South Dakota’s governor Kristi Noem has confirmed her new memoir will be “adjusted” to remove a claim that she once met North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
In No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, Ms Noem, who has been discussed as a potential running mate for former president Donald Trump, said she met Kim when she was a member of Congress.
The claim is the latest controversy surrounding her memoir, which is scheduled to be released on May 7.
There was a national backlash last month after extracts from the book published by news outlets revealed the governor once killed an aggressive 14-month-old dog named Cricket by shooting it in a gravel pit.
Ms Noem wrote of her apparent encounter with the authoritarian leader during a passage in which she described travelling to “many countries to meet with world leaders”, according to a review in The New York Times.
“I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all),” she wrote.
After a wave of public scepticism over the claim, Ian Fury, Ms Noem’s spokesman, clarified it was one of two “small errors” that would be changed.
The book’s publisher also confirmed it would be removed from the print edition and “as soon as technically possible in the audio and eBook editions.”
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