North Korea plays up Kim Jong-un for Nobel Peace Prize amid suggestion he and Trump could share honour

There is growing anticipation in North Korea that Kim Jong-un will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, fanned by reports in state-run media and mandatory lectures at schools, offices and factories across the country.

Suggestions that the North Korean dictator might be in line for the award initially emerged after Mr Kim met US President Donald Trump for their first summit, in Singapore in June, but have stepped up ahead of the two leaders’ meetings this week in Hanoi.

“After the first US-North Korean summit, the authorities began saying during propaganda lecture sessions that Kim Jong-un is a front-runner for the Nobel Peace Prize”, a North Korean government official told RFA.

“Because the two US-North Korean summits are being held one after the other, the authorities began distributing ‘educational materials for the greatness of our highest leader’, including a lot of propaganda about the Nobel prize”, he said.

Another source told RFA that the Nobel Peace Prize is suddenly a hot topic in the North Korean press, with the media claiming that the international media is proclaiming Mr Kim as “the world’s greatest man”.

“The propaganda even says that Western and Japanese media sources are lavishing praise upon the Supreme Leader, saying he’s a potential winner of the Peace Prize”.

The man that Mr Kim is facing across the negotiating table in Hanoi has also been mentioned as a potential winner of this year’s award, with one possibility that the two men share the prize.

“I believe that Mr Trump should receive the Nobel because of the contribution that he has made to achieving peace on the Korean Peninsula, but Mr Kim would not turn the honour down if it was given to both of them together”, said Kim Myong-chol, executive director of the Centre for Korean-American Peace and an unofficial spokesman for the North Korean government in Japan.

Mr Kim told The Telegraph that he “cannot understand” accusations levelled against Mr Trump that he is ceding too much to North Korea in return for vague promises from the North Korean regime to scrap its nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.

“The decision on the award is in the hands of the Nobel committee, but I am sure that Mr Kim would accept it if he was nominated with Mr Trump”, he said. “It would be a great honour and one that indicates that things on the Korean Peninsula are going in a very favourable direction”.