Why is North Korean media “silent” about the meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un?
North Korean media lavished praise on a South Korean delegation's visit to Pyongyang this week, but made no mention of the historic meeting between leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump scheduled for May.
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| US President Donald Trump (left) and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Photo: Getty |
The meeting between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump scheduled for next May has attracted special attention from the media around the world, except for North Korea, Reuters reported.
According to Reuters, North Korean media seemed to pay special attention to the visit of the South Korean delegation to Pyongyang earlier this week. Meanwhile, the state media of this country did not mention two historic talks scheduled to take place in the near future: the meeting between leader Kim Jong-un with South Korean President Moon Jae-in next month and with US President Donald Trump in May to discuss the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.
On March 8, at a press conference at the White House after completing a visit to Pyongyang, South Korean National Security Council Director Chung Eui-yong announced that North Korea is ready to negotiate denuclearization with the United States and has pledged to stop nuclear and missile tests during the negotiations. According to this official, President Trump has accepted an invitation to meet directly with Mr. Kim Jong-un in May.
This information immediately became a topic of interest for the world media. Meanwhile, the North Korean people still seemed unaware of this breakthrough.
Commenting on this, Kang Mi-jin, a North Korean defector who works for the Daily NK news network, said: “North Korea has not yet announced that the two Koreas will hold a summit in April. I believe this decision is only circulating among high-ranking North Korean officials.”
“In North Korea, the leadership will decide not to announce to the media until they know for sure that those summits will take place,” said Shin Beom-chul, a professor at Korea Foreign Affairs University.