Not missing a beat, Kim Jong Un turned to John Bolton, Trump’s hawkish national security advisor, who, just a few months before, had written a column laying out the legal arguments for missile strikes against North Korea.4
North Korea and Bolton had a history. When Bolton was part of the George W. Bush administration, Pyongyang’s propagandists had derided him as “human scum” and a “bloodsucker.” For his part, Bolton had a joke he liked to deploy: How do you tell when the North Koreans are lying? Their lips are moving.
But in Singapore, after Trump had complimented Kim, the North Korean leader asked Bolton what he thought. The national security advisor paused for a second and then responded diplomatically. “My boss is the best judge of character.”
When the two leaders sat down in armchairs for a scripted exchange in front of the media, Kim Jong Un told Trump that he was very happy to have the meeting. “It was not easy to get here,” he said. “The past shackled us, and old prejudices and practices worked as obstacles on our way forward. But we overcame all of them, and we are here today.”
Trump gave Kim his trademark thumbs-up.
The man who wrote a book called The Art of the Deal was charmed. Trump said that the North Korean leader was “very talented,” “very smart,” and a “very good negotiator.” He added that Kim had proven to be “one out of ten thousand” for the way he’d inherited the country in his twenties and has been “able to run it, and run it tough.” He said the two of them had forged a “very special bond.” He said he trusted Kim.
Both before and after the summit, Kim wrote letters to Trump, short, one-page letters in Korean—with an English translation supplied by the North Korean side—that were masterclasses in rhapsodic flattery.
Kim called Trump “Your Excellency” and repeatedly commented on how smart the American president was, what a brilliant political mind he had. He said how wonderful it was to work with Mike Pompeo, who had been the director of the CIA then became Trump’s secretary of state. By the end of September, Trump would be saying that he and Kim Jong Un “fell in love.”
The negotiations to get to this stage, however, were difficult.
When Pompeo arrived in Pyongyang in April 2018 to follow up on South Korea’s conversations, he had directly asked Kim Jong Un if he planned to denuclearize. Kim gave a heartfelt response, although who knows if it was genuine or by design.
“The chairman said that he is a father and husband and he does not want his children to live their lives carrying nuclear weapons on their back,” said Andrew Kim, the head of the CIA’s Korea Mission Center and Pompeo’s translator for the trip.5
It seemed auspicious. So both sides sent negotiators to hash out a deal in the months leading up to the summit. They met at the truce village of Panmunjom in the DMZ, but the talks were slow going. The North Koreans had to repeatedly drive the potholed highway back to Pyongyang to get further instructions from their leader.
Even after the two delegations arrived in Singapore, their positions were still so divergent that they were working with two different documents.
The night before the summit, Pompeo said at a press conference that “the only outcome that the United States will accept” was an agreement on “complete and verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” CVID is a very specific term (the D actually stands for “disarmament”) and one that would require international weapons inspectors to have free rein in North Korea.
There was good reason for the American delegation to be skeptical about North Korea’s commitment to denuclearization. One way or another, the Kim regime had reneged on every nuclear agreement it had ever signed.
By the end of the summit, Kim Jong Un had the better end of the deal. He got away without making any specific promise to give up his nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. He simply reiterated the vague agreement he’d made with the South Korean president in April, agreeing to work toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula—not North Korea, North and South Korea.
There was no mention of the “complete and verifiable and irreversible denuclearization” that Secretary of State Pompeo had insisted upon the previous night.
Trump had also agreed to suspend the joint exercises that the American and South Korean militaries conduct twice a year, exercises viewed as a crucial part of planning for any sudden change on the Korean Peninsula—like a coup in or an invasion from North Korea.
North Korea considers these exercises provocative and also a drain on its resources, since the country has to conduct its own drills in response.
Sitting off to the side, listening to the talks, assistant defense secretary Randy Schriver and Trump’s top Asia advisor, Matt Pottinger, couldn’t believe their ears. They began furiously sending messages to each other to come up with a plan. One called the Japanese national security advisor, and the other got on the phone with the South Korean equivalent. They wanted to give the United States’ two military allies a warning of the announcement that was to come, an announcement that would alarm Japan’s hawkish government in particular.
Trump’s announcement of the suspension of the military drills still caused consternation. At a press conference after the summit, the US president called them “war games”—the North Korean description of the exercises.
Kim had told his American counterparts that although the United States and South Korea claimed that the joint military exercises were defensive in nature, the exercises felt offensive to North Korea.6
In another win for Kim Jong Un, Trump also told his counterpart that he would sign a declaration to end the Korean War.7 It was an idea that Kim Yong Chol, the bearer of the huge envelope, had brought up with Trump during his Oval Office meeting.
Kim Yong Chol said that creating a way to ensure lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula would serve as a sign that the Trump administration was willing to enter into a different relationship with North Korea. Trump said that he was open to making an end of war declaration but that they would still need to work on an actual peace treaty later.
