According to a report from Gordon Chang, writing at the Daily Beast, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has taken to ignoring Donald Trump based upon a statement issued out of North Korea on Friday.
Noting that the Un has been quiet for months -- including a period where it was reported that he was in ill health and dying -- the Beast report notes that North Korea's leader is having problems at home and may be playing a brinksmanship game with the American president who has problems of his own with a faltering re-election bid.
With the report noting, "One explanation is that Kim is concerned the Trump administration, which has not vigorously enforced sanctions for more than two years, signaled it is about to up the pressure," Chang adds, "... sanctions relief is particularly important now because the coronavirus has almost certainly forced the North Korean economy into a deep contraction, as it has done in neighboring China."
According to David Maxwell of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “The major failure for Kim Jong Un is that sanctions have not been lifted,” and he needs Trump, looking for a boost to his own flagging fortunes, to make the next move.
Maxwell goes on to note that Friday's announcement was aimed at Trump and putting him on notice that the regime “no longer appreciates President Trump’s unconventional, experimental, top-down, pen-pal diplomacy.”
"The foreign minister’s statement denigrating the personal ties with Trump was made by a relatively low-level official, leaving room for more senior figures to walk it back. Kim probably thinks that Trump, running for re-election, will have to give him what he wants to avoid a breakdown in relations," Chang wrote. "That may be overplaying his hand, something Kim did in Hanoi in February of last year when he tried what Maxwell calls North Korea’s 'long con,' getting almost-complete sanctions relief for giving up little of its weapons programs."
Chang goes on to note that the Trump administration appears to want to work with North Korea, but that Un is risking a lot trying to get the concessions he wants.
"Kim can continue to try to intimidate Trump—'orchestrated wrath' is what Donald Kirk aptly calls it—but if he fails he will have damaged links with the only power that can give him what he needs," he wrote. "Kim probably realizes he’s in a fix. He needs, for regime survival, both foreign enemies and foreign cash. Getting one undermines the possibility of obtaining the other."
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