SEOUL - When the armoured train carrying Kim Jong Un back from his summit meeting with US President Donald Trump in Vietnam reached Pyongyang Station at 3.08am on Tuesday, throngs of flower-waving North Koreans greeted their leader with"boundless emotions and excitement," the country's state-run media said.
In restarting operations at its missile technology site, North Korea is seeking"to increase its leverage before the next round of talks," said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. But in a telling sign of disappointment, the official Korean Central News Agency's report on Kim's return home made no mention of"comprehensive and epoch-making results" that it had earlier said Kim was discussing with Trump in Hanoi.
Kim might engineer a political purge to keep the elites under control and reassert his authority, Lee said. He might also reshuffle his negotiating team, replacing Kim Yong Chol, a former spy chief who has led negotiations with Washington, with more seasoned foreign ministry diplomats, Lee said. But Kim's insistence on sanctions relief during his meeting with Trump suggested that North Korea has begun feeling pains of sanctions in a way it had never before or that Kim sees sanctions as the biggest obstacle to his ambitious plan to rebuild the economy.
Since taking power in 2011, Kim has focused on reviving the economy, allowing more market activities, as well as kicking off a building boom in Pyongyang and in potential tourist zones on the country's east coast and near its scenic Mount Baekdu.
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