On Wednesday, Aug. 19, President Donald Trump once again spoke positively about his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. When asked about his administration’s goal of denuclearizing North Korea, Trump declined to discuss the issue, turning instead to his relationship with Kim, which he described as “good.” He noted Kim had not liked Joe Biden, Barack Obama or other U.S. presidents, but said that “he likes me” and “we had great meetings.”
Trump also defended his recent decision to scale back major U.S.–South Korean military exercises, saying it was insulting to conduct what he described as a massive war exercise against North Korea when he was “friendly” with its leader. He added that during his presidency, Kim had been “very well behaved.” Trump said South Korea, meanwhile, had made him unhappy by refusing to help with the Strait of Hormuz.
This was not the first time Trump had spoken about his feelings toward the North Korean leader. During his first presidency, Trump described how he and Kim had initially taken a tough stance toward each other. “And then we fell in love, okay? No, really — he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters,” he said.
A dramatic shift in tone
The closeness of Trump’s relationship with Kim Jong Un stands in contrast to the history of U.S.–North Korean relations. During the 78 years of the Kim dynasty’s rule, no U.S. president had previously met a North Korean leader while in office. Trump became the first sitting president to meet the country’s leader in 2018 and, the following year, the first to enter North Korean territory. The purpose of these engagements was to encourage Pyongyang to limit or abandon its nuclear weapons program while advancing U.S. and allied interests.
Yet Trump’s willingness to engage with Kim marked a dramatic change from his own earlier rhetoric. Denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula was already part of Trump’s agenda ever since his first presidential campaign in 2016. Trump had described Kim Jong Un as “a bad dude” and warned against underestimating the North Korean leader. In a February 2016 interview with CBS, Trump said he would seek China’s cooperation in dealing with Kim, stating that “I would get China to make that guy [Kim Jong Un] disappear in one form or another very quickly.”
When asked whether he meant assassinating Kim, Trump responded he had “heard of worse things.” He said if China refused to act, he would “do it a little more forcefully.” In 2017, after assuming office, Trump delivered his first address to the United Nations General Assembly, where he threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” if the U.S. were forced to defend itself or its allies. He also referred to Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man” and said he was “on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.”
The U.S. approach before Trump
Trump’s shift toward a personal relationship with Kim also differed sharply from the approach taken by his predecessors. Throughout his presidency, George W. Bush described then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-il as a “tyrant” and his government as an “outpost for tyranny.”
Bush described North Korea as “a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens” and included it among the countries he called an “axis of evil.” President Barack Obama similarly expressed concerns about North Korea’s human-rights record, describing it as “the most isolated, the most sanctioned, the most cut-off nation on earth.” He said “the kind of authoritarianism that exists there, you almost can’t duplicate anywhere else,” describing it as “brutal and oppressive,” adding that the country “can’t really even feed its own people.”
Former President Joe Biden also took a hard line toward North Korea. In 2023, he warned that “a nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies is unacceptable” and would “result in the end of whatever regime were to take such an action.”
Inside Kim dynasty’s North Korea
The concerns raised by Trump’s predecessors extended beyond North Korea’s nuclear program to the nature of its regime. According to the U.S. Department of State, the North Korean government detains hundreds of thousands of people at any given time within its nationwide network of political prison camps (kwanliso) and subjects them to torture, including electric shocks, chemical exposure, severe beatings, forced nakedness, hanging by the wrists and water torture. Female detainees face forced abortions and infanticide, including cases where guards killed newborns or left them to die; in one case, an infant was suffocated with a wet towel in front of its mother.
The state’s role begins early in childhood. Children from the fifth grade onward receive several hours of mandatory military training each week. Orphans have been sent to coal mines to “repay” the state for their care, while some school activities require children to collect 22 pounds of dried fern or pay a fine.
The government also restricts movement. Unauthorized travel inside North Korea can result in up to three months of forced labor, while entry into the capital, Pyongyang, is tightly controlled. Defectors caught illegally crossing the border face a minimum five-year “labor correction” sentence, which can escalate to indefinite imprisonment or death when classified as a political offense. Border guards are under orders to shoot people attempting to leave the country without permission.
Punishment for political offenses can also extend to the next three generations of a prisoner’s family. The death penalty applies to broadly defined “antistate” offenses, ranging from defection to acts such as sleeping during patriotic events. Extrajudicial executions are a routine feature of governance. Escapees have described public executions as school field trips.
Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea has introduced stricter laws against foreign influence. A 2020 law allows punishments ranging from up to 15 years in prison to the death penalty for watching or distributing foreign media, including South Korean, American or Japanese films. His 2021 directives also banned foreign speech, hairstyles and clothing such as jeans. Yet, Trump, who has spent much of his life around New York’s wealthy social circles, now tells the media “I get along with him,” planning a meet up later this year. Kim Jong Un’s sister commented that she knew “absolutely nothing” of such a plan.
Will Trump strike a deal with Kim before leaving office?
So far, Kim Jong Un has not reciprocated Trump’s personal overtures. His government has praised the two leaders’ relationship but kept personal rapport separate from negotiations, demanding major changes in U.S. policy and acceptance of North Korea’s nuclear status.
Trump has recently acknowledged North Korea possesses 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons and repeatedly referred to it as a “nuclear power,” even as his administration continues to support denuclearization. Whether Trump’s remarks reflect a new strategy for dealing with Pyongyang or signal a fundamentally different chapter in the U.S.–North Korea relations remains to be seen.
His personal rapport with Kim could also raise questions about whether Washington might become more willing to tolerate or take a less confrontational approach toward North Korea’s expanding nuclear capabilities in pursuit of broader diplomatic engagement.
The emerging relationship nonetheless presents an extraordinary historic moment: the president of a country founded on principles of liberty and freedom maintaining close personal ties with the leader of an absolute authoritarian regime.
Edited by James Sutton
Editor’s note: This article has been edited since its original publication.
