月: 2018年6月

This last week the whole world was watching the meeting between Mr. Trump of America and Kim Jong Un of North Korea. I have watched international news for over thirty years and we have never seen anything so strange like this.
Of course it is good for America and North Korea to meet and to talk about making the world safe. Of course we should all do this with countries around the world. We need peace and understanding. But we also need to be truthful. We need to be honest. We need to do the right thing.
Mr. Trump did not talk to Kim Jong Un about the poor people in North Korea. Mr. Trump did not talk to Mr. Kim about the people taken from Japan many years ago. Mr. Trump did not really make the world safer. There are no strong plans to end nuclear weapons in North Korea.
Mr. Trump made it okay for Kim Jong Un to continue the terrible ways that North Koreans live. North Korea is a very very poor country. Many people live terrible lives in North Korea. The government gives people no freedom to live. In North Korea there is no freedom of speech. There is no freedom to say what you think. There is no freedom for education. Many people are in prisons. Many people die inside North Korea.
The meeting between America and North Korea gives Kim Jong Un power, and many people may believe that he is now a good leader for his country.
How do people like Kim Jong Un and Mr. Trump become leaders of countries? How is this possible. In Kim Jong Un’s case, he became the ruler through his father and his grandfather, like a king or a queen. In Mr. Trump’s case, he became the ruler of America because people voted for him.
This is a very important difference, and it is something that we all must understand. Mr. Trump is president because people chose him. It seems unbelievable, but it is true. It is a lesson for all of us in our own countries to remember two very important things.
The first thing is that we need to read carefully, watch carefully, and study carefully the actions and words of our leaders. If they are not true, and if they are not good for the people, we must understand why and to use the powers of democracy to vote. Voting changes our societies and it is our important duty to choose leaders.
The second thing that we need to remember is that governments like we see in North Korea, Cuba, Russia, and Syria are not equal the democracies we see all over the world. Yes, there are different kinds of democracy. There are European democracies, South, North, and Central American democracies, and democracies we see in Japan, Korea, and India. They are different in culture, but they are the same in the idea that human freedom is the most important thing.
We need to read more, think more, choose carefully, and remember that freedom is not free. We need to be smart, and careful, and brave to keep it safe from leaders who are dangerous to the freedom and safety of other people.