Pyongyang, March 6: The much-publicised second summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi on the last two days of February failed to bring out the positive results. Although the two leaders had a good talk on Day 1 and in the early hours of the concluding day, the proceedings were cut short drastically and there was no joint document signing ceremony. Trump later said that Kim's obstinate demand for lifting the sanctions was something that the US could not meet and hence the meeting failed to deliver.
However, the North Koreans were not complaining. The country's main daily came up with an extensive coverage of the people's reaction that Kim's return to Pyongyang from Hanoi and it was positive highlighting the nation's "single-minded unity" irrespective of the outcome of the Hanoi summit, NK News reported. Kim travelled to Hanoi from Pyongyang by train, a journey that took over 60 hours and returned home on Tuesday, March 5, after staying a few days back in the Vietnam capital after the summit got over. It was his longest stay abroad since he took up the reins of power in December 2011 after the death of his father Kim Jong-Il. Rodong Sinmun, the chief organ of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), came up with a big coverage of the event with responses from industrial units and top government officials. "Through the visit to the foreign country, the power of the single-minded unity... was fully demonstrated to the entire world," WPK Central Committee vice-chairman Pak Thae Dok was quoted as saying. By 'single-minded unity', he meant the "leader and the people share the willingness, breath, and destiny by firmly binding together with the attachment of blood ties which can never be severed." The coverage though celebrated Kim's journey to Vietnam, it did not attach much significance to the summit itself and its significance. The Sinmun also carried a commentary on its second page titled "10 days and 10 nights" in which it emphasised North Korea's "national custom of single-minded unity" whereby the leader trusts its people and the latter follow him confidently.