South Koreans are cautiously optimistic about new diplomacy with Kim Jong Un, but find it harder to trust the North Korean leader over nuclear weapons.
SEOUL, South Korea — President Donald Trump says he has a warm relationship with Kim Jong Un, once declaring he “fell in love” with the young North Korean dictator.
Kim Eunsun, a North Korean defector, has reason to be more cautious about her homeland. And this feeling is reflected widely across her adopted country.
Kim was just 9 when her class was taken to watch men being executed by firing squad for supposed “wrongdoings.”
Later, she watched as her father starved to death, becoming one of the more than 1 million North Koreans estimated to have died in a famine that swept the country in the 1990s.
The family’s desperate search for food motivated Kim and her mother to escape North Korea, initially to China in 1998 before they settled in South Korea nearly nine years later.
Now 32, living in Seoul and raising a family of her own, Kim is watching warily as Kim Jong Un and other world leaders pursue a possible deal to help resolve the long-running dispute over the isolated regime’s nuclear weapons.
“I actually do not have any big expectations about the North Korean regime,” she told NBC News.
But she allows herself to feel faint optimism that, this time, the North Korean government is serious about making concessions.
“I hope the changes become real, » she said. « I hope this time they can do what they promised to the world. »
Many South Koreans are also wary. While a recent poll commissioned by South Korea’s JoongAng Daily newspaper showed that seven out of 10 respondents were satisfied with President Moon Jae-in’s recent three-day trip to Pyongyang, more than half did not trust Kim on denuclearization.
Trump signaled that he wants to meet with Kim again soon, building on their June summit in Singapore at which the North Korean leader promised to “work toward” complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
However, progress on this front has been slow, and U. S. officials recently said the next Trump-Kim summit may not happen before 2019. On Friday Pyongyang warned it could resume nuclear development if the U. S. does not lift economic sanctions.
In the meantime, North and South have worked to reduce military tensions.
