It took North Korean state media 48 hours to inform the North Korean people that Donald Trump would have been sworn in as president of the United States on Monday. But the news, in reality, is that the press of the Kim Jong-un regime has reported the news about the arrival of the new tenant of the White House much earlier than usual: in 2016, it took 10 days to announce that he had celebrated Trump’s first inauguration. In 2020, it took up to two months to say that Joe Biden had won the election.
Pyongyang, with the help of the great censorship barrier that isolates its cyberspace, manages the times in its extreme control of foreign information that enters the country. On Trump’s return, the main newspaper of the ruling Workers’ Party, the Rodong Sinmunlimited itself on Wednesday morning to publishing a brief statement saying that the Republican had been elected president of the United States in the November elections and that an inauguration ceremony was held in Washington on Monday.
There was no mention of the words that Trump has dedicated to North Korea and that have not gone down very well with Asian allies such as South Korea and Japan. The American leader described Pyongyang as a “nuclear power”, a term that, until now, Washington refused to use because they understood that this was providing recognition to the regime’s growing nuclear program.
Trump’s second mention of Korea, in line this time with the surreal comments to which the president is accustomed, was to assure that Kim Jong-un would be “happy” to see him again in the White House. “I was a very good friend of his. He liked me and I liked him. We got along very well,” Trump said Monday while signing a series of executive orders.
These words have raised expectations about the rebirth of direct diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang that has been dead during the Biden Administration.
During the Republican’s first term, these relationships, which included up to three in-person meetings between Trump and Kim, were among the most volatile and surprising in American foreign policy. Trump constantly went from confrontation to an almost comical approach if it were not for the fact that in front of him he had a country that, in September 2017, carried out its last nuclear test so far.
“Rocket Man”
In the past, Trump has referred to Kim as “Rocket Man” and threatened military intervention if North Korean nuclear provocations did not stop. That caused a lot of uncertainty in the international community, especially among Asian neighbors, who also looked on in perplexity when Kim accepted the invitation to attend the first historic summit in Singapore in 2018.
There was no progress at that meeting on nuclear disarmament. Nor in the other summits in February 2019 in Hanoi or in June 2019 in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, when Trump crossed the dividing line, in another historic gesture, to meet with Kim.
Despite the visible opening of new channels of dialogue, negotiations were stalled from the beginning because Pyongyang demanded the lifting of international sanctions before advancing the denuclearization process.
During Trump’s first Presidency (2017-2021), North Korea carried out all types of tests with ballistic missiles, both short and long range. It is estimated that in those years the North Koreans were able to carry out around 40 launches. With Biden in the White House, Kim’s threat has advanced considerably, especially in recent years, with around 60 launches into the sea, including improved intercontinental range missiles (ICBM) that are capable of reaching the US coast loaded with a warhead. nuclear.
The North Korea that Trump will now find, in addition to being better armed and just as impoverished and isolated, maintains a reinforced security alliance with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, with whom Kim signed a mutual defense treaty last year under which North Korean troops have been moved to Russian territory to fight against the Ukrainian army.