WASHINGTON (AP) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un displayed flattery and flowery prose in the letters that forged his diplomatic courtship with Donald Trump, according to a new book about the U.S. president.
The couple's personal relationship has been a key driver of diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang, moving from mutual insults and threats of war to a declaration of love from Trump.
"Rage," by Washington Post investigative journalist Bob Woodward, reveals 25 letters the couple exchanged, in which Kim uses exaggerated words while flattering Trump while they formed an unusual friendship.
Addressing Trump as "Your Excellency," Kim's letters are full of flattering language and personal comments, according to transcripts released by CNN.
"Even now I cannot forget that moment in history when I firmly held His Excellency's hand in the beautiful and sacred place as the whole world watched with great interest and hope to relive the honor of that day," Kim wrote to Trump on Tuesday. Christmas. 2018, after their first meeting in Singapore.
It was the first meeting between a North Korean leader and a sitting US president and even after the collapse of his second summit in Hanoi, Kim described Singapore as "a moment of glory that remains a precious memory."
"I also believe that the deep and special friendship between us will function as a magical force," Kim added in a June 2019 letter.
Three weeks later, the two held a meeting on short notice in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula.
Before the meeting, Trump wrote to the North Korean leader, the third generation of his family to rule the isolated country, that they had shared "a unique style and a special friendship."
"Only you and I, working together, can resolve the issues between our two countries and end nearly 70 years of hostility," Trump wrote. "It will be historic!"
But little progress has been made in efforts to denuclearize the North since the pair's first summit in Singapore, and even US intelligence chiefs have warned that Pyongyang is unlikely to surrender its nuclear weapons.
'Central stage'
Trump, who showed Kim a video in Singapore that included images of condo towers rising from the North Korean coast, compared Kim and his nuclear arsenal to a reluctant home salesman.
"It's really like, you know, someone who's in love with a house and just can't sell it," Trump told him, according to the Washington Post.
He insisted that he "left nothing" in his three face-to-face meetings with Kim.
Negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington have stalled since the collapse of the Hanoi summit in February last year.
But even with diplomacy stalled, Trump has often boasted of receiving "very beautiful" and "excellent" letters from Kim.
A few months after the Singapore meeting, Trump had told a rally of his supporters that the two men had fallen in love.
"No, really, he wrote me nice letters, and they are fantastic letters. We fell in love," he said.
In the book, Woodward writes that the CIA never conclusively determined who wrote and drafted Kim's letters, but the agency considered them "masterpieces."
"Analysts marveled at someone's ability to find the exact mix of flattery while appealing to Trump's sense of grandiosity and being center stage in the story," he wrote.
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