0:15

Pushkin from

0:19

Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background,

0:22

the show where we explore the stories behind

0:24

the stories in the news. I'm Noah

0:27

Feldman. This week

0:29

we're going to look at North Korea, and in particular

0:32

the leader of North Korea, the fascinating

0:34

and eccentric Kim Jong Lun. Who

0:37

is Kim Jong Lun? We have

0:40

this tendency to think of him as a

0:42

kind of wild eyed, tyrant, ridiculous,

0:45

pot bellied, more or less a child

0:48

with an eccentric love of the Chicago

0:50

Bulls, a love that's led him straight into

0:52

the arms of the almost equally eccentric

0:55

Dennis Rodman. At the same time, we

0:57

also think of Kim Jong Lun as a dangerous guy.

1:00

Tortures his own citizens, killed

1:02

off his uncle, tortures Americans

1:04

who happened to find their way into North Korea,

1:07

and, perhaps most frighteningly, commands

1:09

a nuclear arsenal and increasingly

1:12

sophisticated missiles that have the

1:14

range to attack Japan and maybe even someday

1:17

the United States itself. Donald

1:19

Trump is also interested in Kim Jong Lun,

1:22

and in fact, it's hard to think of any other world

1:24

leader except possibly Vladimir Putin who's

1:26

gotten quite the amount of attention

1:28

that Donald Trump has given to Kim Jong

1:31

Un. On some level, Trump

1:33

treats Kim Jong Un like a dangerous

1:35

wild man. On the other hand, often

1:38

it sounds like our present has a lot of love

1:40

for Kim Jong Un. I just received a beautiful

1:43

letter from Kim Jong Un. I can't tell you

1:45

the letter, obviously, but it was a very her

1:47

still, very warm, very nice letter. I appreciate

1:49

it, and I'll say it again. I think

1:51

that North Korea has

1:54

tremendous potential. So

1:56

is Kim Jong un genuinely crazy?

1:59

Or is he crazy like a fox? Is

2:01

he so clever that he's managed actually

2:03

to play the president of the United States and

2:06

to use rational strategy to

2:08

gain control over his country, improve

2:10

the condition of his citizens, and advance

2:13

his interests on the world stage. These

2:15

are questions that Anna Fifield from The Washington

2:18

Post has been trying to make sense of in

2:20

her new book, The Great Successor

2:23

The Divinely Perfect Destiny of

2:25

Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un. To

2:28

understand the North Korean leader's rise to power, she

2:30

started by looking at his childhood. When

2:33

he was twelve years old, Kim

2:35

Jong Un moved to Berne, the capital

2:37

of Switzerland, where his older brother was already

2:40

studying at a private English

2:42

language school there. He joined him there.

2:45

And you know, he had traveled in

2:47

the outside world before. His mother had

2:49

taken him to Disneyland in Paris

2:51

and in Tokyo, you know, so he'd been

2:53

out in the world. But this is as Disneyland

2:55

as the world, true. Yeah,

2:58

maybe just as fake as Pyongyang, but a different

3:00

kind of fake. So

3:02

he moved there to Switzerland,

3:04

and this was a chance

3:06

for him to experience a little

3:08

bit of the world and kind of have more

3:11

freedom because ironically, you know, even

3:13

though he was this princeling

3:15

in North Korea, he was very isolated

3:18

there. He lived on these palatial

3:21

compounds. He didn't even

3:23

know his half siblings. He only had

3:25

his older brother and old

3:27

younger sister to play with. He

3:30

didn't go to school. He had tutors

3:34

exactly. He's like some you know, medici

3:36

from Yeah. So he when

3:39

he went to Switzerland, that was a chance for him

3:41

to have a little bit of normality. So

3:43

he went to school. He was

3:46

said to be the son of North Korean

3:48

diplomats. He went with his aunt

3:50

and uncle who they were posed as

3:53

his parents during that time. So,

3:55

yeah, he played basketball every

3:57

day after school, he sat

3:59

through classes. You know, he struggled to

4:01

learn German, but he did

4:04

eventually become conversant in it

4:06

and in English during that period,

4:09

and he was able to have something of

4:11

a normal life. And I actually

4:13

managed to track down his aunt and uncle

4:16

who looked after him during that period. They

4:19

defected to the United States in nineteen

4:21

ninety eight while they were looking after Kim Jong

4:23

un. You have a great theory about why they

4:25

did that. Tell us what that was. Yeah,

4:28

so when I met them, they

4:30

told me it was because partly

4:33

because they wanted to be a bridge between North

4:35

Korea and the United States, and

4:37

partly because that sounds so an

4:39

outside of that sounds absurd, and I take it you to

4:42

me, it also sounded absurd, and I didn't believe

4:44

it for a second. They

4:47

also said they were trying to get medical assistance

4:49

for Kim Jong UN's mother, who had been diagnosed

4:51

with breast cancer, And I think that's

4:54

really the truth. They saw that their linked

4:56

to the regime, there the reason that they

4:58

held this privileged status within the regime.

