Thread by @BonicMichael

New DPRK book, “Ushering in a New Era of Development in External Relations”, highlights Kim Jong Un’s "summits w/ foreign leaders since 2018 & offer[s] a positive outlook on U.S.-DPRK relations resulting from three meetings w/ U.S. President Donald Trump”.
nknews.org/2021/05/new-no…

2/Published thru its Foreign Languages Publishing House via the Naenara website on Wednesday, the book “also praises Kim’s five summits with Chinese President Xi Jinping as well as summits with leaders from Russia, Cuba, Singapore and Vietnam.” “Kim’s summits with Moon [aren’t]

3/"in the book because the publication is explicitly about “external relations,” and the Kim-Moon summits are in the category of inter-Korean relations."

"The book included a list of all of Kim’s summits with foreign leaders since 2018, except for Moon Jae-in."

4/"The book “says Kim and Trump agreed at the Singapore summit in June 2018 to take “step-by-step and simultaneous action in the course of the effort to ensure peace, stability and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula”, “feature[s] dozens of photos of Kim and Trump together

5/"during their three meetings, and said the two leaders “created unprecedented trust between the two countries.” [Images: Foreign Languages Publishing House]

The “book says the U.S. and North Korea can achieve permanent peace if they “make their way through, hand in hand, with

6/"wisdom and patience” [and] also says Kim and Trump “agreed to keep in close touch in the future” and make “a new breakthrough in the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and in the bilateral relations” after their brief meeting at the inter-Korean border in June 2019.”

7/Remarking about "his summit with Trump as recently as Jan. 2021, [Kim said] “DPRK-US summit talks were an event of the greatest significance in the history of world politics.”"

“Ushering in a New Era of Development in External Relations” could be mistaken as "propaganda" meant

8/for "domestic messaging", yet it's available online to the international community and is really a compilation of Kim Jong Un "Greatest Hits" in IR and summitry w/ world leaders. DPRK has made huge strides during KJU, not the least being his diplomatic

https://twitter.com/BonicMichael/status/1392860655472955395?s=20

9/accomplishments. The fact a that good photo taken in Hanoi "in what was actually a contentious summit...in Feb, 2019" doesn't negate the aspiration that "U.S. and North Korea can achieve permanent peace if they “make their way through, hand in hand, with wisdom and patience.”"

10/And when KJU said on Jan, 2021 that “DPRK-US summit talks were an event of the greatest significance in the history of world politics” in the wake of the failed Hanoi summit, that isn't "propaganda", it's a highly accurate statement.

I think people need to put down the pipe.

11/Reality check: DPRK (and it's citizens) now must have a really low regard for Joe Biden👇:

It’s official: The Trump-Kim Bromance is legendary.

https://twitter.com/whatdefook/status/1392406225615298562?s=20

12/Kim has given Trump rock star status. For indeed, he is the only sitting POTUS ever to set foot on DPRK soil. That was huge to DPRK's leadership, elite, party members, workers, farmers, students, artists - everyone. It was historic and Nixonesque.

https://twitter.com/BonicMichael/status/1392655148841725954?s=20

13/Paradoxically, Trump haters who continue to hate and critics who write off “Ushering in a New Era of Development in External Relations” as propaganda meant for domestic consumption are the real propagandists. The question now is: Is Kim waiting on 2024?

https://twitter.com/BonicMichael/status/1338656094378283008?s=20

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