Republican candidate Rick Saccone's North Korea experience may not be all he claims

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Republican candidate's North Korea experience may not be all he claims

Republican candidate's North Korea experience may not be all he claims Rick Saccone, standing in Pennsylvania’s special congressional election, says he negotiated regularly with communist officials – others remember it differently

Benjamin Haas in Seoul and Ben Jacobs in Pittsburgh
Sat 10 Mar 2018 11.30 GMT

North Korea rarely plays a prominent role in US congressional elections, but Rick Saccone – the Republican candidate for Congress in Tuesday’s crucial special election in Pennsylvania – has made much of his experience in the reclusive country.

A television advertisement features moody shots of a missile launch and goose-stepping North Korean soldiers – and Saccone’s claim that his career as “a diplomat in North Korea” makes him uniquely placed to deal with the looming crisis over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.

Saccone’s campaign website says that he “spent one year on a diplomatic mission in North Korea” and describes him as “the only United States citizen living in North Korea that negotiated with the North Korean regime on a daily basis”.

But the four-term state legislator may be overstating his role.

According to former colleagues, although Saccone is one of the few Americans to have dealt with North Korean officials, he was not a diplomat, and was not engaged in traditional diplomacy.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/10/republican-candidates-north-korea-experience-may-not-be-all-he-claims

[orangecrush]

1. Go Conor!