The Millions

Trump’s Got Mail: About Those Great Love Letters from Kim Jong Un

At a campaign rally in West Virginia over the weekend, Donald Trump alternated between bluster over the Brett Kavanaugh nomination and starry-eyed musing over his surprising new relationship with North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un. “We fell in love,” Trump said. “No really. He wrote me beautiful letters. They were great letters. And then we fell in love.”

Trump’s declaring love for one of the world’s most notorious dictators is another first, but the idea of receiving magical and strange letters from North Korea is nothing new.

One of my memories growing up was of receiving letters from North Korea.

Both my father and mother are from what is now considered North Korea, my father from the capital city of Pyongyang, my mother from a smaller village further north called Pukchung. Although the North/South Korea split is easily accepted as a given by Americans, my parents grew up in a unified Korea. One that, also, didn’t split itself. The defeat of Japan by the Allies meant that Korea was freed from being its colony.

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