SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — If North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was searching for the perfect propaganda set piece, something designed to show his…
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — If North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was searching for the perfect propaganda set piece, something designed to show his people that he’s a strong leader pushing inexorably for the long-delayed, long-promised prosperity they deserve, then visiting South Korean President Moon Jae-in might be providing him with a unique opportunity during their summit this week.
Moon believes that his deep engagement with North Korea is crucial after last year’s fears of war, when Washington reacted with fury to a torrent of ever-more-powerful North Korean weapons tests. He argues that better ties with North Korea will help South Koreans, and the region, by settling the decades-long standoff over the North’s pursuit of a nuclear arsenal designed to target the U. S. mainland.
But his engagement push, which includes bringing some of South Korea’s most powerful business tycoons to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, strikes some observers as also boosting Kim as he tries to show his citizens that he’s pivoting to economic improvement and — crucial yet unspoken — raising his impoverished nation up to South Korea’s level, after his claim last year to have completed his nuclear arsenal.
Throughout the first day of Moon’s three-day trip to North Korea, the South Korean leader could be seen grinning broadly as he and Kim enjoyed the ecstatic reception of a Pyongyang that seemed to have been painted, polished and framed until it was the best possible version of itself — on the video that South Korean media traveling with Moon captured and beamed back to Seoul, at least.
Consider one telling scene, not long after Moon’s arrival Tuesday, when cameras caught Kim and his sister, Kim Yo Jong, who acts as her brother’s chief propagandist, both maneuvering Moon so that he had the perfect view — and could be perfectly seen on a reviewing stand, Kim by his side — as an honor guard of goose-stepping troops armed with bayonet-tipped rifles marched by.
A little later, Moon waded into the crowd of elite North Korean citizens who’d been brought out to welcome him, shaking hands with some and then deeply bowing amid wild cheers.
