Trump Writes to Kim Jong-un Offering Help in Virus Fight, North Korea Says
Category: News & Politics
Via: sister-mary-agnes-ample-bottom • 4 years ago • 46 commentsBy: Choe Sang-Hun
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
President Trump has sent a letter to North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, expressing his willingness to help the North battle the coronavirus, North Korea said on Sunday.
“I would like to extend sincere gratitude to the U.S. president for sending his invariable faith to the Chairman,” said Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean leader’s sister and policy aide, in a statement carried by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency. Ms. Kim lauded Mr. Trump’s decision to write the letter as “a good judgment and proper action.”
In the letter, Mr. Trump “wished the family of the Chairman and our people well-being,” Ms. Kim said, referring to his brother by one of his official titles.
According to Ms. Kim, Mr. Trump also explained his plan to move relations between the two countries forward and “expressed his intent to render cooperation in the anti-epidemic work, saying that he was impressed by the efforts made by the Chairman to defend his people from the serious threat of the epidemic.”
The White House confirmed that Mr. Trump had sent Mr. Kim a letter but did not comment on its specifics.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim have repeatedly touted their unusual relationship. They exchanged a number of personal letters before and after their first summit in Singapore in 2018, and at one point Mr. Trump said he and Mr. Kim had fallen “in love.”
But relations between Pyongyang and Washington have cooled since the leaders’ second summit meeting, held in Vietnam in February of last year, collapsed over differences regarding how quickly North Korea should dismantle its nuclear weapons program and when Washington should ease sanctions.
Since then, Mr. Kim has repeatedly said that North Korea was no longer interested in diplomacy with the United States unless it changed what he called its hostile policy, including sanctions. He also warned that the North no longer felt bound by its self-imposed moratorium on testing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.
On Saturday, Mr. Kim attended the testing of two short-range ballistic missiles by his military.
Ms. Kim said on Sunday that her brother had “mentioned his special personal relations with President Trump again and appreciated the personal letter.” But she said good personal relations between the two leaders were not enough to improve their countries’ ties.
“We try to hope for the day when the relations between the two countries would be as good as the ones between the two top leaders, but it has to be left to time and be watched whether it can actually happen,” she said. “However, we will never lose or waste time for nothing, but will keep changing ourselves to be more powerful for that time just as how we made ourselves for the past two years.”
A senior Trump administration official, who insisted on anonymity, said the president’s letter was consistent with his efforts to engage world leaders during the coronavirus pandemic. The official said Mr. Trump looked forward to continued communications with Mr. Kim.
North Korea is highly vulnerable to epidemics because of the decrepit state of its public health system and the international sanctions imposed over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, which make it hard to ship aid there.
Officially, the North has reported no coronavirus cases, although it says it is waging an all-out campaign against the virus. Outside health experts fear that the isolated country might be hiding an outbreak.
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Putin reaches out to Italy. Trump tries a one-up and reaches out to...North freaking Korea? North Korea hasn't reported one case of the virus. Although I doubt they are being truthful about it, why reach out to them when we are so confused and unprepared right here at home?
Also, whether or not Trump knows it, Kim Jong Un's decision to have his sister deal with Trump's unwanted attention, is an insult of huge proportions. It's comparable to Trump having the personal assistant to Betsy DeVos answer a letter from Kim Jong Un.
What? I got a giggle from John Russell? Shirly, I am hallucinating.
Trump likes to create distractions.
Perhaps fat ass should focus on getting our first responders the PPE they need before reaching out to dictators. I will never understand the thought process of trump or his administration. I guess they are looking for leverage but NK will kill their own people to stop the spread before becoming beholden to america.
Their society is set up to do as their leader says or die.
I know. But he had to do something to one-up Putin's offer of help to Italy. I think the best we can hope for is if someone tells jiggle-chins that the public statement (not return letter, but simply a public statement) by Kim Jong Un's sister was an intentional insult.
their citizens have been in lock down for decades. who visits NK? who in NK can afford to leave? their government officials. fuck them. let covid-19 blow thru their government and military leadership and do our work for us. trumpski is desperate for any type of foreign policy victories he can gain, now that he's bungled the health crisis in the US by denial and foot dragging. NK is low hanging fruit, since the leadership of most of our allies can't stand trumpski now.
it's our state governors that have shown leadership and initiative by making the hard decisions while POS/POTUS has stood in the background denying any responsibility. the best things trumpski could do for the country now is to shelter in the WH, lose his cell phone, and stuff a locker room full of gym socks in his gaping uneducated mouth until we see some daylight in this international health crisis.
Hahahaha!!! This comment is precisely why I love you!!
Exactly. Have not heard N. Korea mentioned at all in the coverage of the COVID19. However, there are unknown numbers of Chinese nationals coming and going in N. Korea.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is a N. Korean outbreak of this virus the leadership could be capable of committing mass murder to contain it.
Well, think about it. They are sandwiched between China and South Korea, both of which have it biggly and they have tons of day traffic to and from China.
It is more likely that they have it and are keeping it quiet.
After all the herd thinning will leave more food for the survivors.
