the Korea kerfuffle:

Under President Obama, when China started digging up the seabed to make shoals into artificial islands, (with no ecology types seeming to notice, of course), and then President PNoy wanted to fight back, the Obama state dept pushed us to keep quiet and go to court in the matter. So the Philppines did, won the case, but China ignored the international law and kept building.

Now, of course, nothing short of a war will get them out of there.

But things have changed with Trump: And Austin Bay gives the background here:

In June 2017, at the Shangri-La summit in Singapore, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said the US had vital interests in the Asian littoral and that the Asia-Pacific region was “a priority region” for Washington. The Trump administration would address regional issues through “military partnerships, robust investment and trade relationships, and close ties between the peoples of our countries.” ...
 Mattis said the US would “engage China diplomatically and economically to ensure our relationship is beneficial.” That was a carrot.
But Mattis didn’t shy away from confronting China’s South China Sea aggression. He declared that the 2016 arbitration court ruling concluding that China had illegally seized Filipino territory was binding and served as a diplomatic starting point to peacefully manage regional disputes. That was careful, measured language—in effect, “Let’s play by the rules and respect each other.”
 As he finished, Mattis mentioned, as if in passing, that for the first time the US would give Vietnam a retired US Coast Guard cutter. That was a small but forceful stick waved at Beijing. In 1979, China and Vietnam fought a bloody border war and China lost.

Vietnam was once part of China, and actually did an ethnic cleansing of their Chinese ethnic groups after the communists took over. 

as for Korea, StrategyPage's most recent analysis is HERE. 

and they note something not usually reported in the news: the low birth rate in both the Koreas, and the problem of corruption in the north.

ironically, a lot of rural farmers in Korea marry foreign women, mainly from SEAsia. and we have a lot of workers in Korean factories.

But you might not know it but immigration is a big issue here in the Philippines too:

and a lot of it has to do with China.

Background:
Duterte, dislikes American bullying and is trying to make nice with China, but China keeps reneging on their deals to invest here, and locals tend to dislike China (mainly because most of the elite families are descended from Chinese businessmen who married local girls, and it's hard for outsiders i.e. ordinary folks, to break into their clicques and succeed)

Much of the drug crisis here is from Chinese gangsters, and now it turns out that those casinos built and promoted by previous presidents are not just attracting Chinese gamblers but hiring Chinese to work there.

 and the latest kerfuffle is about illegal Chinese immigrants stealing jobs from locals:  the PhilStar reports not only 50 thousand working here with legal work permits, but over 100 thousand who came as "tourists" and stayed to work as illegal immigrants.

on the other hand, Filipinos and other use similar tactics to work illegally in China (and in a lot of other countries in SEAsia and in the Middle East).

so illegal immigration is not just an American problem dreamed up by Trumpieboy.