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US President Donald Trump (right) meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sentosa Island in Singapore, on June 12, 2018. (AP-Yonhap) |
North Korea has remained mum about former US President Donald Trump's reelection for a week, despite the significance the outcome might hold for the North's leader Kim Jong-un and his regime.
As of early Wednesday, none of the North's state media had published any articles, commentaries, or broadcasts about Trump's election victory, although this is not rare considering that it took a similar course in the past.
North Korea has a track record of delaying reports on US presidential election outcomes. When Trump won his first presidency in 2016, it took 10 days for Pyongyang to mention his election victory in an article in a state mouthpiece criticizing South Korea.
As for the election of President Joe Biden, the North had stayed silent for more than two months before it first reported on the news in a propaganda outlet, after Biden was formally sworn in.
It was hardly any different with Barack Obama's consecutive wins.
North Korea's silence raises questions about why the recalcitrant regime is choosing this approach and when or how it might express its position on Trump's win.
Experts said Pyongyang may be considering the right timing to comment, as the incoming Trump administration has only just begun appointing personnel to key foreign policy positions, including US Congressman Mike Waltz as the national security adviser and Senator Marco Rubio as the secretary of state.
Both Waltz and Rubio are known to have a hawkish stance toward North Korea.
Rubio has described Kim as a "lunatic" with nuclear weapons and long-range missiles that can hit the US mainland and has stated that the United States should do "whatever it takes" to stop the North from acquiring such weapons capabilities.
Waltz has strongly called for imposing secondary sanctions against Chinese and Russian energy companies for supporting North Korea.
Since Trump's new foreign policy team has not yet formally taken office, North Korea is likely to wait until his policy on North Korea takes shape in his second term and until he makes an initial statement about North Korea before issuing its own response.
Some experts said Kim's first message to Trump is likely to strike a more hostile tone than an amicable one, considering their failed nuclear summits in 2018 and 2019, and North Korea's deepening military cooperation with Russia.
North Korea and Russia recently ratified a new defense pact that Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed in June, raising speculations that the North may soon officially announce its troop deployment to Russia to support Moscow's war in Ukraine.
During Trump's first term, Trump and Kim had exchanged barbs, raising tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Trump then warned of "fire and fury" against the North, and both of them boasted of having "nuclear buttons" on their desks.
But as the flurry of nuclear diplomacy with North Korea later unfolded, Trump and Kim met three times, although the denuclearization talks collapsed without a deal in Hanoi in early 2019. (Yonhap)
