‘We fell in love’: Trump swoons over Kim letters
Pyongyang gifts dogs to South Korea’s Moon
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said he and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un have fallen “in love”-their bromance fuelled by “beautiful letters” he received from the leader of the nuclear-armed state. Trump on Saturday elevated his recent praise of Kim to new heights, at a West Virginia rally in support of local candidates for his Republican Party.
“And then we fell in love-OK? No really. He wrote me beautiful letters and they’re great letters. We fell in love,” Trump told the crowd. On Monday at the United Nations General Assembly Trump lauded the North Korean strongman-who is accused by the UN and others of widespread human rights abuses-as “terrific”, one year after Trump eviscerated Kim from the same platform. Trump followed those comments by saying Wednesday he had received an “extraordinary letter” from Kim, and sounded optimistic about prospects for a second summit between the two leaders “fairly quickly.”
Trump used his debut address at the UN General Assembly 12 months ago to threaten to “totally destroy” North Korea and belittle its leader as “rocket man,” prompting Kim to respond by calling the president a “mentally deranged US dotard.” Those were among a series of playground-type slurs the leaders of the two nuclear-armed states hurled at each other, setting the world on edge. Last August, after US media reported Pyongyang had successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead to fit into a missile, Trump warned Pyongyang not to threaten the United States or it would face “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
Kim had earlier compared comments by Trump to the bark of a “rabid dog,” and Trump derided Kim as a “sick puppy” before the apparent outbreak of puppy love. Trump met Kim in Singapore in June for the first-ever summit between the two countries that have never signed a peace treaty. The summit led to a warming of ties and a halt in Pyongyang’s missile launches, but there has been little concrete progress since. North Korea’s foreign minister Ri Yong Ho on Saturday told the UN there was “no way” that his country would disarm first as long as the US to push for tough enforcement of sanctions against Pyongyang.
Pyongyang’s gifts
In another development, South Korean President Moon Jaein received a pair of North Korean indigenous hunting dogs from Pyongyang, his office said yesterday, the latest token of the rapidly blossoming friendship on the peninsula. “Cheong Wa Dae (the presidential office) was offered a pair of Pungsan dogs from the North as a gift at the North-South summit and received them Thursday,” the South’s presidential office said in a statement.
The canines, both aged around one, were handed over via the truce village of Panmunjom with three kilograms of dog food to “help with their adaptation”, it added. Known for its loyalty and cleverness, the Pungsan breed-a hunting dog with thick, creamy white coat, pointy ears and hazel eyes-is one of the National Treasures of North Korea. The canine gifts come after a September meeting between Moon and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang, at which Kim agreed plans to shutter a missile-testing site and visit Seoul.
North and South Korea also announced that they would jointly bid for the 2032 Olympics. Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung had also received a pair of Pungsan pups after his landmark summit in Pyongyang with then North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in 2000. The dogs were kept at the Seoul Grand Park and both died of natural causes in 2013 after giving birth to 21 puppies. The newly arrived pooches will reside at the presidential office with Moon-an animal lover who already owns a Pungsan dog named Maru, a former shelter cat called Jjing-Jjing, and Tory, a black mutt he adopted after taking office. — Agencies