Tae Yong-ho, who was Pyongyang’s envoy to the UK before seeking asylum in South Korea in 2016, said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un would want US presidential nominee Donald Trump to win in November.
“What Kim Jong-un wants more than anything at this moment is for Trump to win the US presidential election and for the trilateral security cooperation of South Korea, Japan and the US -- a Biden era legacy -- to become obsolete,” Tae told The Korea Herald on Sunday.
Trump, speaking during the final Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, said when he returns to the White House he would “get along with” Kim and that the North Korean leader would “like to see me back, too.”
“I think he misses me if you wanna know the truth,” he said.
Tae said the summit between the US and North Korea leaders falling apart in 2019 “did not seem to have led to a cut in ties.” “Strangely enough, they still exchanged ‘love letters.’ They appear to have kept in touch, leading Trump to believe that Kim is rooting for his victory,” he said.
The former North Korean elite said Kim seems to have reciprocated Trump’s recent courtship by bringing up dialogue for the first time in recent years earlier this month.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the transfer of a new tactical ballistic missile weapons system on Aug. 4, the North Korean leader said, “Whether it be dialogue or confrontation, the choice is ours.”
Tae said Kim “gave the Trump side a sign by saying he may choose dialogue.”
If Trump talks to Kim again after he is re-elected, it was unclear whether it would be with the aim of completely denuclearizing North Korea or to stop at merely eliminating North Korean nuclear threats to the US, he said.
“The signs are not reassuring that this time, Trump would go into talks with Kim with complete denuclearization of North Korea as the end goal,” he said.
Tae said North Korean denuclearization missing in both Democratic and Republican party platforms was “extremely worrying.”
“For Kim Jong-un, it is a very encouraging feat that denuclearizing North Korea was not stated as a goal in the party platforms of the two US parties,” he said.
“He would take this as another progress in North Korea gaining recognition as a nuclear state, after Putin indirectly acknowledged his country’s nuclear weapons status during the summit in Pyongyang in June.”
He said it was important for the US, Japan and like-minded countries to continue to together voice that North Korea “will never be recognized as a nuclear power.”
Tae said the Democratic Party presidential nominee Kamala Harris saying she will not cozy up to Kim in her nomination acceptance speech last week is something “very threatening and uncomfortable (for the North Korean leader) to hear.”
“The vice president is in essence saying she would live up to the spirit of the Camp David summit based on the trilateral cooperation of the US, South Korea and Japan,” he said.
“On the other hand, it is good news for Kim Jong-un that Trump is reaching out to him again,” he said. “He is pining for him to win and reconnect.”
Tae was made the secretary general of the South Korean presidential advisory council on unification of the Korean Peninsula in July, after his term as a member of the National Assembly ended in May.
He is the first North Korean defector to be elected into the National Assembly by a constituency. Also in a first as a North Korean defector, he was elected into a leadership role of one of two main political parties of South Korea -- the ruling People Power Party -- as executive member of the supreme council.
