Flattery — it gets Kim everywhere
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un may be one of the most murderous leaders on Earth, but his image has been quietly getting a makeover with help from some of his former sworn enemies.
The long list of atrocities against Kim’s name includes cruel and inhumane prison gulags, summary executions, child killings, death by starvation and worse.
But when a poll this year asked South Koreans for their opinion of Kim, his approval rating was a staggering 80 per cent.
Pro-Kim rallies have sprung up among a small number of young South Koreans since the June summit with United States President Donald Trump.
Dr James Kim, from the Asan Institute in Washington, says the North Korean leader is even portrayed in South Korea as ‘‘sort of cute’’ with a little ‘‘rocket man’’ doll made in his image, a reference to Trump’s pejorative term for the North Korean leader when hostilities were at their height.
And when – or if – Kim goes ahead with a historic visit to Seoul as hoped, he will be asked to speak to the Korean General Assembly, an event at which Speaker Moon Hee Sang suggests he will be warmly received.
So when South Korean President Moon Jae In revealed en route to New Zealand that Trump had asked him to deliver a message to Kim praising the North Korean leader as someone Trump liked and could do business with, it barely caused a ripple.
‘‘President Trump asked me to forward to [Kim] these messages; he has a very friendly view of Chairman Kim Jong Un and likes him.
He hopes to fully carry out the remaining agreements [from their June summit in Singapore] together with him so that he will make Chairman Kim Jong Un get what he wants,’’ Moon said.
It is not the first time Trump has used flattery to get Kim around the negotiating table as the US seeks to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programme.
After their summit in Singapore, the American said Kim was a ‘‘very open’’ and terrific leader, joked that he and Kim ‘‘fell in love’’ and praised the North Korean leader for his love for his country.
But despite the high hopes following that summit, the US and North Korea appear to be at a stalemate, with Kim yet to even commit to negotiations on a deal for nuclear disarmament.
Many feel that Trump’s flattery has only hardened Kim’s resolve to hold out till the US president himself agrees to sit around the table with him again, in the belief it will get him a much better deal. But there is also an alternative view that Trump’s bizarre statesmanship may actually provide the breakthrough in North Korea that has eluded others for decades.
So is Trump playing Kim? Or is it the other way round? Bruce Klingner, formerly of the CIA and now a member of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation in Washington, thinks the ‘‘beatification’’ of Kim by Trump – like the ‘‘flawed’’ deal agreed at the Singapore summit – is a strategic blunder.
Ignoring human rights abuses in order to keep the summit on track had also undermined pressure from the international community over Kim’s appalling human rights record, and helped legitimise him on the world stage.
‘‘Someone who the United Nations has said is committing crimes against humanity was described [by Trump] as ‘a smart cookie, he loves his people, we’re in love with each other’ . . . Even Neville Chamberlain didn’t describe Hitler as loving his people and as a smart cookie, and that Neville was in love with Adolf.’’
Colonel David Maxwell, a former military man and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong, deputy director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department, had been leading the charge on managing Kim’s reputation. She and her older brother had succeeded in ‘‘upending’’ assumptions about the North Korean leader in the outside world.
His performance during his historic meeting with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae In at the so-called truce village, Panmunjom, on the border between North and South, had been particularly masterful.
Kim projected himself as smart, funny, even humble, according to many reports.
‘‘It was amazing. I can appreciate Koreans in the South saying ‘this is different’,’’ Maxwell says. ‘‘And of course they’re hopeful.
‘‘Everyone wants peace and they hope he’ll change. Maybe he will, but I don’t think so.’’