As chefs and hotel staff were poised to put the final touches to their creations, the White House announced Trump and Kim would be leaving the Metropole hotel in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, without a deal, and without lunch. It was the dying moment of a deal aimed at dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program and paving the way for the resolution to the technically unfinished 1950-53 Korean War. The Metropole, a grand, colonial-era hotel in the center of Hanoi’s French Quarter, had seemed swept along with the hope the day before the summit unraveled.
