[In front of a National Assembly ruled by a left-wing party that favors engagement with North Korea and seeks to avoid antagonizing the regime, Trump noted the slave-like conditions North Korean workers face, the malnutrition among children, the suppression of religion and the forced-labor prison camps where he said North Koreans endure “torture, starvation, rape and murder on a constant basis.”]
By Anna
Fifield
 |
President Trump gave North Korea a stern warning during his remarks before
South Korea's National Assembly in Seoul on Nov. 7.
(Melissa Macaya/The Washington Post)
|
TOKYO — President Trump has said on several occasions
that he is willing to talk to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Well, on
Wednesday, Trump did — after a fashion.
The U.S. president directly addressed his
33-year-old nemesis in a speech to South Korea’s National Assembly. This time,
Trump did not call Kim “Little Rocket Man” or use the kinds of rhetorical
flourishes that play so well on Twitter.
But the words that Trump did use cut deeper,
because they struck at the very heart of the Kim regime.
If there is one thing that Kim has shown he
cannot tolerate, it is personal criticism.
“North Korea is not the paradise your
grandfather envisioned,” Trump said to Kim, who, if he was in Pyongyang, was
just 120 miles away. “It is a hell that no person deserves.”
Kim Il Sung, who is revered like a god in North
Korean propaganda, established the country in 1948 as a “socialist paradise” of
free housing, health care and education where people would want for nothing.
Grandson Kim Jong Un claims his legitimacy as North Korea’s supreme leader by
virtue of being a direct descendant of this quasi-deity.
Trump devoted a large part of his address to
detailing the human rights abuses that the Kims have committed in North Korea,
filling his speech with words such as “twisted,” “sinister,” “tyrant,”
“fascism” and “cult.”
“I wanted to stand up from my seat and shout
‘Yahoo!’ ” said Lee Hyeon-seo, an escapee from North
Korea who was sitting in the assembly hall during Trump’s address. “We just
don’t hear people talking about North Korea in this way in South Korea, so I
was very emotional during the speech. I was very impressed.”
In front of a National Assembly ruled by a
left-wing party that favors engagement with North Korea and seeks to avoid
antagonizing the regime, Trump noted the slave-like conditions North Korean
workers face, the malnutrition among children, the suppression of religion and
the forced-labor prison camps where he said North Koreans endure “torture,
starvation, rape and murder on a constant basis.”
Other advocates for North Koreans expressed
hope that Trump’s remarks would remind the world that the country is home not
just to a dictator with nuclear weapons but also to 25 million people who
suffer under him.
“President Trump spoke about human rights in
North Korea more than any other previous U.S. president,” said Jeong Kwang-il,
who was held as a political prisoner in North Korea and now runs the No Chain
for North Korea human rights group in Seoul. “I’m hopeful that American policy
toward North Korea will focus more on improving human rights there.”
The president did not mince words about the way
the Kim regime has managed to retain its grip on the populace.
“North Korea is a country ruled as a cult,” he
said. “At the center of this military cult is a deranged belief in the leader’s
destiny to rule as parent-protector over a conquered Korean Peninsula and an
enslaved Korean people.”
The success of South Korea discredited “the
dark fantasy at the heart of the Kim regime,” Trump said.
It is hard to exaggerate the reverence with
which North Koreans are forced to treat the Kim family. Every home and all
public buildings must display portraits of Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il
that must be cleaned only with a special cloth. North Koreans must bow at
monuments to the leaders and sing songs celebrating their supposedly legendary
feats.
There is no escaping the Kims and the narrative
that they have created a utopia that is the envy of the world.
So to suggest that the regime is founded on a
“fantasy” and that the country is something other than a socialist paradise
amounts to heresy in North Korea.
“This speech made the ‘axis of evil’ speech
look friendly,” said John Delury, a professor of international relations at
Yonsei University in Seoul, referring to President George W. Bush’s 2002 State
of the Union speech, in which he included North Korea as a country seeking weapons
of mass destruction. “That sent a signal to Pyongyang that the Americans are
not open to changing their relationship with North Korea and that the president
was deeply hostile and ideologically hostile to them.”
But others saw an opening from Trump, with his
suggestion that there is a way out of the quagmire. “Despite every crime you
have committed against God and man . . . we will offer a path to a much better
future,” Trump said, noting that this would require total denuclearization.
Victor Cha, tipped to be Trump’s nominee for
ambassador to South Korea, wrote on Twitter that the president publicly offered
a “diplomacy exit ramp” to the Kim regime.
At a news conference with South Korean
President Moon Jae-in the previous day, Trump urged North Korea “to come to the
table” and “do the right thing, not only for North Korea but for humanity all
over the world.”
At recent meetings near Geneva and in Moscow,
Pyongyang’s representatives have signaled an interest in talks with the United
States — as long as those talks are not about denuclearization, a nonstarter
for Washington.
The regime in Pyongyang is likely to react
angrily to Trump’s speech.
After Trump threatened at the U.N. General
Assembly in September to “totally destroy” North Korea and mocked Kim as
“Rocket Man,” Kim took the unprecedented step of releasing a statement in his
own name, calling Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” who would “pay
dearly” for his threats.
At the same time, North Korea’s foreign
minister said the country might detonate a nuclear device over the Pacific.
A U.N. commission of inquiry once charged that
the blame for North Korea’s human rights abuses went all way to the top of the
leadership, leading to calls for Kim Jong Un to be referred to the
International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
That prompted North Korean officials to respond
publicly to questions about human rights conditions in a way they had not
before — a clear attempt to defend the dignity of their leader.
“North Korea tends to react sensitively to
criticism in human rights,” said Cheong Seong-chang, director of the
unification strategy program at the Sejong Institute, a private think tank in
South Korea.
He predicted that the response this time would
be especially sharp because of the time that Trump spent talking about North
Korea and the detail he went into, plus the president’s repeated calls for the
world to isolate the country.
“North Korea is highly likely to take Trump’s
address as a declaration of war and call for a holy war of its own against the
U.S.,” Cheong said.
Yoonjung Seo in Seoul contributed to this
report.
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