Kim Jong-un ‘doesn’t deserve’ Donald Trump’s compliments, North Korean defector Grace Jo says after meeting US president
- Jo, who escaped the North after losing most of her family, met US president at White House’s commemoration of National Day for the Victims of Communism
- Trump has frequently praised Kim, talking of their close friendship and even ‘love’
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Kim “doesn’t deserve all those compliments”, Grace Jo told reporters.
Jo, who escaped the North after losing most of her family to repression and starvation, met Trump as part of the White House’s commemoration of National Day for the Victims of Communism.
She said afterwards that she thinks Trump does not really mean it when he speaks so warmly of Kim.
“I think that’s more of a politics [thing],” she said, speculating that Trump was just trying to be “very nice” and “polite”.
“I don’t think he spoke that, like nice words towards Kim Jong-un, as genuine, true feeling,” she said.
“If he really compliments Kim Jong-un in [those] words and that’s really true, then I don’t really agree on that one,” she said.
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Jo said on Thursday that she lost three members of her family to starvation in the 1990s and that her father was killed by the authorities.
She said the rest of her family made four attempts to escape to China but was sent back each time before she ultimately reached the United States in 2008 and became a citizen.
“After I came to America, I learned how we can live as a human being and I feel like, wow, this freedom is amazing,” she said.
