Kim Jong Un—the dictator Donald Trump has repeatedly cozied up to, including in tweets and public statements last week—is believed to have had a top North Korean envoy to the United States executed in the wake of February’s failed summit in Vietnam. According to a South Korean report, Kim Hyok Chol, who led the Hanoi negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, was killed by firing squad in March outside the North Korean capital in what’s being described as a “purge” of the country’s top nuclear negotiators. Four other foreign ministry officials were also reportedly executed, and at least one, a senior official who was photographed last year handing Trump a letter of goodwill from the Kim regime—has been sent to a prison camp.

The disturbing revelations, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the U.S. is looking into, stand in stark contrast to Trump’s declarations that Kim is a “great leader” who “wants to see wonderful things for his country”. The president frequently praises the brutal strongman, and last week sided with Kim over his own administration officials to downplay renewed missile testing. “North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me,” Trump tweeted. “I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me.”

Trump also gleefully noted that Kim seems to share his view of his current top 2020 challenger, writing that he “smiled when [the Kim regime] called Swampman Joe Biden a low I.Q. individual, & worse.” “Perhaps that’s sending me a signal?” he wrote. In the midst of the ensuing backlash, Trump barely made an effort to come up with a convincing lie, tweeting that he was “actually sticking up for Sleepy Joe Biden while on foreign soil,” explaining that his jabs at the current Democratic frontrunner were “softer” than Kim’s. Kellyanne Conway similarly shrugged off questions of impropriety, telling reporters that Trump hadn’t consulted with Kim—they’d merely reached “the same conclusion separately” about Biden.

But the reported executions of Kim Hyok Chol and others underscore precisely why Trump’s ceaseless praise of the dictator is so problematic. The senior envoy was killed for having allegedly been “won over by the American imperialists to betray the supreme leader,” per the report. He’d led talks in the second Trump-Kim summit, which broke down before the two sides could even agree on first steps toward denuclearization. Kim Yong Chol, who delivered the “very nice” letter from Kim to Trump after their first summit in 2018 that made the president fall “in love” with his North Korean counterpart, was reportedly sentenced to the remote prison camp for “re-education,” along with an interpreter who made an error during the summit that “undermined” the regime’s reputation.

Such tactics are entirely in character for the Kim regime. But it’s unclear whether the reports will matter to Trump, who has shown a willingness to look the other way at human-rights abuses, as long as those who perpetrate them are friendly to him personally. The U.S. is currently seeking to verify the report in South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo, which was based on the account of an anonymous source, but next steps remain a mystery. “We’ve seen the reporting to which you are referring,” Pompeo said in a news conference in Berlin Friday. “We’re doing our best to check it out.”

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