North Korea summit: Trump, Kim have a lot in common

Both were born into wealth and privilege, are capable of vicious attacks on those who anger them and love the spotlight.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un are different but share a number of personality traits. Picture: AP

In the struggle to understand the remarkable summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, a truism has become established - that, for all the apparent differences between the two men, they share a good deal in common.

Both, the observation goes, were born into wealth and privilege. Both are capable of ad-hominem attacks on those who displease them; both love the media spotlight.

“Thin-skinned alphas, both men are wedded to a go-it-alone leadership style, have a penchant for bombast and are determined to project dominance when they finally meet,” The Washington Post wrote.

“As President Trump prepares for his summit with Kim Jong-un, he sees some of himself in the authoritarian North Korean.”

As the US president embarks on a step that none of his predecessors has taken, this may be a consoling thought - that the man he patronised as “Little Rocket Man” is probably not all that different from Big Rocket Man himself. “This is a leader who really is an unknown personality - people don’t know much about him,” Mr Trump observed, with the confidence of a man who believes he knows more than most. “I think that he’s going to surprise on the upside, very much on the upside.”

It is a pleasant fantasy but a fantasy nonetheless. It would be difficult to find two leaders with less in common than Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. If today’s summit is a success, it will be because of the raw realities of power, rather than sentimental notions of friendship.

Mr Trump’s personality has been extensively analysed but what about Mr Kim’s? The people who have recently got to know him best are President Moon of South Korea and the officials who helped to set up two recent inter-Korean summit meetings. At the first of these, the young chairman memorably stepped across the border to greet Mr Moon, a man old enough to be his father, and then, led him back one step into North Korea - an unscripted gesture dense with symbolism and hope for a future united peninsula.

The idea that Mr Kim is a temperamental equivalent of Mr Trump - an aggressive and domineering “alpha male” - was contradicted by the behaviour of the North Korean leader over the next few hours.

There is no doubting his capacity for cruelty, of course; he presides over an oppressive dictatorship and oversaw the execution of his own uncle, and probably the murder of his half-brother. With Mr Moon, though, he was confident but always observant of the respect that traditional Korean politesse demands that a younger man accord to an elder.

The politeness was reciprocated by Mr Moon. Like people across east Asia, Mr Kim is unlikely to respond positively to American notions of “toughness” and abrasive self-assertion. “Chairman Kim is very serious, and well mannered,” says a South Korean official, who played a part in arranging the talks.

“He has experience and he is knowledgeable in many matters. But respect, and appropriate language, are necessary in dealing with him.”

At 34, Mr Kim is less than half Mr Trump’s age (71) but, having spent several years at school in Switzerland, he is in certain ways a more cosmopolitan figure than Mr Trump, a quintessentially New York character.

If the US president is unable to maintain a semblance of camaraderie with the prime minister of Canada, it is difficult to see how he will sustain it with the dictator of North Korea. And if offence is given, or merely taken, then it could be quite enough to doom the whole encounter.

The Times