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Earlier this week Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, carried a story stating that US President Donald Trump faced a growing likelihood of impeachment, triggered by the firing of FBI Director James Comey and the leaking of secrets to Russia. The story even quotes Trump’s tweets about “fake news” and being the victim of the worst political witch-hunt in history, concluding that the Trump twitterstorm demonstrated the “vulnerability of the isolationism, unilateralism, and protectionism” of his policies (translation by Dagyum Ji at NK News).
The gathering momentum for impeachment has been reinforced, according to the Rodong Sinmun analysis, by public protests throughout the US inspired by the impeachment of Park Gye-hye. The article concludes, “What is obvious is that Trump could become a miserable president who disappears from the political stage without fulfilling his tenure if he runs amok and fails to get a grasp of reality properly like he has now” (Yonhap translation).
I was with them until that part about American protestors aping South Korean protestors.
And I am apparently not alone: the British betting firm Ladbrokes has Trump at less than even odds to serve his full term. The bookmakers say it was indeed the Comey firing that tipped Trump into perilous territory. But they still have him at 3:1 to make it through 2017.
I have to believe that a certain segment of the Rodong Sinmum readership looks longingly on openness and accountability implicit in its reporting of the internal politics of South Korea and the United States.
But if one steps back, the subtext of the Rodong Sinmum piece is really quite interesting: it presupposes that a reader understands that the country’s leader firing the head of an investigative service is problematic, especially as it appears connected to an investigation into alleged espionage activities. That there is a communications tool, Twitter, that the President Trump uses to communicate to the public, and that his communications reveal, well, a somewhat problematical view of the world. But most importantly, that a mechanism, impeachment, exists, that sovereign citizens can use to remove a deficient elected leader from office.
I suppose that one can rationalize these messages in the North Korean context as the US and South Korea have bad presidents (unlike our Kim bloodline leaders) and their politics are full of dirty dealings hence they must resort to messy impeachments, while we can rest assured in the infallibility of our Dear Respected Comrade Kim Jong-un.
But somehow, despite all the socialization, I have to believe that a certain segment of the Rodong Sinmum readership looks longingly on openness and accountability implicit in its reporting of the internal politics of South Korea and the United States. Even if we Americans have installed “war maniacs” in the White House.
