SINGAPORE — An armored train was unavailable this time around, so North Korea’s 30-something leader had to look elsewhere.
Months after he was mocked for traveling to Beijing on a train similar to that which his forefathers used, Kim Jong Un arrived here on Sunday using another peculiar method of transportation: a Boeing 747 lent to him by the Chinese government.
[Also read: Kim Jong Un brings portable toilet to Singapore so sewer divers can’t examine his waste]
The massive plane, with a phoenix logo emblazoned on its tail, touched down at Changi Airport at around 3 p.m., hours before President Trump would arrive in a customized version of the same aircraft series. As soon as Kim and his closest aides disembarked, speculation abounded.
“Told Kim Jong Un flew Air China for couple reasons: (1) it’s a 747 to match Air Force One, and (2) flying [Air China] shows solidarity with the Chinese before negotiations,” tweeted “CBS Evening News” anchor Jeff Glor.
Told Kim Jong Un flew Air China for couple reasons: (1) it’s a 747 to match Air Force One, and (2) flying AC shows solidarity with the Chinese before negotiations
— Jeff Glor (@jeffglor) June 10, 2018
“There’s a lot of support coming from the Chinese side,” John Park, director of the Korea Working Group at Harvard’s Kennedy School, told Fox News hours later, citing the loaned aircraft as one example of China’s efforts to maintain its influence during Kim’s high-stakes summit this week with Trump.
Former and current White House officials, however, were less inclined to place meaning behind the authoritarian leader’s arrival on a borrowed Chinese aircraft.
“Did he have a choice?” a White House official responded by text when asked about Kim’s jet, suggesting North Korea’s aging inventory of Soviet-era planes was too unreliable for its leader to travel in.
“If I were Kim, I wouldn’t want to come in on a North Korean jet,” said former White House national security aide Sebastian Gorka. “The guy needed to get here and not in a rowing boat, so China probably threw him a bone.”
A cargo plane from Pyongyang did travel to Singapore on Sunday, stopping in China to refuel along the way. But the aircraft carried the armored limousines Kim will use to make his way around Singapore, and not the leader himself. The plane was the last to arrive on Sunday.
Speculation about the Air China flight comes just weeks after Europe and the U.S. were reportedly ruled out as potential venues for Trump’s meeting with Kim because of the difficulties North Korea would have faced traveling that distance.
Kim’s top aide and vice chairman Kim Yong Chol arrived for pre-summit talks in the U.S. last month on an Air China flight from Beijing to New York, highlighting the isolated regime’s lack of sophisticated and reliable planes.
