Kim’s image shift: From nuclear madman to skillful leader
SEOUL, South Korea — He ordered his uncle executed and half brother assassinated. He spent millions developing and testing a hydrogen bomb and intercontinental ballistic missiles as his people suffered severe food shortages. He exchanged threats of nuclear annihilation with President Donald Trump, calling the American leader a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.” That was last year’s image. In more recent months, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, has achieved one of the most striking transformations in modern diplomacy.
The man described by critics as a murderous dictator and nuclear lunatic has held hands and had heart-to-heart talks with South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, who has encouraged and abetted Kim’s makeover.
Kim has enticed South Korea and the United States into negotiations by dangling the possibility of denuclearizing his country. His popularity has surged in polls in South Korea as he prepares to become the first North Korean leader to meet a sitting U.S. president.
With a dazzle of diplomatic initiatives in the run-up to his historic summit meeting Tuesday with Trump in Singapore, Kim has effectively redefined himself. Some South Koreans now see him as more reliable than Trump despite the decadeslong alliance between their country and the United States.
Kim’s enhanced standing among South Koreans was crystallized by recent images of him walking in the woods with Moon, and on a beach with President Xi Jinping of China discussing North Korea’s nuclear program.
The optics contrasted with what many South Koreans view as Trump’s scattershot diplomacy, in which he abruptly canceled the Singapore summit meeting, then reversed himself after Kim authorized a calm statement offering Trump “time and opportunity” to change his mind.
Despite the image change, Kim is unlikely to surrender his nuclear weapons anytime soon, or ease the grip of his repressive regime. But he has proved to be a skilled — some might say beguiling — strategist, driving events on the Korean Peninsula and showing a willingness to recalibrate.
“Once Kim Jong Un decided to improve ties with South Korea and the United States, he