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Post by Admin on Mar 12, 2018 18:22:59 GMT
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may propose sending his sister, Kim Yo-jong, to the US as part of efforts to launch direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang, according to a South Korean diplomatic source.
That may be one of a number of possible messages South Korean envoy Chung Eui-yong will deliver to US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in Washington this week, the source told the South China Morning Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Kim Jong-un has arrived in Vietnam for his second summit showdown with Donald Trump as the US President vowed to get tough on North Korean nukes.
Grinning broadly, the dictator stepped off an armoured train before being driven to the capital, Hanoi, in a bulletproof Mercedes limo for crunch talks with Trump.
Meanwhile Trump jetted off on Air Force One for what he predicted will be a “very productive summit” which will kick off with a private dinner on Wednesday.
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Post by Admin on Mar 13, 2018 18:16:49 GMT
“Kim Jong-un has a certain message, which is not publicised to be delivered directly to the Trump administration. It’s something very unconventional and something very unusual. I don’t know if the US will disclose this message to the public.” Chung will deliver “conditions from the North Korean side to start some bilateral dialogue with the United States,” the source said. “Maybe as Kim Jong-un sent his sister to South Korea, perhaps he has the intention to send his sister to Washington DC. She is the most powerful weapon of North Korea now.” Chung is travelling to DC with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service chief Suh Hoon who, according to multiple South Korean diplomatic sources, will meet with his US counterpart Mike Pompeo.
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Post by Admin on Mar 15, 2018 18:19:09 GMT
Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean leader’s younger sister, spearheaded a charm offensive from Pyongyang when she attended the start of the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea last month, and invited South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in to visit Pyongyang. Kim Yo-jong was the first member of the North’s ruling dynasty to visit South Korea. The younger Kim’s presence in Pyeongchang laid the groundwork for visits by two South Korean government delegations to Pyongyang after the Games ended. What has followed represents a reversal from the militaristic threats Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump lobbed at each other – Kim via North Korea’s state media and Trump via Twitter – throughout the second half of last year. John Park, the Korea working group director at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, shed further light on the messages Chung was reportedly bringing to Washington. “There were things discussed in secret [between Chung and Kim in Pyongyang] that are only for US ears,” Park said at a Korea Society event in New York. “That creates a lot of anticipation about what that might be. That’s the part that we’re waiting to potentially hear about, if that becomes a basis that’s sufficient for the US side to move forward in terms of talks.”
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Post by Admin on Mar 17, 2018 18:35:51 GMT
While some writers have since criticized the media frenzy, arguing that we should resist fawning over Kim Yo-jong, few pointed to gender stereotypes that underpinned this admiration. By overlooking these assumptions, however, we fail to expose the highly gendered nature of mainstream accounts of women in international relations and foreign policy.
Seeing women as natural peacemakers has a long history across cultures and continents. Through various processes of socialization, men and women are often associated with gender-specific traits: men are viewed as strong, aggressive, rational, and courageous; women are seen as passive, peaceful, emotional, charming, and seductive. These binary distinctions contribute to men and women’s unequal treatment, not least in the male-dominated realm of foreign policy.
Manifestations of strict gender identities have been recurring throughout the Korean Peninsula crisis, not least with U.S. President Donald Trump’s boasts of possessing a “much bigger” and “more powerful” nuclear button than his North Korean counterpart. Gender bias is also found in media portrayals of Kim Jong-un and his sister, with the former depicted as an irrational, violent megalomaniac, while the latter’s “charm offensive” conquers the hearts and minds of South Korea.
Likewise, it is no coincidence that Trump and Kim Jong-un both chose to send close female relatives to the Olympic Games, likely in a bid to soften the public images of their respective countries. Ivanka Trump’s arrival at the closing ceremony was first and foremost ceremonial, and seen by some as an attempt to counterweight the coverage of Kim Yo-jong. It demonstrates the potential for stereotypes to be deployed by men in power for public diplomacy objectives.
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Post by Admin on Apr 30, 2018 18:35:28 GMT
News broke Friday morning, that two of the most powerful men in the world — Kim Jong Un, the supreme leader of North Korea, and Moon Jae-in, the president of South Korea — were conducting historic peace talks. These talks come 73 years after the two countries separated, and reports indicate that the watershed summit was helped along by Kim Jong Un’s little sister, Kim Yo Jung. As vice director of the Workers’ Party of Korea Propaganda and Agitation Department, Kim Yo Jong (who is believed to be 30) is one of North Korean leader Kim’s most trusted aides and the youngest of his siblings. She reportedly went to school in Switzerland and attended college in Europe, and according to CNN, serves as an adviser to her brother’s regime, even ruling the country briefly while Kim Jong Un suffered from reported gout or diabetes in 2014. On Friday, during the Inter-Korean Summit at the Peace House in South Korea, she was the only woman at the table and sat next to the North Korean leader, taking notes. She handed her brother a pen to sign a guestbook and, according to the U.K.’s Independent, she blushed when South Korean president Moon Jae-in called her a “celebrity” for appearing at February’s Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. According to CNN, Kim Yo Jong had a big hand in the orchestration of the summit: “It was Kim who personally delivered a letter on her brother’s behalf to South Korean President Moon Jae-in as communications resumed between the nations.”
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