Although keeping the country on a wartime footing has been helpful for creating cohesiveness at home, the Kim regime has long wanted to sign a peace treaty—because then it would be able to insist there was no longer any need for the US military to be stationed in South Korea. But the United States has always balked at any suggestion that it would pull out its troops and hardware from South Korea and potentially leave its ally vulnerable.
Forging a peace treaty would give Kim Jong Un a face-saving way to give up at least some of the nuclear arsenal that he’d spent so much money and effort on obtaining. But by taking the two countries out of a technical state of war, North Korea could also see a way free of the sanctions that were crippling its economy.
For all the disdain in Washington for Trump’s tactics, the American president showed surprising perception about what was driving his North Korean counterpart. Again, this was manifested in an unusual way, but in a way that Kim Jong Un could identify with.
During their meeting, Trump got out an iPad and showed the North Koreans a video that his national security staff had made, although the credits said it was made by “Destiny Pictures.” He also sent them home with a copy of it.
The video was preposterous, but it was also perfect for Kim Jong Un. It was a vision for a brighter future.
It started with a shot of the crater lake at the top of Mt. Paektu and then zoomed through some of the world’s most recognizable construction projects: the pyramids of Egypt, the Colosseum, the Taj Mahal, the skyscrapers of Manhattan, and, of course, Kim Il Sung Square.
It was, the narration said, “a story of opportunity.” It was about “two men, two leaders, one destiny.” The video repeatedly showed those two men throughout, portraying them as equals.
But, notably, it showed North Korea as one giant development opportunity. The Pyongyang skyline was filled with cranes. It took the famous photo of North Korea at night as seen from space and then turned on
the lights to make it look like the black hole had as much electricity as South Korea.
“Think of it from the real estate perspective,” Trump told reporters after the summit, imagining “great condos” being built on the “great beaches” of Wonsan. “Boy, look at the view,” he said. “You could have the best hotels in the world.”
The video featured a shot of a highly developed beach in Florida, where Trump has the Mar-a-Lago resort.
It was, one commentator quipped, not realpolitik but “real estate politik.”8
To entice Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear weapons and become a normal member of the international community, Trump tried to give him a sense that he was missing out on a great opportunity.
You are at the bottom of every list that ranks success or human progress, the American president told his North Korean counterpart. But he put a positive spin on it. If you’re willing to rethink the premise of what success looks like, we will be there to help you, he told Kim.
He even put forward different models that the Great Successor could follow. He held up the examples of China and Vietnam, which have adopted capitalist economic principles but where the Communist Party retains political control. He even suggested North Korea could be like Japan, the world’s third-largest economy and a constitutional monarchy. He suggested that Kim Jong Un could become like the Japanese emperor, occupying the position of revered but ceremonial head of state while the elected government ran the country.9
Over the years, the North Korean regime has had plenty of opportunity to embark on Chinese- or Vietnamese-style reforms. They have never wanted to go down that path. And Kim Jong Un certainly would not want to be a mere figurehead like the emperor of Japan—whose father, by the way, had led the brutal occupation of Korea. But there was plenty of room in between their two visions.
So Kim Jong Un had good reason to be feeling relaxed as he sat down for lunch, even if Trump did throw a line to the photographers about making sure they looked “handsome and thin and perfect.”
The lunch was as painstakingly negotiated as the talks.
Every item on the menu was subject to much back and forth. In the end, they were served an “East-West nine-course meal” for the working lunch that featured beef short-rib confit, soy-braised codfish with radish and Asian vegetables, and dark-chocolate tartlet ganache.
The North Koreans were hypersensitive about food security, well beyond anything that President Trump’s staff had experienced with any other leader. Kim Jong Un’s food taster arrived two hours in advance to check the meal for poison.
But the conversation over lunch was light. They talked about basketball and cars. Kim Jong Un told Bolton that he was “famous” in North Korea and suggested the two of them take a photo together. Maybe that would improve his image among regime hard-liners in Pyongyang, Kim suggested, presumably referring to the people who’d called Bolton “human scum” not too many years earlier. The Washington hard-liner laughed in response.10
Trump offered to show Kim Jong Un “the Beast,” his armored limousine full of high-tech safety features. Watching the two of them walking up to the car and seeing Kim Jong Un heading for the open door, I thought the two of them were going to drive somewhere. But Trump’s Secret Service agents stopped the interlude before any North Koreans could get too close to the special vehicle.
Then the two of them strolled in the lush garden of the Capella Hotel together and waved from one of the balconies—a little like the queen of England might do from Buckingham Palace.
Then they repaired to the grand room where they would sign their vague document. A North Korean official wearing white latex gloves inspected and cleaned the pen that had been set on the table for the North Korean leader. But the Great Successor never touched it. His sister handed him a pen—a $1,000 Montblanc—when she gave him the document to sign and then put it back in her purse when he was finished.
And with that, Kim Jong Un had made history. He had defied the predictions that he would not be able to corral the cadres of this anachronistic regime. He had confounded assessments of North Korea’s technical capacity to build a hydrogen bomb and a missile that could reach the US mainland.
