The President gets detailed regional briefings in the Oval Office on these things on a daily basis, including highly classified humint, sigint and elint on places like North Korea, and additional information on their movements, negotiating tactics, movement of their ships and diplomats, the works.
He probably has a brief, high-quality North Korean update at least three or four times a week.
He is on top of each negotiators' latest moves.
And he approves of all of this crap. He and Condi Rice. So they know FULL WELL what is going on. They are the ones making the decisions at the top.
And their decisions, in this case, SUCK!!
NONE of your post was “news” to me.