Kim is now only foaming on top of café’s lattés
SEOUL: With missile tests, nuclear threats and the ruthless destruction of opponents, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been an ominous presence hanging over the South.
But these days, customers at a café in the centre of South Korea can find an image of the North Korean leader staring up at them from their coffee cups.
Since a beaming Kim held a summit in April with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the In & Out café in Jeonju city, three hours south of the capital Seoul, has been serving lattés decorated with frothy images of the two leaders.
A sign also offers customers the chance to take a photo and be featured on latté foam, along with Kim and Moon.
“I watched the inter-Korean summit and was very impressed,” said owner Kim Jeong-il, who coincidentally shares his name with Kim Jong-un’s father. “My shop is named In & Out, and I made (the latté) praying for peace in the hope we’d be able to go ‘in and out’ of South Korea and North Korea.”
Few other businesses seem to be willing to risk using Kim’s image, but in the wake of the April summit, where Kim came across as an affable young man, more South Koreans are changing their attitudes towards a leader who has threatened to destroy Seoul.
Relatives killed
Besides raining invective on the South and its leaders since he took power in Pyongyang in 2011, Kim has been accused of ordering the killing of his uncle and half-brother, and of scores of officials suspected of disloyalty.
According to a Gallup Korea survey released on June 1, Kim’s overall favourability among South Koreans rose from 10% in March to 31% in May. An earlier Gallup Korea survey, conducted after the April summit, showed 65% of respondents had a more favourable view of Kim after the summit than before.
Kim’s popularity in South Korea is likely to have increased even more, ahead of a summit to be held next week with US President Donald Trump in Singapore.
Moon told Kim, during a second inter-Korean summit in May, that the North Korean leader had “gained a lot of popularity in South Korea recently”, to which Kim responded: “That is a relief.”
In the past, South Korea had blocked some websites and arrested and even prosecuted citizens under a security law that bans “praising, encouraging, or propagandising” North Korean entities. As recently as 2013, more than 100 people had been arrested under the law, but Freedom House, funded by the US government, says that number had dropped to seven last year.
That, along with Kim’s reputation, may make many businesses think twice about trying to capitalise on the buzz.
However, the Gym88 kickboxing gym in Seoul has been using Kim’s image for two years, albeit in a not very com- plimentary way. “You have to lose some weight too,” says the banner for the gym, which shows a photograph of the portly North Korean leader next to a bikini-clad woman.
A trainer who declined to be named said that despite the law and emotional opinions of Kim, there had been no criti- cism of the gym since it put up the banner.
Analysts said Kim went out of his way to defuse hostility during his recent appearances and image consultant Park Young-sil says that he “made the most effective use of the power of the smile through this inter-Korean summit”.
Kim Jong-un “strategically chose air-kisses during the second meeting, to express how he feels psychologically closer to Moon based on mutual trust,” she said.
Not everyone is happy with the more positive image of Kim in the South.
The North Korean leader is a “demon”, said Kim Sang-jin, a former South Korean soldier turned anti-North Korea protester.
The South Korean government and the press is “fooling the citizens” and emphasising only the soft side of Kim in order to make the US-North Korea summit happen and put on “a fake peace show”, Kim Sang-jin said.
At his café in Jeonju, meanwhile, Kim Jeong-il said some anti-communist critics had complained about his Kim Jong-un themed coffee, but overall the response had been positive, with around 20 people a day specifically looking for the Kim latté. – Reuters