President Donald Trump said it himself to Congress and the American people- “No regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea.” But when it comes to human rights, don’t expect Mr. Trump to hold Kim Jong Un’s feet to the fire at the Singapore summit. The focus is on nuclear weapons, and the young autocrat’s international standing is likely to be boosted regardless of the outcome.
US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a “comprehensive” document on Tuesday following a historic summit in Singapore aimed at the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. There were no immediate details on the contents of the document but Trump said he expected the denuclearisation process to start “very, very quickly”.
In the run-up to Tuesday’s historic face-to-face with Mr. Kim, Mr. Trump has appeared unconcerned about the implications of feting an authoritarian leader suspected of ordering the public assassination of his half brother with a nerve agent, executing his uncle by a firing squad and presiding over a notorious gulag estimated to hold 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners.
Although the breakthrough made at the summit marks just the start of a diplomatic process, it could bring lasting change to the security landscape of Northeast Asia, just as former U.S. President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972 led to the transformation of China.
Still it is important to note that while Mr. Trump highlighted Pyongyang’s problematic human rights record in January during his State of the Union address where he also said the “depraved character of the North Korean regime” demonstrated the nature of the nuclear threat it could pose the president has skirted those concerns since agreeing in March to Kim’s suggestion of a summit.
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