Does Kim even want to meet Trump?<\/p>\n
For now, Pyongyang’s public response has been lukewarm at best.<\/p>\n
Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader\u2019s powerful sister, said on Wednesday that she was \u201ccompletely unaware\u201d of Trump’s claims that the two sides were communicating.<\/p>\n
She also dismissed the significance of the reduced military exercises, saying they remained provocative.<\/p>\n
That was followed by North Korea’s missile launches on Thursday.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Kim Yo Jong acknowledged that her brother and Trump still have an \u201cexcellent\u201d relationship, suggesting that the personal channel between the two leaders has not necessarily disappeared.<\/p>\n
Dr Park said the personal rapport between the two leaders could help.<\/p>\n
The pair could have good chemistry, he added. \u201cTrump, he\u2019s in a way a larger-than-life figure \u2026 and Mr Kim \u2026 is in a way, I\u2019ve been told, machismo.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Trump admires authoritarians who have not done anything to offend him. Like Putin, Trump seems to like Kim and is thus predisposed to not take a hardline against the latter,” said Dr Nah.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The amicability could go both ways, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“But it could also be that Kim realises that Trump is the only American president susceptible to flattery, and is hence using that as a weapon against the latter,” he added.<\/p>\n
Whether or not the two men genuinely have a good relationship, personal rapport can only go so far. The two countries continue to have fundamentally different objectives, Dr Park noted.<\/p>\n
Washington wants to prevent the emergence of a hegemonic power on the Eurasian mainland, with nuclear non-proliferation an important part of that strategy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd from North Korea\u2019s vantage point, having a powerful, prosperous and free South Korea on its border is not a good thing. On top of that, the US forces have been on South Korean soil for the past seven years plus,\u201d said Dr Park.<\/p>\n
He believes Kim will be cautious about what to expect from a meeting given the failure of their previous nuclear diplomacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure if it is realistic to expect a lot of breakthroughs in the US-North Korea relations,\u201d he said, pointing to how Trump\u2019s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered nothing out of the ordinary and the US president has remained hawkish towards Iran and Cuba.<\/p>\n
A meeting outside North Korea will also carry high stakes for Kim, he added. \u201cIf he wants to make a foreign trip, the logistics are very complicated.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if he doesn\u2019t make any significant achievements in those meetings, it is going to be – if not detrimental – politically costly for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Does Kim even want to meet Trump? For now, Pyongyang’s public response has been lukewarm at best. Kim…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[65595,141,31,34,33,444],"class_list":["post-128283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-cna-explains","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-korea","tag-north-korea","tag-south-korea","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}