North Korean media have reported Kim Jong-un’s denuclearisation talks with Donald Trump, but with one key omission – their failure to reach a deal due to differences over sanctions.
The official KCNA news agency offered a largely positive account of Thursday’s doomed meeting in Hanoi, saying the two countries had deepened their “mutual respect and trust” and describing the summit as an event of “great significance”.
The tone was in stark contrast to international media accounts highlighting the seemingly unbridgeable chasm that forced the US president and North Korean leader to part ways in Hanoi early without signing a declaration.
South Korea’s JoongAng Daily described the outcome as “a great shock”. The summit’s collapse “will put a damper on the inter-Korean peace process pursued by the South Korean government”, the newspaper said in an editorial, citing now-dashed hopes that the partial lifting of sanctions would have allowed Seoul to restart joint economic and tourism projects with the North.
“Yet what this reality confirms is that no deal is better than a bad deal,” it added. “If the North would have won by only offering to dismantle enrichment facilities at Yongbyon, they could very well have reversed this course as they have done in the past. Pyongyang would retain its status as a de facto nuclear state while the South would be left hanging.”
KCNA said only that Kim and Trump “highly appreciated” the opportunity to meet again, nine months after their first summit, and welcomed the “remarkable progress” they had made since, according to KCNA Watch.
“They had a constructive and candid exchange of their opinions over the practical issues arising in opening up a new era of the improvement of the DPRK-US relations on the basis of progress,” the agency said, referring to the North by its official title the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The article ran alongside photos of Trump and Kim on the first two pages of Friday’s Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers’ party of Korea – an indication that state media intend to portray the meeting as another diplomatic success for Kim.
How did North Korea cover the unexpected end to yesterday’s #HanoiSummit?
— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) March 1, 2019
The meeting dominates the first two pages of the Rodong Sinmun, which gave a largely positive review, calling it an event of “great significance in building mutual trust.” https://t.co/c0AvaHxcVy pic.twitter.com/PD1oQsnyM4
The tone of North Korean media coverage has been generally positive all week. On Wednesday, the Rodong Sinmun devoted its entire front page to Kim’s arrival in Hanoi the previous day, accompanied by several colour photographs.
It gave similar prominence to the leaders’ greeting and dinner on Wednesday, when the mood music pointed towards a more detailed agreement than the vague statement they signed in Singapore last June.
But on Friday, KCNA made only opaque references to the challenges ahead, noting that Kim and Trump would have to overcome “inevitable hardships and difficulties” that it attributed to seven decades of “antagonism and confrontation” between the two countries.
The agency also made no mention of comments by the country’s foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, who has disputed Trump’s account of the talks, claiming that North Korea had only demanded partial sanctions relief in return for closing its Yongbyon nuclear complex and not, as the president had claimed, an end to all sanctions.
