Opening a New Era of Development of External Relations

 

Kim Jong Un, President of the State Affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, elected head of state ten years ago, has made an outstanding contribution to defending international justice and achieving global peace by conducting energetic external activities.

 

Strategic Diplomacy Towards Major Powers

 

On the basis of a correct analysis and judgment of the balance of forces and developments in the world political arena, Kim Jong Un conducted external activities with the major powers in the region, thus strengthening cooperation with these countries and contributing to ensuring security and safeguarding peace on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia.

First, he attached great importance to the special traditional relationship between his country and China and strengthened the relationship of friendship and cooperation between the two countries through diplomacy between heads of state.

He met President Xi Jinping of China several times, in Pyongyang, Beijing and Dalian, and has in-depth discussions with him on the problems related with strengthening strategic understanding between the two countries and keeping step with each other in the international arena.

He also conducted energetic external activities with Russia, consolidating the traditional relations between his country and the Russian Federation.

He met President Putin in Vladivostok and discussed the problems of common concern in the international political arena and cooperation between the two countries for the development in the region.

With the relationship between the DPRK and People’s Republic of China and between the DPRK and the Russian Federation becoming closer, the strategic balance between the forces surrounding the Korean peninsula was achieved, and an international situation favourable for defending the stability and peace of the world created.

The news that he met President Xi Jinping several times a year and met President Putin in a city not far away from the DPRK drew special attention of the international society.

The world media organs called his activities with China and Russia as “diplomacy attaching more importance to contents than to form” and “pragmatic diplomacy.”

What is clear is that the mode of his diplomatic activities proved quite effective in deepening friendship between the heads of state, further developing bilateral relations and achieving substantial results.

 

World-Shaking Diplomacy Towards the United States

 

Kim Jong Un presented his image in front of the world as an innovative and flexible state leader with positive diplomacy towards the United States.

As everybody knows, the relationship between the DPRK and the United States has been most hostile on this planet over the past 70 years.

Regarding the DPRK as a thorn in its flesh, the United States has resorted to every conceivable means and method to suffocate the country, which is invariably following the road of independence and socialism.

The DPRK’s response to it has been something beyond imagination. As the United States resorted to nuclear threats, it has possessed the capability with which to make an annihilatory retaliation against the US mainland.

The bilateral relations, which were growing more aggravated, were a source of the gravest threat not only to the situation on the Korean peninsula but global peace and security, arousing a growing concern among the international community.

Around this time, Kim Jong Un arranged summit meetings with the United States several times with courageous and proactive proposals, striking the world with wonder.

The world media reported that the first DPRK-US summit meeting in Singapore on June 12, 2018 was recorded in history as a “handshake of the century,” a “short but great handshake,” which brought down the barriers of the cold war lasting for about 70 years and whose meaning had surpassed that of the “Beijing handshake” between Mao Zedong and Nixon in 1972 and of the “Reykjavik handshake” between Gorbachev and Reagan in 1986. The world commented the first-ever DPRK-US summit meeting as a “super-realistic and historic event,” “convulsions of nature,” “world-shaking event” and “a meeting to be dealt with in the history books and world history textbooks.”

The three rounds of subsequent DPRK-US summit showed the world that the conflict and dispute between the two most hostile countries in the world could be fully resolved by the diplomatic, ie, peaceful methods, not by military methods.

 

For Unity and Cooperation with Other Countries

 

It is a consistent stand of the DPRK to develop, under the ideals of independence, peace and friendship, cooperative relations with all the countries which are friendly towards it and strive for global independence on the basis of the principle of equality and mutual benefit.

In his report to the Eighth Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea on the work of the Party Central Committee, Kim Jong Un clarified the external policy of the WPK for consolidating friendship and unity with all the countries which respect the sovereignty of his country and for achieving genuine international justice.

He vigorously worked to strengthen unity and solidarity with socialist countries which shared the ideals of his country.

He conducted energetic external activities–raising unity and cooperation with socialist China, a neighbouring country, onto the highest level possible, receiving the Cuban leader who visited his country with warm feelings of comradeship and paying an official goodwill visit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Thus he created a good atmosphere for socialist countries, to strengthen solidarity, supporting and teaming up with each other.

In addition, he ensured that his country developed relations of friendship and cooperation with all countries that are friendly to it.

Thanks to his energetic external activities, the external prestige of the DPRK has increased remarkably.