5:01

You know, had a terminal illness, so

5:03

mainly Kim Jong UN's mother. Kim Jong UN's mother

5:05

was not formally speaking married to Kim

5:07

Jong UN's father. No, she was a de facto

5:10

First Lady of North Korea and very powerful

5:12

within that regime. So I think

5:14

they saw that their privileged status

5:16

would not exist forever and they took

5:18

the opportunity to escape. So

5:20

they did, in the middle of the night, take

5:22

a taxi to the American embassy and

5:25

burn and ask for political

5:27

asylum, and they were granted it. So they've been living

5:29

here since nineteen ninety eight. Now

5:31

in your book, you protect their

5:34

identities, but you must

5:36

do an amazing job of sleuthing to turn

5:38

them up, and you do have some really

5:40

fascinating detail about what they're doing with

5:42

themselves. Yeah, that's right. So they

5:45

arrived in the United States, was very limited

5:47

English. They were

5:49

obviously the CIA wanted to talk to them

5:52

a lot at the beginning about what they

5:54

knew about the family and the regime. But

5:56

they quickly settled into life

5:58

in America. By

6:01

you know, they opened a dry cleaners, just like many

6:03

Korean immigrants to the United States,

6:06

and they quickly adapted to this life.

6:09

They were working incredibly hard, their

6:11

three children went into American

6:13

schools and flourished. You know, they have all

6:16

gone on and graduated from good colleges

6:18

and are living normal kind of Korean

6:20

immigrant to American

6:23

dream lives. I mean, I can hardly imagine

6:25

a better cover for people

6:28

fleeing North Korea than mixing

6:30

in with the community and opening a small business and working

6:33

hard at it. Are they financially

6:36

in need of doing that, do you think? I mean, they're

6:39

working hard as part of their cover. They're working

6:41

hard because they're broken. The only money they have is the money they're

6:43

making from their drakening business. They're

6:45

not broke, They are comfortable. They

6:47

told me that they received two hundred thousand dollars

6:49

from the CIA at the beginning to buy

6:52

a house, and that they have not

6:54

received any assistance since them. I mean, that's

6:56

what they told me. That's all I have. But

6:58

you know, that's incredible. I mean that could be the government's certainly

7:00

a cheap yeah, well yeah, And but they

7:02

have worked very hard and they have lived

7:05

their own American dream. And presumably,

7:09

although you're not disclosing their their identities,

7:12

prisumably their identities are known to North

7:14

Korean intelligence or do you think they're genuinely

7:17

missed or skipped out by by North

7:19

Korean intelligence. I imagine the

7:21

North Koreans would know about them,

7:24

but I don't know. I don't know if they know where they

7:26

are. Yeah, I mean, and that was a big

7:28

part of the reason that I went to great lengths to preserve

7:30

their anonymity and not disclose exactly

7:33

where they are, because yes, I do not

7:35

want the North Koreans to find them the right and

7:37

I hope you didn't even write it down

7:39

in your notes on any electronic device. I did

7:41

not in my brain all over which they can

7:43

get into. So here's

7:46

young Kim Jong un. You describe how he first

7:48

went to the American school, and then after his aunt

7:50

and uncle left, he actually switched

7:52

to a public school, to a

7:55

German speaking Swiss publics

7:57

or state school. You say he

7:59

had been isolated before and this was his chance to interact

8:01

with other kids, But in your telling and from

8:03

the people you spoke to, it sounds like he was actually a

8:05

pretty lonely kid, even in

8:08

Switzerland. Yeah. I think

8:10

that he found it quite frustrating not to

8:12

be able to communicate. So when he went

8:14

into this German speaking school after

8:17

his aunt and uncle had defected, and you

8:19

know that was probably the coats. To avoid

8:21

having to explain why his parents suddenly

8:24

changed overnight. He went

8:26

into a like a reception class

8:28

where he was learning

8:31

German, learning his lessons in very easy German

8:33

at the beginning to adjust, and then he went into

8:36

a normal classroom there, but

8:38

he did seem to have some difficulties

8:41

fitting in. Some former classmates

8:44

described how he would lash out. He would

8:46

kick their shins or spit at them and things

8:48

in frustration. But then he did

8:51

have a couple of good friends who

8:53

he did invite back to his house, and

8:55

one of them, who was the son of Portuguese immigrants,

