He laughed with Trump — then in walked Moon: Kim Jong-un's 'contempt smile' at Panmunjom

[A STUDY OF KIM JONG-UN 7]

Feb. 28, 2019, is a day North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will never forget. It is the date of the "no deal Hanoi summit," in which U.S. President Donald Trump walked out of negotiations in Vietnam, an insult the North Korean leader had never experienced before. Could Kim himself have ever imagined that, just over six years later, he would stand shoulder to shoulder with the leaders of China and Russia at the viewing gallery of Tiananmen Square in Beijing in September last year?

Kim’s elevated strategic status is a reality. He is no longer in a hurry. Even if Trump sends another overture, his new position would be to casually ignore it. How did the young leader of Northeast Asia’s poorest nation, once treated merely as a joke, reach his current position? What choices did Kim make to overcome the failure of the Hanoi summit, and how has North Korea changed as a result of those choices? How has this change altered South Korea’s security environment? We must now deal with a Kim of a different caliber. That is why we must study him now. - Ed.

In Panmunjom, the inter-Korean truce village in the demilitarized zone on June 30, 2019, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's lips were busy keeping "His Excellency" in good spirits.

"If your excellency takes a step forward, you will be the first U.S. president to cross the border."

When U.S. President Donald Trump, standing on either side of the military demarcation line, said "Would you like me to step across? Would you like me to? […] I'd be very proud to do that," Kim seized on the words before the interpreter had even finished — and invited him to cross. A showman like Trump was never going to pass up an opportunity like that.

At 3:47 p.m., Trump claimed yet another photograph for the history books.

Moments later, Kim turned to the press.

Kim said Trump stepping into North Korea, an act that critics of the president said was nothing more than a photo op, was indicative of something more significant — that it was an expression of President Trump's "extraordinary determination to move beyond the bad past and open a good future." He sounded almost like a spokesman, lavishing praise on Trump without pause.

But Kim's expression shifted shortly after from the moment he came face to face with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who had been waiting inside Freedom House on the southern side of Panmunjom.

It was Kim's third meeting with Trump and his fourth with Moon. And for the first time, an expression appeared on his face that had never been seen before: a contempt micro-expression, with only the right corner of his mouth raised roughly 0.8 centimeters (0.3 inches).

A contempt expression appears as a slight asymmetric lift of one corner of the mouth, or a twist of one lip upward. It is an involuntary micro-expression that surfaces unconsciously when a person perceives someone as inferior or feels a sense of dismissal or superiority, according to Jium & Gitdeum, a personal branding research institute specializing in nonverbal behavior. Micro-expressions are fleeting involuntary facial movements — lasting just 0.1 to 0.5 seconds — that appear even when a person tries consciously to control their emotions, and are considered more accurate signals of a person's true emotional state than words.

In Jium & Gitdeum's analysis, Kim's contempt expression was observed seven times across roughly 30 minutes of publicly available footage, lasting an average of 1.2 seconds each time.

Kim had come to Panmunjom barely three months after the collapse of the Hanoi summit, desperate to salvage something. The words coming out of his mouth were more forward-leaning than ever. But his body language could not conceal the discomfort beneath.

I'll play along with your peace show, but I will never trust you again — that was what his face was saying.

The fact that the contempt expression appeared most frequently during the three-way scenes — with Moon, Trump and Kim together — suggests the situation itself was a source of stress. The wound from the Hanoi no-deal was still raw; Kim had to face Trump again and somehow reverse the outcome. Already struggling to manage Trump, he now had Moon stepping in as well, trying to project warmth and harmony. For Kim, it was a rude awakening — and it showed on his face.

According to sources closely familiar with the circumstances, Kim's contempt expression mirrored the tortured behind-the-scenes maneuvering that had produced the trilateral meeting in the first place.

The meeting had come together in barely 30 hours after Trump floated the idea of a surprise encounter on Twitter, now X, and North Korea responded. Kim had been that eager.

But in fact, Kim had not wanted Moon at Panmunjom, and had conveyed that preference to the U.S. side, according to sources. Moon's determination to bring the leaders of all three countries together to reinforce the path toward peace proved stronger — and he prevailed.

It was not the first time Kim had sought to cut Moon out entirely.

According to 27 personal letters released in 2022 by the Korean-American Club — a group of current and former South Korean correspondents in the U.S. — through its foreign policy quarterly Korus Journal, Kim wrote to Trump on Sept. 21, 2018. The leader expressed hope to personally discuss the North’s denuclearization with the U.S. president instead of with Moon, adding that he believes Moon’s "excessive interest" is "unnecessary."

