Hello soldier
The Washington Post seems oddly surprised that North Korea sees and portrays Trump’s lovefest with Kim from its own point of view as opposed to someone else’s.
North Korean state television aired a 42-minute documentary on Thursday that offered a different view of Kim Jong Un’s meeting with President Trump in Singapore.
Gee, imagine that.
Anyway, the point is, Trump made it easy for them. Of course he did.
Notably, the documentary appears to have captured several scenes that international news organizations missed — including one awkward moment when Trump was saluted by a North Korean military leader. The U.S. president then salutes in return.
Though only a brief interaction, it was telling that the salute was included in the documentary, according to Jean H. Lee, a North Korea scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
“This is a moment that will be used over and over in North Korea’s propaganda as ‘proof’ that the American president defers to the North Korean military,” Lee said. “It will be treated as a military victory by the North Koreans.”
Maybe if he’d done some actual preparation instead of telling us he’s been preparing for it his whole life, he would know better than to do that.
Presidents aren’t required to return salutes to military personnel, even U.S. soldiers — Ronald Reagan supposedly started the tradition of the president regularly returning the salute to members of the U.S. military. And it is highly out of the ordinary for a president to return the salute of a member of a foreign military.
Maybe, just maybe, non-military people shouldn’t salute at all.
So my understanding of saluting is that the rules are pretty universal at this point, across branches and countries. Here is a good summary:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-proper-saluting-etiquette-in-the-U-S-military-Does-an-NCO-have-to-salute-a-senior-NCO-Does-an-officer-have-to-salute-a-senior-officer-What-are-the-scenarios-in-which-an-NCO-does-not-have-to-salute-an-officer
Trump should not have saluted a member of the military of a non-ally, or, really, any non-U.S. military (and, really, not the U.S. military either).
What makes this not as bad as it might seem is North Korea is very into military protocol, following the same basic rules our military does. And the rules are very clear: The subordinate person salutes the person higher in rank, and the person higher in rank returns the salute.
The North Korean military leader saluting Trump is unambiguously acknowledging Trump as someone of superior rank. Trump returning the salute does not really mean anything (other than perhaps generally acknowledging legitimacy).
Lee, a North Korean expert, says this shows dererence and will be treated as “a military victory”. This seems like a huge stretch, as returning a salute never shows deference. The other experts in the article use terms like “vaguely improper”, which seems to fit better.
So yet another dumb move on Trump’s part, but not likely to be a big propaganda victory for North Korea.
” The subordinate person salutes the person higher in rank, and the person higher in rank returns the salute.”
So, if the North Koreans edit it to make it look like Trump salutes first….
(I don’t know if this could be done as I haven’t seen the clip in question and don’t intend to go out of my way to do so.)