Meeting thrusts Kim Jong Un into the limelight

Kim Jong Un meets South Korean National Security Director Chung Eui-yong in Pyongyang  (Photo provided by “KCNA” – Korean Central News Agency).

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un grins, just on the verge of a belly laugh, as he grasps the hand of a visiting South Korean official. He sits at a wide conference table and beams as the envoys look on deferentially. He smiles broadly again at dinner, his wife at his side, the South Koreans seeming to hang on his every word.

Kim is used to being the center of gravity in a country that his family has ruled with unquestioned power since 1948, but the chance to play the senior statesman on the Korean Peninsula with a roomful of visiting South Koreans has afforded the autocratic leader a whole new raft of propaganda and political opportunities.

Photos released by North Korean state media yesterday showing Kim meeting with the envoys on Monday evening are all the more remarkable coming just months after a barrage of North Korean weapons tests and threats against Seoul and Washington had many fearing war.

North Korean TV later broadcast video from the meetings that showed Kim smiling and laughing during the meeting, proposing a toast at the dinner reception, and waving as two limousines carrying the South Korean delegates left the main building of the ruling Workers’ Party.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the images were reported in North Korea, but they spread rapidly across the southern part of the peninsula a day after the North said Kim had an “openhearted talk” with 10 envoys for South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Kim reportedly expressed his desire to “write a new history of national reunification” during a dinner that the South Korean government said lasted about four hours.

The meeting marked the first time South Korean officials have met with the young North Korean leader in person since he took power after his dictator father’s death in late 2011. It’s the latest sign that the Koreas are trying to mend ties after one of the tensest years in a region that seems to be permanently on edge. The South Korean delegation led by presidential national security director Chung Eui-yong returned to the South yesterday, hours before Moon’s office was to hold a media briefing on the outcome of the visit.

Given the robust history of bloodshed, threats and animosity on the Korean Peninsula, there is considerable skepticism over whether the Koreas’ apparent warming relations will lead to lasting peace. North Korea, some believe, is trying to use improved ties with the South to weaken U.S.-led international sanctions and pressure, and to provide domestic propaganda fodder for Kim.

But each new development also raises the possibility that the rivals can use the momentum from the good feelings created during North Korea’s participation in the South’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics last month to ease a standoff over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and restart talks between the North and the United States.

The role of a confident leader welcoming visiting, and lower-ranking, officials from the rival South is one Kim clearly relishes. Smiling for cameras, he posed with the South Koreans and presided over what was described by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency as a “co-patriotic and sincere atmosphere.”

Many in Seoul and Washington will want to know if, the rhetoric and smiling images notwithstanding, there’s any possibility Kim will negotiate over North Korea’s breakneck pursuit of an arsenal of nuclear missiles that can viably target the U.S. mainland.

The North has repeatedly and bluntly declared it will not give up its nuclear bombs. It also hates the annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises that were postponed because of the Olympics but will likely happen later this spring. And achieving its nuclear aims rests on the North resuming tests of missiles and bombs that set the region on edge.

But there was nothing about the Koreas’ very real differences in the North Korean report. Kim was said to have offered his views on “activating the versatile dialogue, contact, cooperation and exchange” between the countries.

He was also said to have given “important instruction to the relevant field to rapidly take practical steps” for a summit with South Korean President Moon, which the North proposed last month.

Moon, a liberal who is eager to engage the North, likely wants to visit Pyongyang, its capital. But he must first broker better ties between North Korea and Washington, Seoul’s top ally and its military protector. Foster Klug, Seoul, AP