8:58

Kim Jong actually told him. He showed him

9:00

a picture of Kim Jong il and said this is my father,

9:03

and this kid laughed and said, yeah, right, your

9:05

father as the leader of North Korea, and

9:07

Kim Jong wan just let it go. And of

9:09

course this classmate Frand

9:12

discovered some years later that Kim

9:14

Jong Gond really was telling the truth. So

9:17

it's not a normal childhood by

9:19

any measure, even though it may have been comparatively

9:21

more normal than it was for Kim Jong

9:24

Gond. Where he lived at home in North Korea. Yeah,

9:26

nothing about his childhood was anywhere

9:28

And what his aunt told me was that

9:31

from that day, his eighth birthday,

9:34

when he was unveiled as the

9:36

future leader of North Korea, it had

9:38

just become impossible for him

9:40

to live a normal life. And some of

9:42

the kids who knew him in Switzerland said

9:45

they did find it kind of weird and surprising

9:47

that when he was out on the basketball

9:50

court after school there would often

9:52

be this little lineup of Korean

9:54

adults sitting in deck chairs, cheering

9:57

and clapping excessively for him whenever

9:59

he scored a point in the

10:01

game. Can I actually ask about the basketball because

10:03

that will turn out to be very important later

10:05

on. His obsession with the Chicago

10:08

Bulls in particular, who were the

10:10

greatest team playing basketball at the time that he

10:12

was a kid, turned out to be relevant to his later

10:14

career and will come to that. But

10:16

why basketball, first of all, any

10:19

sense of why this archetypally

10:21

American sport, which admittedly was globalizing

10:24

very much in this period of time, in part through

10:26

the avenue of the Bulls and their great star

10:29

Michael Jordan. But he thought on why

10:31

he became obsessed with basketball and the

10:33

other question I'm dying to know is was

10:35

he any good at it? It's not that easy

10:37

to play basketball, especially if you're a short

10:40

and slightly round child. I mean,

10:42

there's loving it and then there's loving to play at Those aren't

10:44

exactly the same thing. Yeah, right, So it's

10:46

a funny story how he became interested and

10:48

there. When he was a child, he was really

10:50

obsessed with machines like planes

10:53

and anything with an engine. Boys,

10:56

Yeah, exactly. He loved to make

10:59

model airplanes and fly them and things like that.

11:01

But his mother became very concerned that

11:03

he was so obsessive about this. You

11:05

know, he would ring he's making a

11:07

model ship. He would ring an

11:10

actual naval engineer from

11:12

the North Korean People's Army to ask a

11:14

question at three o'clock in the morning. You know,

11:16

this is his sense of entitlement, and

11:19

the admiral would answer the

11:21

phone. Can be hard to read those instructions.

11:24

And so his mother was concerned that

11:26

he was becoming too obsessive with

11:28

this, and she wanted to get him into sport. And

11:31

there is this Korean belief, you

11:33

know, South Korean, North Korea, to this day

11:35

that if you play basketball you'll grow

11:37

taller, and so his mother

11:40

channeled him into basketball. He

11:43

actually is a few inches taller than his father

11:45

was, so you know, who knows, maybe I worked a little, but

11:47

so she encouraged this, and

11:50

Kim Jong un just basically switched from

11:52

one obsession to the other. So he

11:55

you know, he had all the gear, all the spalleding,

11:58

you know, official NBA balls. He

12:00

used to sleep with his basketball also,

12:02

like a lot of American kids, right, absolutely, I slap

12:05

was mine, you know what I mean? You know that

12:07

very characteristic of a kid who just really loved was a

12:09

sport. Yeah, that's right. And so then he would go

12:11

out at every opportunity he had

12:13

a basketball hope at

12:15

his apartment building where he was, he

12:18

would go out to the nearby high school

12:20

and play with other kids every single day after

12:22

school. Joe may have been his only form of social

12:24

interaction that wasn't mediated through

12:26

language. Yeah, exactly, no lang. I mean he

12:28

was trying. Yeah, but you don't

12:31

really need to speak language. Pay basketball. It enables

12:33

you to communicate in some way through that. That's what you

12:35

know, the NBA would like us to think of that, and I think that is

12:37

sort of true. Yeah, And so I think he was not

12:39

exceptionally good or even very good at

12:41

that time. He did love it, okay, I think

12:44

he was Okay, he wasn't unspeakably bad.

