Vietnamese authorities were not amused when an impersonator of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, wandered the streets of Hanoi on Friday, just days before the second summit between Kim Jong-un and the US president, Donald Trump.
Howard X, an Australian, said Vietnamese authorities questioned him and another impersonator dressed as Trump and warned them they could be deported after they had taped an interview at a local TV station. The interview was not aired.
“They then said that this was a very sensitive time in the city due to the Trump/Kim summit and that our impersonation was causing a ‘disturbance’,” he said in a Facebook post.
He had reluctantly signed an agreement that he would not give interviews or do any impersonations in public.
Howard X, an Australian-Chinese impersonator of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russell White, who is impersonating U.S. President Donald Trump at the Opera House, ahead of the upcoming Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, February 22, 2019.
Vietnam has announced an unprecedented traffic ban along Kim’s possible arrival route, state media has reported.
The roads department has been reported as saying the ban would first apply to trucks 10 tons or bigger, and vehicles with nine seats or more on the 170km (105-mile) stretch of Highway One from Dong Dang, the border town with China, to Hanoi from 7pm on Monday to 2pm on Tuesday.
This would be followed by a complete ban on all vehicles from 6am to 2pm on Tuesday.
The summit is slated for Wednesday and Thursday.
The move implied that Kim might take a train and disembark at the Dong Dang railway station and go by car to Hanoi. It is not known if he will travel by train from Pyongyang via China or fly to a nearby Chinese city because his overseas travel plans are routinely kept secret.
Officials have said the colonial-era Government Guest House in central Hanoi is expected to be the venue of the summit, and the nearby Metropole Hotel would be a backup.
Reuters and Associated Press