North Korea lauds leader Kim for Trump summit performance

HAILING THE HERO The message was clear: this is a big success for Kim and the result of his wise leadership.

: The news on television and the front page of the ruling Workers’ Party newspaper was something North Koreans never would have imagined just months ago — their leader Kim Jong Un warmly shaking hands with President Donald Trump.

One day after the meeting between Kim and Trump in Singapore, North Korea’s state-run media were filled with images of its beaming leader standing as an equal on the international stage with the president of the most powerful country in the world — a reminder of just how much of a propaganda coup the North saw in Tuesday’s unprecedented summit. Dubbing it the start of a new relationship between their countries, which are still technically at war, Pyongyang’s first reports Wednesday stressed to the North Korean people that Trump agreed at Kim’s demand to halt joint military exercises with South Korea as long as talks toward easing tensions continue and suggested that Trump also said he would lift sanctions as negations progressed.

“President Trump appreciated that an atmosphere of peace and stability was created on the Korean Peninsula and in the region, although distressed with the extreme danger of armed clash only a few months ago, thanks to the proactive peace-loving measures taken by the respected Supreme Leader from the outset of this year,” the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said in a summary of the meeting.

The media message was clear: this is a big success for Kim — known in the North as the Marshal — and the result of his wise leadership. “Kim Jong Un and Trump had the shared recognition to the effect that it is important to abide by the principle of step-by-step and simultaneous action in achieving peace, stability and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” KCNA reported.Te North made no secret of China’s behind-thescenes presence at the summit.

PYONGYANG