12:46

No, he put in a lot of practice at

12:48

that time, and he really is a

12:50

really serious fan, as we

12:52

would come to see later. You know, the

12:54

very first time that Dennis Rodman went

12:57

to North Korea, he took

12:59

three Harlem Globetrotters with him because

13:02

his people thought, you know, the Harlem

13:04

Globetrotters with all their on court antics

13:06

would be very entertaining and very

13:09

accessible for North Korean people. Kim

13:11

Jongan hated it. He wanted a serious

13:14

game. So the next time Dennis

13:16

Rodman went, he took these retired

13:18

all stars because Kim jong n wanted

13:21

a real, proper game to play

13:23

there. So he is really serious about this, and he

13:25

does follow it very closely. Say

13:27

something about the weird way by

13:30

which Dennis Rodman, of all of the

13:32

players of the Chicago

13:34

Bulls from the era where Kim Jongan was a kid

13:36

and a fan, ended up being the person

13:38

you mentioned in the book that the CIA

13:41

actually thought of sending

13:43

Dennis Rodman in the first place. I don't

13:45

know how you came across that that's a fascinating thing. I had

13:47

never read that anywhere else before, but that it

13:49

didn't work, and yet Rodman still ended

13:51

up going. How did that happen? Yeah, that's

13:54

right. So I think when Kim Jongan took

13:56

over, American intelligence

13:58

agents and you know, administration officials

14:00

saw an opportunity to try to engage

14:02

this new leader. So

14:05

the first wink actually knew about it,

14:07

though, was when Vice Media

14:09

took Dennis Rodman. They had initially

14:11

tried to convince Michael Jordan, but

14:14

for some reason he was not so keen on going

14:16

to North Korea. They got Dennis Rodman instead.

14:18

But this was down on his luck

14:21

and needed the money, exactly happy to go.

14:24

But this idea did

14:26

not originate with Vice. First

14:28

of all, the CIA had talked about

14:31

taking a Chicago ball or sending a Chicago

14:33

bull to North Korea, and they had settled

14:35

on Dennis Rodman as well, and for whatever reason,

14:38

that didn't work out. But at the same

14:40

time and the last years of the Obama in

14:42

the middle years actually of the Obama administration,

14:45

outside experts were going into the Oval

14:48

office and one of them actually suggested

14:50

that they take advantage of the Chicago

14:53

Bull fascination and try

14:55

to, you know, make a bridge that way.

14:57

So it didn't go anywhere that Obama, very

14:59

excellent basketball player, did

15:01

not appeal to for a long time. Yeah,

15:03

yeah, but it did not appeal to him at

15:05

that time. It took Dennis Rodman and Vice

15:07

to make that happen. Once you brought up

15:10

Vice and Dennis Rodman, I just have to

15:12

ask you about the surreal scenes

15:14

that you describe in your book on

15:16

the trip that Vice put together

15:19

at which Rodman went. None

15:21

of it sounds like ordinary journalism.

15:24

None of it makes Kim Jong un sound

15:26

like an ordinary head of state.

15:29

Tell me about how that happened and

15:32

about the weirdness that ensued. Yeah,

15:35

so VISs did come up with this idea

15:37

to take a Chicago Bull. They

15:40

got Rodman, and the North Koreans responded

15:43

without really knowing that Vice

15:46

News wasn't your standard media organization

15:48

at their time, but they had told

15:50

their leader that Dennis Rodman wanted to go,

15:53

and he accepted and off they went.

15:56

And yes, there was the basketball side

15:58

of things, but also there

16:00

was a lot of partying that went on during

16:02

these trips. So it sounds like everybody

16:05

was drunk or drugged out of their minds. Yeah.

16:07

In fact, you know, one stage during

16:10

the course of the evening on that Vice trip,

16:13

Dennis Rodman had to tell the Vice entourage,

16:15

you know, the Vice team, to tone it down

16:18

a little. They were so out of control. And one of them

16:20

said to me, you know, we knew things were bad when Dennis

16:22

Rodman was telling us to cool it. Yeah.

16:25

There was a lot of drinking. There

16:27

was karaoke. Apparently Kim

16:29

Jong un sang some James Brown get

16:32

on up during this

16:34

evening. One of the people who

16:36

was on the Vice team was playing the saxophone.

