Why did Kim Jong-un avoid smoking during summit?

By Park Si-soo

A tenacious self-control or etiquette for a negotiation counterpart who is nearly double his age?

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is a proven heavy smoker who would find nobody challenging his free cigarette puffing whenever and wherever he wants in his kingdom-like homeland. Perhaps any complaint of his public smoking would constitute a grave challenge to his almighty authority.

But during last week's inter-Korean summit, nobody saw the third-generation North Korean leader in his early 30s smoking in public. Kim might have felt a spike of smoking desire ― a typical symptom of smokers in stress ― during the high-stakes political showdown with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in, 65. But smoking Kim was nowhere to be seen on live TV coverage of the summit and even unheard of in free-flowing post-meeting hearsay.

Then a question arises: How could Kim control his nicotine cravings? Another question is: Why did he do so?

A news report on Monday provided some pieces of the answer, not all. South Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo reported presidential officials saying Kim was first and last seen smoking at around 8 p.m. on Friday in the midst of the post-summit banquet. It happened after he knocked back shots of strong South Korean alcohol. He reportedly puffed a cigarette not in the crowded banquet hall, but in a separated smoking room on the third floor of Peace Hall. Which cigarette brand was unknown.

Officials said Kim was free to smoke, but he didn't.

“An ashtray was put on the tea table (set up on the wooden Dobo Bridge) to let Kim smoke freely during the one-on-one talks with Moon. But he didn't,” Dong-A quoted an official as saying. “We also placed an ashtray in a reception room for icebreaking talks between the two leaders, but Kim didn't.”

The official said Kim seemed to avoid smoking during the summit, taking into account the “magnitude of the summit and etiquette for Moon who is nearly double his age.”