high stakes diplomacy
Intel agencies building a profile of Kim in a bid to gain advantage in the US-N. Korea talks
US intelligence experts are trying to build a profile of Kim Jong-un to give President Donald Trump a competitive edge in one of the most consequential summits since the Cold War, but they face a huge challenge — figuring out a secretive North Korean ruler few people know much about.
They will rely in part on the impressions drawn by CIA director Mike Pompeo, who just weeks ago became the first Trump administration official to meet Kim. Pompeo, who was confirmed as Secretary of State on Thursday, came back from Pyongyang privately describing the young North Korean leader as “a smart guy who’s doing his homework” for the meetings, according to one US official, who described Pompeo’s personal view of Kim for the first time.
The profile will also include intelligence gathered in past debriefings of others who have interacted with Kim, including ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman, Kim’s former classmates at a Swiss boarding school and South Korean envoys, other US officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
There is the sense of excitement in Seoul that almost everybody is preparing for celebration on Friday.
— Victor Cha, a US expert on Korea visiting Seoul
Our kids can get live education about unification by watching South and North Korean leaders shake hands in real time.
— Park Sung-il, a school principal in Gwangju
All of this is being used to update the US government’s classified file on Kim’s behavior, motives, personality and leadership style to help Trump and his aides develop a strategy for dealing with Kim at the expected first-ever meeting of US and North Korean leaders.
Despite that, direct knowledge of Kim remains limited — a “black box,” according to one US official familiar with the profiling efforts — especially given the scarcity of spies and informants on the ground and the difficulties of cyber-espionage in a country where Internet usage is minimal.
Shielded by North Korea’s extreme opaqueness, Kim has posed a special set of profiling problems for US spy agencies.
US experts will be closely studying both Kim’s words and body language at his historic summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday, officials said.
Amid the scramble to put together the Kim profile, the US officials said another challenge was determining how much information to give Trump — known to have little patience for detailed briefings or lengthy documents — and then persuading him not to act purely on gut instinct, as he often does with foreign leaders. —