16:39

Kim Jong UN's uncle, uncle

16:41

Jong Song Tech, the one he would later have

16:44

executed, was there that night,

16:48

and there were a lot of quite brazen

16:50

toasts. I mean, Dennis Rodman stood

16:52

up and said something about how

16:55

Kim Jong UN's father and grandfather

16:58

had done some screwed up

17:00

things. I'll paraphrase there. Can I

17:02

see what says in your book your

17:05

father and grandfather did some fucked up shit he

17:08

did, and everybody was holding

17:10

their breath. And to get away

17:12

with saying that to the

17:15

leader of North Korea and walk away

17:17

cleanly, what I don't know is

17:19

how the Korean translated translated

17:21

that sentence you purely one would hope, I would

17:23

hope. Yeah, although you were saying that Kim jonglen

17:26

can speak English. Yeah, he seems

17:28

to be able to understand some English. Who we've

17:30

seen him when he was talking to Donald Trump. He seemed to be nodding

17:32

and getting the jokes first. I don't know how his

17:34

curse words are and whether he got that, but

17:37

anyway, early in one's education to

17:39

speak English on the basketball Yeah, yeah, you're

17:42

right. But anyway, once it was translated,

17:44

he laughed and everybody breathed

17:46

aside of relief, and on they continued.

17:49

So I think you know the story is of that

17:51

trip, and as well the vice film that they

17:54

made out of it contributed to a kind

17:56

of deepening of the perception that Kim

17:58

jongn was not the kind of person who was going to be able

18:00

to consolidate power and then actually

18:03

govern as essentially

18:06

a monarch, because once you've got

18:08

not one, not too but three rounds of

18:10

succession, you can call it a dictatorship,

18:13

but it has monarchic components.

18:15

And you make a great point in the book that

18:17

there's an imagined bloodline that

18:19

takes all of the Kim

18:22

Jong's family and takes them

18:24

back to a mythical birth on

18:26

Mount Pectu, which is a kind of site

18:29

of kings. So it really really

18:31

is monarchic, and I

18:34

guess I want to turn now to this question of

18:36

how he actually pulled it off and

18:39

surprised everybody. So

18:41

let me start by asking you whether

18:43

you think that it's to do

18:46

with Kim jongon's own personal

18:48

qualities ultimately that have enabled

18:50

him to consolidate power, or whether

18:52

it's really a product of a recognition

18:55

in the senior echelons of the regime,

18:58

not so senior as to be executed or assassinated,

19:00

but just below that

19:02

that the monarchy works better

19:04

with a figurehead at the top of it, and they're better

19:06

off keeping him than they would be with the

19:09

uncertainty and disorder that would follow

19:11

his removal. Yeah,

19:13

I think he has shown a

19:15

natural aptitude for this. There is a reason

19:18

why he was the son who was chosen

19:20

as the successor. There

19:23

weren't so many choices, no, but there

19:25

were three, and the third son should

19:27

have been the last choice, right, but he

19:30

rose to the top. You know, he

19:33

very shrewdly used

19:35

that North Korean brains trust the

19:37

people who had been supporting his

19:39

grandfather and then his father. You

19:42

know, if we look at the man who

19:44

walked around the hearse at his father's

19:46

funeral with Kim Jong On at the front

19:48

of the car, those

19:50

people had been propping up

19:52

this regime forever they

19:54

were They were the regime, and

19:57

Kim Jong iarn had their

19:59

support. They helped in the transition

20:01

process. They made sure that power

20:04

remained with him, and once

20:06

they had served their purpose, he got

20:08

rid of because these were the powerful

20:11

people who had their own

20:13

potential factions and power

20:15

bases and could theoretically

20:17

pose a challenge to him. So

20:20

there was the head of the Korean People's

20:22

Army had helped

20:24

Kim Jong An, had helped his father. He

20:27

was disappeared and never seen again. And

20:30

then we had the propaganda chief, the

20:32

guy who was in charge of perpetuating

20:34

all of this mythology about the bloodline

20:36

and the exceptional gun skills.

