N Korean film on Kim meet reveals focus on economy

Korea has produced a film on leader Kim Jong Un’s summit meeting with President Donald Trump this week, feeding, as one would expect, a fervid cult of personality but also seemingly highlighting his dream of economic development.

The 42-minute film, titled “Epochal meeting that pioneered new history between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the United States”, aired on North Korean state television on Thursday.

It shows the highlights of Kim’s three-day trip to the citystate of Singapore, including exchanges during his historic summit with Trump on Tuesday, and visits he made to some of Singapore’s top sites that evening.

Rigidly controlled North Korean state media usually give ordinary people little exposure to the affluence of their Asian neighbours.

For years, media have relentlessly extolled the successes of their state, and its leaders from the Kim family, proudly defying the evil United States and its lackey allies, even as many ordinary North Koreans starved.

But this film lavished praise on prosperous, capitalist Singapore, lauding the “clean, beautiful and advanced” nation and suggesting it had lessons to offer.

“Our comrade supreme leader said he is eager to learn the excellent knowledge and experiences in various fields from your country,” the state media presenter cited Kim as telling Singapore officials.

Kim was briefed on urban planning and lauded the island nation’s “world-class” cargohandling capacity, as well as its well-equipped ports and its economy.

One analyst said the film was underscoring Kim’s stated pledge to make the economy a priority, after he had announced the achievement of a long-held ambition to develop nuclear weapons.

Kim shifted his focus at a ruling party congress in April, abandoning the parallel pursuit of nuclear weapons and economic development he had expounded since taking power in 2011, to focus instead exclusively on development. “It’s to give the message that ‘We could be as rich if we develop the market economy’,” Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean defector who now runs a Seoul-based think-tank, said of the film’s message.

SEOUL:North