Now, he had the president of the world’s most powerful nation declaring his willingness to work together to achieve his vision.
The tricky part was going to be managing to get the American-led sanctions lifted so that the economy could grow while still keeping hold of his core nuclear and missile capabilities.
Once he got home, his nuclear program still safe and secure, Kim Jong Un turned to part two of his strategy for staying in power: raising living standards around the country.
The hands-off, laissez-faire approach to the economy of his earlier years was over.
In the sweltering heat of July, he went to a textile mill in Sinuiju, on the border with China, where he rebuked factory managers for repeatedly failing to meet their targets and lambasted them over the state of the “decrepit building that looks like a stable.”
He also had stern words when he visited a chemical fiber mill nearby; he upbraided the managers for trying to pass the blame about the plant’s shortcomings. “I’ve visited countless units, but I’ve never seen workers like this,” he seethed.
He traveled from the northeast to the southwest, touring textile mills, fish farms, shipyards, a potato-processing plant, power stations, and factories making cookies and backpacks and coal-mining machines. He gave advice on instant noodle packaging.
The same military zeal he had applied to developing the nuclear and missile programs was now being applied to the economy. He encouraged the workers to approach their tasks as if they were involved in “three-dimensional warfare.” He called for a construction “blitzkrieg.” He even ordered a military regiment to vacate its land to make way for the construction of a large vegetable greenhouse “at lightning speed.”
Kim Jong Un was showing that he wanted to boost the market and encourage private consumption as if security of the nation depended on it. The security of his regime certainly did. Having made good on the first part of his “simultaneous push” by acquiring nuclear weapons, he had to approach the second part, the economy, with the same fervor.
He wasn’t doing this because he cared about the people and their well-being. His actions over the previous seven years had proven that he couldn’t care less about the general population.
No, he cared about his own survival. His grandfather lived to the age of eighty-two, his father to seventy. Kim Jong Un could dream of ruling for thirty or forty or even fifty years to come.
Since taking power at the end of 2011, Kim Jong Un had alternately coddled and terrified the cadres who kept him in power. He’d developed a credible nuclear weapons program. He’d allowed the economy to breathe a little. He’d convinced the leader of the free world that he was a rational counterpart and the skeptical leader of his benefactor, China, that he at least knew how to behave.
Now came his biggest test yet. He had to show the people of North Korea that life was getting better under the Great Successor.
EPILOGUE
THE TRAFFIC WAS TERRIBLE IN BEIJING ON JANUARY 9, 2019, even by the standards of this city of twenty-one million people on the move. The second ring-road was so paralyzed that people were taking the opportunity to do some morning exercises next to their cars. I got out of my taxi to take a photo of the gridlock and see whether I could catch a glimpse of the motorcade.
Kim Jong Un was in town again. President Xi Jinping had thrown a lavish banquet in the Great Hall of the People, the plush ceremonial building on one side of Tiananmen Square, to celebrate Kim Jong Un’s thirty-fifth birthday the night before. The following day, Xi hosted his young neighbor for lunch at the state-run Beijing Hotel, a place where Mao Zedong once entertained Kim’s grandfather.
After their first five years of enmity, Xi was now pretending that Kim was his prodigal son. Indeed, Kim’s visits to China were becoming so commonplace that they were no longer a no
velty, just a nuisance for Beijing’s commuters.
The Great Successor had pulled off a remarkable transformation. He had managed to convince some of the most powerful people in the world to treat him like the normal leader of a legitimate state.
Indeed, eight days earlier, Kim Jong Un had looked decidedly presidential when he delivered his New Year’s Day address.
He did not speak from a podium as in previous years. Instead, as the clock chimed midnight, Kim Jong Un sat in a big leather armchair in a wood-paneled study, portraits of his father and grandfather behind him, leather-bound books filling the shelves.
The echoes were not accidental. One of Kim Jong Un’s top aides had been reading a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and had clearly advised his boss to adopt the trappings of the Depression-era American president’s famous “fireside chats.”
The Great Successor was now seeking to replicate the intimacy with his citizenry that FDR created with Americans in the 1930s and at the same time to reinforce the notion that he was a respectable leader.
The events of 2018 had left an “indelible imprint on history,” said Kim Jong Un, dressed in a Western-style suit and just a week away from his thirty-fifth birthday. The coming year, 2019, would be a year “full of hope.”
“I want to believe that our relations with the United States will bear good fruit this year, as inter-Korean relations have greeted a great turn, by the efforts of the two sides,” he said, reading from a teleprompter and glancing at the notes in his hand.
He referred to the economy thirty-nine times in his speech, and the only time he mentioned his nuclear program was to declare his regime would no longer make, test, use, or proliferate nuclear weapons.
The nuclear weapons were hidden, and the missiles were silent. The assassination of his half brother in Malaysia less than two years earlier had been all but forgotten. The death of American college student Otto Warmbier even more recently had faded from view. President Trump even gave Kim a pass on the incident. “He tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word,” Trump said after their second meeting, held in Vietnam at the end of February.
The Great Successor Page 30