20:39

At the age of five, he also

20:41

disappeared from view, never seen again. Uncle

20:44

Jong Song Tech, who was close

20:46

to his older Kim Jongn's older

20:48

half brother Kim Jong nam, and who

20:50

had been very much in charge

20:52

of economic relations with China and

20:54

appears to have been kind of a reformist minded

20:57

person, very charismatic,

20:59

gregarious character. I've heard so many

21:01

stories about his drinking and his karaoke skills

21:04

and things. He had a really sizeable

21:07

power base. He is. He

21:10

doesn't just disappear from view. He

21:12

is hauled out of a politbureau

21:14

meeting very publicly. There's this long

21:17

dire tribe against him of like

21:19

Shakespearean kind of rhetoric,

21:22

calling him a thrice cursed treacherous

21:25

being, and then he has executed

21:28

a few days later. If

21:30

you are somebody powerful in that regime

21:32

and you see all of these other people humiliated

21:37

and executed in this way, you

21:39

are going to think twice about questioning this guy

21:41

and challenging this guy. So partly

21:43

it's through this fear and

21:47

Kim Jong uns showing that nobody is

21:49

safe, not even his own family members, that

21:51

he's been able to look after this

21:53

regime. But the other part of

21:55

it is that he has made sure that

21:58

the people around him, the people who keep him

22:00

in power, have become rich under

22:03

him. They are living a life much

22:06

better than ever before. They

22:08

have been able to use their positions

22:11

in a very corrupt way to earn a lot

22:13

of money on the side through business

22:15

dealings and you know,

22:17

making money during their travels. So

22:20

those people are living a better

22:22

life than ever before. So through

22:25

you, through loyalty, developing

22:27

this loyalty and keeping everybody fearful,

22:30

he's managed to keep it together. So you're

22:32

describing what sounds to me like a two track

22:34

strategy. The first track is

22:38

rely on the people who think they need you to

22:41

get into power and to consolidate your power,

22:43

and then one by one knock them

22:45

off. You call that the Richard the third strategy,

22:47

as long as you're being Shakespearean, Yeah, and

22:50

the good thing about that strategy is you knock off your

22:52

potential opponents. The risky thing

22:54

about that strategy, see Richard the third is

22:56

that you've knocked off your potential opponents, and

22:59

there's the danger that you won't have a base once

23:01

you've done that. And then that leads to the second

23:04

strategy that you're describing, which is actually

23:06

to improve the status of the

23:08

people who you are relying the

23:10

new people, as it were, the ones who were rising

23:12

by virtue of your position and who therefore

23:14

will owe what they have to you in particular,

23:17

and not to your father. How

23:20

has Kim Jong un gotten that

23:22

new rising class of elites to

23:25

be so much better off than they were

23:27

in the past. Yeah, he's allowed

23:29

a lot or tolerated a lot more kind of

23:32

market based activity. So

23:34

there's now a lot of trading that happens

23:36

between China and North Korea.

23:38

And if you are senior in the

23:40

regime and involved in any kind of

23:42

trade whatsoever, and so many

23:44

people are, Like all of these huge apartment

23:47

towers in North Korea

23:50

have been built, a lot of it through

23:52

military labor, but Chinese money

23:54

and Chinese investments, So they are selling

23:56

these contracts to Chinese

23:59

investors and taking

24:01

a cut on the side. So these people

24:03

have been able to earn

24:06

a lot of money. People

24:08

who are sent to or to earn money for

24:10

Kim Jong earn, and he has a whole special

24:13

unit setting up just to filling his coffers.

24:16

They have also been able

24:18

to enrich themselves on the

24:20

side. So because these people

24:22

have been allowed to be corrupt and

24:24

making their money, yeah, they

24:27

have more reason than ever

24:29

to be loyal to Kim Jong ear And they had this new

24:31

band of loyal people who would not enjoy

24:34

this privileged position. And these riches

24:37

if they were to defect to South Korea and drive

24:39

a taxi. So from what you're describing,

24:41

it sounds like he's created a one percent

24:44

via corruption. And to do that, there has

24:46

to be a part from which you can steal,

24:49

and the part is trade. Increased

24:51

economic activity and increased trade more

24:53

than existed previously. And

24:55

in your account, by allowing that relatively

24:58

small tranche of people to

25:00

get a bit of the pie as it comes into him,

25:02

I mean he may get the line share of it, but allowing

25:05

them to scrape off a certain amount and make

25:07

real money, he's built an elite

25:09

class that is loyal

25:12

to him in a way that looks

25:14

a bit like the model that

25:16

the senior ranks of the Chinese Communist

25:18

Party followed, not in the last

25:20

decade, but in two or three decades

25:23

before then, when China was just beginning

25:25

its market opening, when of

25:27

course, party senior party officials became

25:29

tremendously rich and created

25:31

an elite that then consolidated itself

25:33

and supported the government.