In plain terms: Moon should stay out. What makes the letter striking is that Kim sent it just two days after holding a summit with Moon in Pyongyang. That Kim's contempt expression appeared most prominently when all three were together at Panmunjom may not be unrelated.

Yoon Geon-young, a Democratic Party lawmaker who was deeply involved in arranging the meeting, pushed back on that reading.

"Moon's attendance proceeded after Kim Chang-son, chief secretary of the State Affairs Commission, replied that he agreed to it," Yoon said. "The U.S. side was also aware of this."

Kim Chang-son had long served as Kim Jong-un's majordomo. The episode suggests Kim had been calculating carefully over how to structure the Panmunjom meeting to his own advantage.

Even setting Moon's presence aside, the occasion was a burden on Kim Jong-un — as his consistently tightened expression throughout the event made clear.

The JoongAng Ilbo commissioned Jium & Gitdeum to jointly analyze publicly available footage from two diplomatic encounters: the June 30, 2019 trilateral summit at Panmunjom, and the April 27, 2018 inter-Korean summit at Panmunjom. The institute tracked Kim's facial expressions, gestures, and postural shifts to identify what changed between the two meetings.

In June 2019, Kim's contempt expressions typically appeared alongside what analysts call a "social smile" — a smile that reaches the mouth but not the eyes. The pattern was consistent: a forced smile, followed immediately by contempt. The flashes were brief enough that it was not always clear precisely who he was looking at. But after meeting the gaze of Trump or Moon, Kim would produce a forced smile, then snap back to a rigid expression — again and again.

The contrast between genuine and performed emotion becomes clearest as Kim exits the meeting room after wrapping up his session with Trump. Every smile shared with Trump disappears instantly once he turns away. But after a quiet exchange with his own interpreter, the smile lingers. It was, by all accounts, nearly the only genuine smile Kim produced that day.

"This is one of the moments that most clearly reveals Kim Jong-un's 'pendulum psychology,'" said Kim Yeo-jeong, CEO of Jium & Gitdeum. "His diplomatic smile and his real emotion collide in an instant, and the result shows on his face."

The betrayal he felt over the no-deal and the ambivalence of still needing Trump — both surfaced on his face in a single unguarded moment.

It was a completely different face from the one Kim had worn just one year and two months earlier, at his first-ever summit with Moon at Panmunjom on April 27, 2018.

Drawing on over two hours of publicly available footage, and analyzing 12 nonverbal indicators — including smiling, walking rhythm, tension, dominance, confidence, openness and gestures — the institute found that genuine smiles appeared on Kim's face 4.2 times per minute during that meeting. He broke into a broad smile once every 15 seconds.

A genuine smile — one where both the corners of the mouth and the muscles around the eyes move simultaneously — is known as a Duchenne smile, named after the 19th-century French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne. Kim's Duchenne smiles at the 2018 summit were, analysts concluded, "a clear signal — unlike a ceremonial smile — of genuine satisfaction with the situation and positive expectations for what lay ahead."

The defining image of the April 27 inter-Korean summit was the moment Kim spontaneously invited Moon to cross back and forth over the military demarcation line together — a scene no one had anticipated, projecting a flexibility that had never before been associated with Kim. Trump would later recreate it at Panmunjom.

But the two scenes were subtly different. With Moon, Kim crossed the line back and forth with a broad, sustained smile, holding Moon's hand throughout. With Trump, Kim guided him with polished hand gestures, and limited physical contact to the ceremonial handshake for photographs. Both moments made history — but the atmosphere was different.

At the 2018 summit, Kim emitted a stream of signals designed to project the image of a statesman leading a normal country. His "leaning in" posture — tilting his body toward the other person as a sign of engagement and attentiveness — was sustained for approximately 28 minutes during the Footbridge conversation with Moon.

His average eye contact duration was 3.8 seconds, up 375 percent from his early years in power. Physical contact — touching Moon's hand or lightly grazing his arm — occurred 18 times over 30 minutes.

The scale of Kim's gestures was 1.4 times his average, indicating greater openness. His walking pace reached 72 steps per minute — 20 percent faster than his usual gait — projecting confidence. Through body language alone, Kim was working to recast himself: from reclusive dictator to rational negotiator.

"Kim showed a very human side in front of Moon," said Kim Yeo-jeong of Jium & Gitdeum. "It was a strategy to use the inter-Korean summit as a bridge to the North Korea-U.S. summit — and by displaying modes of conduct North Korea had traditionally shunned, Kim was trying to earn international credibility as a legitimate participant in peace negotiations."

