North Korea defector and activist Hyeonseo Lee shares her thoughts on the outcomes of the Trump-Kim summit and her meeting with Trump in February.
The historic meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong-un earlier this month, although not delivering any specific results, prompted many in the western media to think the world may be one step closer to complete denuclearization in North Korea. But people more familiar with North Korea’s ruling family are not so optimistic.
Hyeonseo Lee, a North Korea defector who fled the country 20 years ago and later married an American man, had never thought of the possibility of the president of the United States meeting with the leader of her home country. Even now that the most unthinkable has made history, the whole thing still feels unreal.
“The world has a delusion about Kim Jong-un right now,” Lee said at the Forbes Women’s Summit in New York on Tuesday. “None of us [who have lived in North Korea] believe he will actually give up nuclear weapons, although I wish he meant what he said because the North Korean people really need it.”
But she could see the desire for this symbolic meeting to happen from both sides.
When President Trump abruptly cancelled the meeting in the middle of the negotiation, I knew immediately that he would change his mind and the meeting would happen eventually,” Lee told Observer. “It was just my instinct. I knew that both Trump and Kim Jong-un really needed that meeting, and Trump was really good at pushing someone into a deal.”
Lee was one of the eight North Korean escapees who met with President Trump in February at the White House, where she made a quite specific proposal to Trump.