25:35

Do you think he's copying China

25:37

in that regard In some

25:40

respects, yes, but in some respects

25:42

no. I mean, I think he would like

25:45

some economic development and

25:48

that sense that life is getting

25:50

better, but he can't

25:52

have even Chinese style reform

25:55

and opening like even that is too risky

25:57

for him because the difference

25:59

there is that there is

26:01

a kind of jockeying for power within

26:04

the Chinese Communist Party. You

26:06

know, they not every leader

26:08

has been called Mao in China, right, There

26:10

is a competition,

26:13

and Kim Jong un cannot have that

26:15

kind of competition within the

26:17

ranks of North Korea because

26:20

it would be very hard for him

26:22

to say, or would have been very hard for him to

26:24

say that a twenty seven year old

26:26

marshall who's never spent a day in the military

26:29

and has no political experience is the best

26:31

guy for the job. But he could allow competition

26:33

for the second rank, as it were. I mean, if

26:35

he's treated more or less as a monarch, he

26:38

could allow among the elites some

26:40

jockeying for power in his regime by

26:43

do you do a good job, do you bring in money, do

26:45

you show loyalty to me? I mean, maybe he is

26:47

and there has been some changes there people. You

26:50

know, in the Communist Party ranks, people do rise

26:52

and fall there, and so we have seen a number of

26:54

people disappear from the Politburo people rising,

26:57

so he has tried to make his

26:59

own. Every place has politics, I mean, even

27:01

an authoritary and dictatorship has parted. North Korea

27:03

has hawks and doves, you know they do.

27:05

There is this, you know, he has to

27:07

manage that. Let's talk

27:10

now about his expansion of

27:12

market reforms more broadly, to

27:14

reach a larger and larger segment

27:16

of the population through gradual

27:18

marketization. That seems to

27:20

be in a way both the most brilliant

27:23

and also the most high risk aspect

27:25

of his policy, the attempt to sort of improve

27:27

the standards of living not just of a one percent but

27:30

of a growing entrepreneurial class. You're

27:33

in a country in North Korea where historically entrepreneurship

27:36

was completely prohibited and punished,

27:38

and if people did it on the sly, they

27:40

were very limited in what they could get away with. And

27:43

now there's been a gradual

27:45

but very meaningful opening of

27:48

entrepreneurial opportunities. Is

27:50

it working, Yes, it is

27:52

working to an extent. This

27:55

trend started after the famine at

27:57

the end of the nineteen nineties. Out of necessity,

28:00

people were like literally starving. Today,

28:02

the whole generation was malnourished and a shorter exactly

28:05

exactly. He brand damaged. Yeah, so that

28:08

was lerated at the time out of necessity,

28:11

but Kim jongn has allowed that to

28:13

expand under quite constrained

28:15

circumstances though. So now

28:17

there are markets. There are more than four hundred

28:19

and fifty marketplaces around

28:21

the country, more than double the number than when

28:23

he took over. Every major

28:25

city in town has one at least one,

28:28

and this has become the life. Kind of marketplaces

28:30

are you describing, Well, this is a thing that they've

28:32

become, you know, quite institutionalized.

28:35

There are huge buildings built by the state.

28:37

The state rents out the stalls. They take

28:40

may make money from the rent. They tax

28:42

the sales in there, so the state is really

28:44

enriching itself. And what's being sold

28:46

everything, Yeah, everything. Able to visit one, I have

28:49

not been allowed to visit one, but I've seen a lot of secret

28:51

footage from inside these markets and talk

28:53

to people about them. You know, there's

28:55

the daily necessity, So a lot of people

28:57

are selling food. There's rice that's

28:59

coming in. You can buy electronics

29:03

from China. You can buy rice cookers, and you

29:05

can buy glittery cell phone cases.

29:07

You can buy if you have the money and more and more

29:09

people do. You can buy everything, So

29:11

this is a way that people are able

29:14

to earn their own living

29:16

independent of the state. This is a huge

29:18

change in North Korea. I mean, it's giving

29:20

up on the core notion of self

29:23

reliance through radical

29:26

Marxian and communism exactly exactly.

29:28

I mean, even though they stick to that in their propaganda,

29:30

it's not happening in effect anymore.

29:33

But there are still constraints and people do

29:35

have to be kind of very careful not to run a foul

29:38

of the system, like if you are seen to

29:40

be living too large or you know, it's

29:43

not so much the authorities, you

29:45

don't have to worry about the authorities. But in a bigger risk

29:47

is that is jealousy. You know, where

29:49

once people in North Korea were equally

29:52

poor, now there are more

29:54

and more middle class people. There's more conspicuous

29:57

consumption, you know, and if your neighbor

29:59

sees you living too good at life, they

30:01

might rat on you and try and make

30:03

up something about you or tell people

30:05

that you are corrupt and then us

30:09

necessary feature of all inequality.

30:11

But inequality has turned out to be, for a

30:13

better or worse, a necessary feature of

30:15

all relatively marketized economies. Yeah,

30:18

but when you're told every day that you live in a socialist

30:20

paradise and that the leader is, you know, taking

30:22

great care of you, that can be even

30:25

more hard to stomach. I think I'm sure that's true.

30:27

China pulled it off, though. I mean, there in China you

30:29

still have the rhetoric of state socialism

30:32

even as you've got increasingly marketized economy,

30:35

and you've got it vastly greater

30:37

inequality than previously existed. Yeah, I mean.

