Despite the American press absolutely losing their minds over North Korea’s Goebbels Girl, Vice President Mike Pence apparently carried on despite getting the stink-eye from the dictator’s sister.

Pence not only headed up the United States delegation to the Winter Olympics, he also was busy with some high-level diplomatic talks.

Pence had already visited South Korea as vice-president last year, and looks like that previous visit laid some groundwork for some pretty intense discussions between himself and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Vice President Pence, in an interview aboard Air Force Two on the way home from the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, told me that in his two substantive conversations with South Korean President Moon Jae-in during his trip, the United States and South Korea agreed on terms for further engagement with North Korea — first by the South Koreans and potentially with the United States soon thereafter.

The frame for the still-nascent diplomatic path forward is this: The United States and its allies will not stop imposing steep and escalating costs on the Kim Jong Un regime until it takes clear steps toward denuclearization. But the Trump administration is now willing to sit down and talk with the regime while that pressure campaign is ongoing.

This is a substantive development in getting South Korea’s full cooperation in dealing with whatever may happen next with Kim Jong-un and his gulag queen sister.

I'm grateful for the strong relationship between the U.S & South Korea. We're going to stand solidly with South Korea and with all of our allies to continue to bring the maximum pressure to bear on North Korea. #VPinASIA pic.twitter.com/EfqB6yWLi0

— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) February 10, 2018

Pence called it “maximum pressure and engagement at the same time.” That’s an important change from the previous U.S. position, which was to build maximum pressure until Pyongyang made real concessions and only then to engage directly with the regime.

“The point is, no pressure comes off until they are actually doing something that the alliance believes represents a meaningful step toward denuclearization,” Pence said. “So the maximum pressure campaign is going to continue and intensify. But if you want to talk, we’ll talk.”

Pence and Moon worked this out during their bilateral meeting Thursday at the Blue House and their joint viewing of speedskating heats in PyeongChang on Saturday evening. Pence conferred with President Trump every day he was in Asia. Before these meetings, the Trump and Moon administrations were not aligned on whether Seoul’s new engagement with Pyongyang should continue after the Olympics end.

Will a “maximum pressure and engagement” strategy actually work on North Korea, and get them to come to the table for talks? It depends on how much pressure they actually feel. We’ve apparently learned that all they have to do is put trained cheerleaders in front of cameras and the media will clap like demented seals. With encouragement like that from the American media, who knows how emboldened their “Director of Propaganda and Agitation” with the permanent resting bitch face will be to try something else for the cameras?