Call it the diplomacy of low expectations: After Kim Jong Un’s regime spent much of the past year threatening its neighbors and the U.S. with its nuclear weapons, his sister got a surprisingly warm reception at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. And North Korea—having sent athletes and cheerleaders to the Games as well—got the kind of publicity that should have been reserved for South Korea, which organized, paid for, and is hosting the event.
Here are some of the recent headlines:
North Korea heads for diplomacy gold medal at Olympics: analysts (Reuters)
Kim Jong-un’s Sister Turns On the Charm, Taking Pence’s Spotlight (The New York Times)
North Korea cheerleaders making quite an impression at Winter Olympics (USA Today)
Michael Bristow, the Asia-Pacific editor at the BBC, said that Kim Yo Jong in particular had “bolstered the image of North Korea.”(Such image management is her job as deputy director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the North Korean Communist Party.) But he noted that “not everyone has been taken in.” The Japanese foreign minister dismissed her performance as “smile diplomacy.”
“It’s an odd situation where you have a country, North Korea, that’s been developing nuke weapons in contravention of UN sanctions appearing quite well,” Bristow said, “and a country like America, which has been the staunch ally of South Korea, coming across as quite badly.” Vice President Mike Pence, who attended the Games, was not noted for his “smile diplomacy;” he did not greet the North Korean emissary, nor stand for the arrival of the joint Korean women’s hockey team.