North basks in Kim’s performance
Start of new relationship
THE series of photos on the front page of the ruling workers’ party newspaper showed something North Koreans never would have imagined just months ago – their leader Kim Jong-un warmly shaking hands with US President Donald Trump.
The priority treatment of what even Pyongyang is calling the “historic” meeting between Kim and Trump in Singapore underscores just how much of a propaganda coup the North saw in yesterday’s summit.
Dubbing it the start of a new relationship between their countries, which are still technically at war, Pyongyang’s first reports today 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 continued and suggested that Trump also said he would lift sanctions as negotiations 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,” said a summary of the summit by the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The summit capped a swift turn of events that began on New Year’s Day with a pledge by Kim to reach out to the world now that his nuclear forces have been completed.
His focus on diplomacy, including earlier meetings with the leaders of China and South Korea, is a sharp contrast with his rapid-fire testing of longrange missiles and the fiery exchanges of threats and insults last year that created real fears of a war on the Korean Peninsula.
“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 denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula,” KCNA reported.
That doesn’t seem to pin the North down to the measures Trump said he would demand going into the talks and it remains to be seen what significant changes could occur now that they seem to be moving to- ward more peaceful relations. Both sides promised to push the process forward quickly.
Interestingly, the North made no secret of China’s behind-the-scenes presence at the summit. Media coverage the day Kim arrived in Singapore showed him waving from the door of the Air China flight that brought him from Pyongyang.
Kim’s biggest task in the months ahead will most likely be to try to push China, his country’s key trading partner, to lift its sanctions and to entice South Korea to start once again offering crucial investment in joint ventures and infrastructure projects.
In the meantime, however, the North appears to be basking in its leader’s newfound status as the most popular kid on the block. – Associated Press/African News Agency