Kim Jong-un smiled at Panmunjom in 2018 and again in 2019. But when those genuine smiles vanished, the stage of peace so carefully set by three leaders crossing the military demarcation line went dark.

The truth behind Kim Jong-un's 11 seconds of tears

“The patriotic and heroic commitment shown by our People's Army soldiers […] is something that evokes tears of gratitude from everyone.”

In the early hours of an autumn morning in 2020, Kim Jong-un stood at the podium overlooking Kim Il-sung Square, his eyes glistening. He was recalling the days North Korea had struggled against the spread of Covid-19 and a succession of devastating typhoons. Powerful storms had swept through the country in August and September, leaving a trail of casualties in their wake.

As the speech wore on, Kim's shoulders trembled a little more with each passing minute.

"I also offer my militant encouragement and thanks to my most dependable combatants of the divisions of the WPK members from the capital city."

He could no longer hold back. He slowly removed his glasses and dabbed at his eyes with a white handkerchief. From the crowd of roughly 20,000, a roar of applause broke out. As the people chanted their pledge to defend Kim Jong-un to the death, he answered them with the word "thank you" — twelve times.

"Few dictators are known to have cried in front of their subjects. Even for leaders of democracies, crying in front of their constituents is a headline-worthy moment." — Business Insider, 2023

It was a scene that would later attach to Kim the image of a "tearful leader." But were his tears truly an expression of love for his people?

Kim Yeo-jeong, CEO of Jium & Gitdeum, a personal branding research institute specializing in nonverbal behavior, assessed Kim's tears as "an attempt to reframe the economic hardship that deepened after the Hanoi no-deal — not as a personal failure, but as a narrative of a leader's suffering and endurance."

She added that "Kim Jong-un's tears can be read as a nonverbal strategy to neutralize criticism and strengthen internal cohesion by sharing emotion, rather than directly acknowledging or explaining responsibility."

A joint analysis between the JoongAng Ilbo and Jium & Gitdeum of footage from Kim's parade speech in October 2020 concluded the tears came at a precise moment.

Kim's voice had already begun to tremble 30 seconds before he reached for his handkerchief. His pitch rose and fell — what analysts read as early signs of emotional escalation. Fifteen seconds before the tears, his eyes began blinking rapidly, measured at 35 times per minute — nearly double the 15 to 20 blinks per minute typical of adult men in ordinary conversation.

Then came what Kim Yeo-jeong called "the decisive moment of drawing emotion to its peak": Kim removed his glasses. He wiped his eyes for approximately 1.8 seconds. Five seconds later, he put his glasses back on with both hands. It took 15 seconds in total before he resumed his speech.

When he did, his voice had hardened.

"Our Party will invariably administer and ceaselessly expand the advantageous policies and measures, which are aimed at improving the people's wellbeing and providing more benefits to them."

But as he said the word "improving," he furrowed his brow and shook his head from side to side — a gesture that contradicted his words. A mismatch between speech and body language is also a known signal of deception. It may be evidence that neither the tears nor the declaration of improved welfare had much to do with genuine love for the people.

"Kim Jong-un's tears were deployed as an emotional device to send the message: 'I too am a victim. I am enduring this alongside you,'" Kim Yeo-jeong said. "In words, he was saying 'I'm sorry to the people' — but when you look at his nonverbal behavior, what that actually reflects is closer to emotion about his own situation."

In practice, Kim's conduct in domestic settings after the Hanoi no-deal moved steadily toward that of an unconstrained ruler. Domineering and hierarchical behavior toward officials was captured with growing frequency. He did not hesitate to hurl insults at senior cadres, calling them "idlers" and "rotten attitudes."

In a comparative analysis of Kim's field guidance visits in 2024 versus 2018, Jium & Gitdeum found that finger-jabbing increased from 2.1 to 6.8 times per hour. The proportion of time spent in the hands-behind-back posture — a signal of dominance — rose from 15 to 58 percent.

Outbursts at officials, once rare, became routine at 1.3 per hour. Turning his back on subordinates also became noticeably more frequent. The average angle of his chin tilt rose from 8 to 15 degrees — a gesture widely read in nonverbal behavior research as a signal of confidence, superiority, and arrogance.

"After the Hanoi no-deal, Kim Jong-un has become fixated on a compensatory drive to prove his leadership to excess," Kim Yeo-jeong said. "He is consumed by a defensive mechanism — replacing the recognition he failed to obtain from the outside world with absolute authority on the inside."

BY YOO JEE-HYE, CHUNG YEONG-GYO AND SHIM SEOK-YONG   [[email protected]]