The survivors are already well fed. The general population is not. Some are literally relegated to eating dirt.
My opinion. N. Korea would fare better if the COVID19 only ran through the population and participants of the many N. Korean military parades. Nothing wrong with N. Korea except for those guys.
Help begins at home.
I'm willing to bet North Korea is probably already being ravaged by the virus. We just will not hear Kim's regime admit it. As stated in the article, NK's abysmal public health system is largely incapable of dealing with a pandemic situation. NK shares a large border with China providing large vectors for the spread of the virus. Finally, I have to wonder whether in Kim's twisted mind he sees the virus in his country as a blessing in that it has the capability of wiping out millions of poverty stricken in North Korea resulting in less mouths to feed.
how? are they letting in tourists? do their people travel abroad and return?
There are many flights a day between North Korea and China.
ah, so then NK is well and truly fuked.
ya know, I was just wondering how many deaths around the world the communists will rack up with this BS
cool. the covid-19 express shuttle. coffee, tea, or covid-19?
There is also a lot of cross border trade at all levels between NK and China.
like I said above.
I now agree.. NK is well and truly fuked.
as to how many will die in NK? the world will never really know for sure.
True, but at the end of the day, they are more allies than enemies.
For starters, there's a lot of trade between the two countries.
North Korea Illegally Trades Oil, Coal, With China's Help
China has to play a balancing act. They don't want to let the N Koreans get too crazy-- for example, by shooting off a bunch of Nukes at N Korea and/or Japan. That would not be good for China!
But on the other hand they want the insane dictatorship to stay in power-- China sees North Korea as a buffer between themselves and the west. (In addition, as long as N Korea exists and keeps creating problems for the West, China hopes that that will keep the west a bit "off balance"-- having to deal with N Korea-- so we can't fully focus on confronting China's expansionsist plans in the Pacific , Africa, and elsewhere.
In short, China wants to ensure the survival of N Korea and their wacko regime-- but they also don'y want them to get too powerful.
China's relationship with NK is more a matter of convenience. I think China fears the possible idea of a prosperous and democratic SK on their immediate Southern border. Add the US military presence in SK to the mix and that worries them even more. NK is needed by China solely as a buffer zone to keep the Western powers at arms length so to speak.
It’s hard to ignore Kim’s statement of a ‘big present’ for USA for Christmas.
Christmas 2019 has come and gone.
Must we wait another year for our present?
Considering what we are going through, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Covid-19 was the gift of which he spoke.
Wow! Gotta be amazed at the "fuck em!" attitude from the Left around here. The people of NK are still people. Still human beings. There's nothing wrong - and everything right - with offering them help. It won't be in the form of masks, but it might come in the form of sharing information, and it might result in an easier path to peace in the future.
I thought I was being very explicit as to whom I expected to become infected. sorry you missed it. of course I have compassion for those that are innocent victims of that totalitarian regime. hopefully trumpski's BFF in the NK can see his way clear to trade his nukes for the required medical needs of his people when those meds become available. I'm so optimistic, aren't you? /s
He shits on our allies and sucks up to the dictators. What's good about that? They all lie, they do have that in common. The biggest lies.
"America First!"
Sound familiar?
Maybe we should focus on taking care of our humans first? Just a thought.
You think that this little gesture was a big blow to that effort, huh?
If ONE American died as a result, would it be wrong THEN? You're not stupid, think it out. Why should the USA be bending over backwards to help NK? We shouldn't, America First. Remember?
As a result of what? Sharing information? How would that happen?
What exactly do you imagine "bending over backward" would look like? Since we haven't seen a specific, detailed proposal, it seems a little premature to get upset over it.
The Trump/Un bromance continues.
Trump is looking for that legacy item so he can yell and scream about how great he is. NK has played trump like the punk POS he is. The USA is struggling to get testing and supplies, trump is giving it away to Dipshit Dictators in an effort to make himself look good.
Can't even make that shit up. Meh, I am sure that the cons would have been fine with it if Obama had done the same thing .
I'm not too sure that I believe that.
Trump has said he'll do a lot of things...but then almost always takes it back. (Well, if his promises are positive he renegs---sometimes if they're really nasty he goes through with them.
Trump says a lot of things. Today he whined that if weren't the president he would be making billion$ of dollars. He also reiterated that he was working for free for the Americans and not taking his $450,000 yearly salary. He is such a big man and can not waste any opportunity to tell us how big he is. But, the man sued all the way to the Supreme Court to keep his financials hidden. Yes indeed, he is such a big man.
As far as the murderous Kim Jung Un and Trump. There is definitely something there. Something sinister.
Trump even praised China before he decided to start his childish nickname bullying. Since the majority of what we buy comes from there, it is stupid to start insulting a country we rely so much on for our own survival, that is a very harsh truth. China did the wrong thing, but 2 wrongs don't make a right. Trump mimicking the same denial process, starting testing too late and leaving us all on our own with only state leadership is appalling. It was beyond insulting to read Trumps press release offering test kits to 3 other countries. I thought it was America First.
One of the positions he eliminated was a scientist with more knowledge about these viruses than almost anyone alive. This caused a delay in possible solutions and treatments.