Kim Jong-un ‘hit on’ Sarah Huckabee Sanders during summit with Donald Trump
Kim Jong-un was supposed to be focusing on his meeting with Donald Trump. Instead, he was more interested in one of the women in the room.
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North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un “hit on” one of US President Donald Trump’s senior staff members during their diplomatic summit in Singapore in 2018.
This important piece of information has been brought to light by former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was the unfortunate target of Kim’s amorous yearnings.
Ms Sanders has written a book about her time working for Mr Trump, and unlike the other gazillion tell-all memoirs of his presidency, it’s actually complimentary.
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The book includes a funny, if slightly unsettling, anecdote from the Singapore summit, where Mr Trump tried and failed to reach a concrete denuclearisation deal with Kim.
During the two leaders’ meeting, Ms Sanders looked up from the notes she was taking and noticed Kim “staring” at her.
“We made direct eye contact, and Kim nodded and appeared to wink at me,” she writes, according to reporting from both The Guardian and The New York Times.
“I was stunned. I quickly looked down and continued taking notes.
“All I could think was, ‘What just happened? Surely Kim Jong-un did not just mark me?’”
Ms Sanders told Mr Trump about the incident on their way back to the airport later. He was extremely amused.
“Kim Jong-un hit on you!” the President said.
“He did! He f***ing hit on you!”
Ms Sanders told her boss that was not what she meant, but then-White House chief of staff John Kelly, who was also in the car, backed him up.
“Well Sarah, that settles it. You’re going to North Korea and taking one for the team!” Mr Trump joked.
“Your husband and kids will miss you, but you’ll be a hero to the country!”
The two men “howled with laughter”.
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Ms Sanders is from a rather famous family. Her father, Mike Huckabee, is a pastor and former governor of Arkansas who ran for president multiple times, albeit unsuccessfully.
Political experts are expecting Mr Huckabee’s daughter to follow in his footsteps by running for governor herself.
Her book comes out on September 8.
Kim, meanwhile, has been the subject of increased speculation recently.
Last month, rumours swirled that the North Korean dictator was in a coma. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service reported Kim had delegated some authority to his sister, Kim Yo-jong, due to “high stress levels”.
Then, photos of Kim started to pop up all over the place, putting conjecture about his health and a potential transition of power to bed.
But now in an ominous sign, Kim Yo-jong also vanished from public view. She hasn’t been seen since July 27.
North Korea’s ruling family has a grim history of dispatching senior officials who get too big for their boots. Even when they’re direct relatives of the leader.
In 2017, for example, Kim’s brother Kim Jong-nam was assassinated at Kuala Lumpur airport.
A few years earlier, Kim Jong-il’s son-in-law Jang Song-thaek suddenly disappeared amid reports he had become the country’s de facto leader.
He had been executed. In 2013, the government released a statement calling Jang “worse than a dog” and accusing him of trying to steal “the supreme power”.
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Kim’s relationship with Mr Trump has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride since the US President came to power in 2017.
Mr Trump was initially aggressive towards North Korea, labelling Kim “little Rocket Man” and threatening to destroy him.
Later, the pair developed a sort of bromance. Mr Trump boasted of the “beautiful letters” Kim was sending him, and spoke optimistically about the prospect of a denuclearisation deal.
“He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love,” the President famously said at a rally with his supporters in 2018.
“We’re doing great with North Korea,” he said.
“We were going to war with North Korea. Millions of people would have been killed. Now we have this great relationship.”
At the summit in Singapore, Mr Trump showered Kim with compliments.
“He is very talented,” he told reporters.
“Anybody that takes over a situation like he did at 26 years of age and is able to run it and run it tough – I don’t say it was nice, he ran it – very few people at that age, you can take one out of 10,000 probably who couldn’t do it.”
He called his meeting with Kim “very productive”. The pair signed a document committing them to “lasting and stable peace” on the Korean Peninsula, and saying North Korea would “work toward complete denuclearisation”.
But that agreement has not led to any practical progress and Mr Trump has since soured on Kim. The two leaders have returned to threatening each other with huffy statements.
Speaking for Myself comes out on September 8.
Originally published as Kim Jong-un ‘hit on’ Sarah Huckabee Sanders during summit with Donald Trump
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