Trump and Kim’s Cozy Relationship Makes Nuclear Talks Tougher
The leaders, who “fell in love” during their first summit, have few options now that discussions have collapsed.
Illustration: Johanna Walderdorff for Bloomberg Businessweek
Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un often explain their surprisingly warm relationship in the language of romance. They “ fell in love” during the first-ever summit between a U.S. president and a North Korean leader in Singapore last year, Trump said. A top North Korean diplomat similarly describes the chemistry between the two leaders as “mysteriously wonderful.”
Since the breakup of the most recent round of talks in Hanoi in February, however, Kim has registered his displeasure not as a lover scorned, but as a dictator at the helm of an increasingly advanced nuclear arsenal. Over one week in May, he personally oversaw the trials of at least two short-range ballistic missiles capable of striking all of South Korea, where some 28,500 U.S. troops are based.