North Korean officials touted a new letter from President Trump about the coronavirus pandemic, one day after the communist leader oversaw the launch of two missiles into the Sea of Japan.
“We regard it as a good judgment and proper action for the U.S. president to make efforts to keep the good relations he had with our Chairman by sending a personal letter again at a time as now,” the dictator’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, said Saturday.
Trump has made personal diplomacy with Kim a centerpiece of his strategy regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, but negotiations have stalled for months. The missile launch Friday was overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic, but the pariah state is widely perceived as using such tactics to reclaim the attention of world leaders.
“President Trump sent a letter to Chairman Kim of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, consistent with his efforts to engage global leaders during the ongoing pandemic,” a senior administration official told the Washington Examiner. “The President looks forward to continued communications with Chairman Kim.”
North Korean leaders have not acknowledged any new coronavirus cases, but U.S. officials believe that the country — a client state of neighboring China, where the pandemic originated — has been afflicted by the contagion, and local sources claim the outbreak is severe.
“The situation is so desperate that it is just a matter of dying from starvation or infection,” a member of an underground North Korean church told a South Korean media outlet.
Kim’s sister acknowledged that the pandemic was a theme of the letter, claiming that Trump “expressed his intent to render cooperation in the anti-epidemic work, saying that he was impressed by the efforts made by the Chairman to defend his people from the serious threat of the epidemic.”
The letter might temporarily satisfy Kim’s need for international attention, according to one Asian diplomat who follows North Korean issues.
“I feel like they are saying: Please look at me!” the diplomat told the Washington Examiner after the latest missile launch. “The whole world is only focusing on coronavirus pandemic. For him, I think, most unwanted scenario would be forgotten.”
