dictator and a former dancer, drama and entertainment were almost guaranteed.
And the ratings were gold. The global media televised the unprecedented meeting between a sitting U.S. president and the leader of North Korea at 9:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, prime time for those watching in Washington and New York. Whatever the hour—it was 9:00 A.M. in Singapore for Trump, Kim, and the three thousand journalists—the world sat transfixed before their televisions and commented on social media as pundits analyzed every gesture and utterance of the two main players and their supporting casts. Trump’s biographers Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher said that he harnessed his decades of appearing on talk shows and sitcoms, at WrestleMania, and on The Apprentice for fourteen years, his cinematic skills fully evident in his latest gambit with Kim, who was more than willing to play his part.
Even the preparations for the summit had all the elements of a good drama. There were two outsize leading actors known for their penchant for disruption and unpredictability. There was surprise, when then CIA director Mike Pompeo went to Pyongyang over the Easter holiday in late March to meet with Kim Jong Un. There was speculation: Where would they meet? What would they discuss? How would they get along? There were spies who played big roles in arranging the meeting. There was a triumphant hostage release, as North Korea freed three Americans who had been detained for various acts of “espionage and hostile acts against the government.” There was even audience participation: Trump tweeted on April 30, “Numerous countries are being considered for the MEETING, but would Peace House/Freedom House, on the Border of North & South Korea, be a more Representative, Important and Lasting site than a third country? Just asking!”
There were other tweets and statements from the U.S. president touting the coming meeting with Kim rather than managing expectations. Trump had good reason to play up the regime’s rather meager utterances about denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and its conditionality on positive U.S. actions toward North Korea, utterances that over the decades had proven meaningless, given North Korea’s observable actions to the contrary and its history of reneging on previous agreements. A Pew Research Center poll from late April/early May 2018 found that 71 percent of Americans supported direct talks with North Korea. A CNN poll that was taken around the same time echoed the Pew findings, when it reported that a whopping 77 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s plans to meet with Kim, even though just seven months prior, at the height of tensions, only 35 percent approved of Trump’s handling of the North Korea issue. South Koreans also viewed Trump positively as a result of the planned summit; his favorability rating climbed to 32 percent, up from 9 percent just a year prior.
For Trump, his decision to meet with Kim was a foreign policy success that crossed party and geographical boundaries, and he relished chatter about his winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Similarly, Kim enjoyed a boost in his favorability rating that reflected hopes that North Korea was finally willing to change its course. His enhanced global profile was thanks to the unsolicited help he was getting from the U.S. president, who was intent on selling his mastery of the situation, linking his political success to the vague assurances that Kim was making to reinforce the narrative, and getting the public involved and invested in their leaders’ success. According to Trump (and Moon), Kim was now “honorable” and “sincere” in his desire to denuclearize and commit to a peaceful Korean Peninsula; their statements helped to humanize Kim and assisted in his effort to shed his image as the irrational madman and murderer from Pyongyang.
In the months that followed, Trump and Kim would meet multiple times, exchange letters, and tout their personal chemistry, even as the world would see little movement on the nuclear issue.
KNOW YOUR ADVERSARY
As the world counted down the days before the first Kim-Trump summit—on May 10, President Trump announced that the meeting would be in Singapore on June 12—warnings, optimism, premature declarations that peace was afoot, policy advice, and expert observations saturated the airwaves and print media. And given the extraordinary events that led up to Kim’s remarkable pivot toward engagement, and the unsubstantiated claims by Trump and Moon that Kim was committed to abandoning his nuclear arsenal, Korea watchers were understandably examining their assumptions about Kim’s motivations and whether he had, indeed, made a strategic change in his views