30:39

And the reason I say that it is working in North

30:41

Korea and that people are now much more entrepreneurial

30:44

and aspirational is because Kim

30:46

Jong un hasn't really had to do anything

30:49

to allow this improvement.

30:51

You know, people have been able to

30:53

trade and earn their way to a better

30:55

standard of living. You know, sometimes

30:58

life is a little bit better, you

31:00

know, better than horrible, you know, slightly less

31:02

horrible. Sometimes it's a lot better,

31:04

depending on how successful these people are. But

31:07

he has been able to take all of the

31:09

credit for this. He's been able to say that under

31:12

his great leadership, people's lives are improving

31:14

without having to do very much at all. The

31:17

next challenge for him is how he

31:19

sustains that improvement. Because

31:21

I mean, one of the fascinating things I discovered

31:24

when I went to Switzerland and I leafed

31:26

through the curriculum from the

31:29

time that Kim john Lund was at school and burn

31:31

and all students in Switzerland learn

31:34

about the French Revolution. They learn

31:36

about rising expectations and

31:38

how you know those expectations going

31:41

unmet can lead to revolution. And

31:44

I wonder if he remembers those

31:46

lessons and now if he is thinking

31:48

about how he sustains the

31:51

sense of things getting better. And that is

31:53

why I conclude that he needs to press

31:55

ahead with economic development.

31:58

He needs to try to attract foreign investment.

32:00

He really needs to get rid of those American

32:03

led sanctions and allow trade

32:05

and money to flow unfettered, because

32:08

you know it will run out of steam. You're

32:10

describing somebody who has the perfect

32:12

training, as it were, for his job. You

32:14

know, maybe growing up part of the time in Switzerland

32:17

didn't teach him to eliminate his enemies.

32:19

Maybe he had to learn that by watching The Godfather

32:21

or just by watching his father do it. And he managed to do

32:23

that. But the marketized

32:26

reforms, the gradual marketized reforms,

32:28

sound very much like what one would expect

32:31

from someone who grew up in the West, who

32:33

saw the capitalism was delivering much

32:36

greater standard of living than anyone

32:38

in North Korea was experiencing, and

32:41

when he came to power, decided to open

32:43

things up. Not politically by any stretch of the

32:45

imagination, but economically. I

32:47

mean, is that what you're saying, that's connecting the dots.

32:50

No. I think that his time in Switzerland

32:53

taught him that if

32:55

he lived in a democracy, he'd

32:57

be in nobody. He'd just be another

33:00

kid struggling to get by. He wouldn't

33:02

be loved and adored at

33:05

every turn. You know that the Swiss

33:08

or the Western liberal democratic

33:10

model was not for him. I think it

33:12

showed him that he needed

33:14

to keep his bizarre family

33:16

personality cult intact if he was

33:18

going to continue to enjoy this

33:21

very privileged position at the top. But

33:23

does it have to Can I just push back a moment? I mean, someone

33:26

is raised to be a prince, he's told from an

33:28

early age that his destiny is to become a prince.

33:31

He does then does prince like things, you

33:33

know, succeeding to power, killing off his enemies.

33:36

Eventually we haven't talked about it, but killing off his

33:39

own brother in this spectacular

33:41

airport assassination. These

33:43

are all things that are in the script for a

33:46

prince. It doesn't require, I don't think,

33:48

for us to explain this behavior to think

33:50

that, you know, he saw, he saw

33:52

that he couldn't have made it into democracy. I mean, it's just

33:54

natural. If this is your destiny, you

33:57

proceed along this destiny.

34:00

Yeah, I mean, I think the bottom line is

34:02

that, especially since so many people,

34:05

including the President of the United States, since

34:07

we're coming to him, I said that he's

34:10

a rational or crazy in some way.

34:12

I mean, the conclusion that I very much draw is

34:14

that he has not. He has acted perfectly

34:17

rationally and in a calculated

34:20

manner. With all of this, with the

34:22

brutal executions, with the gradual

34:25

opening on the economic side, and the tolerance

34:28

of markets, all of the stuff

34:31

exactly, It makes perfect sense if

34:33

you are a totalitarian leader

34:35

whose primary goal is staying

34:37

in power. So your

34:40

rationalist. Kim Jong un has

34:42

his great interlocutor today in

34:44

Donald Trump, whom you just mentioned, and

34:47

I want to ask you about their dance. They're

34:49

in some very complex and intricate dance where

34:52

they're close and they're far, and they're close and

34:54

they're far. How rationally

34:56

do you think Kim Jong un has acted

34:58

in that engagement and how successful

35:01

do you read his efforts as having been, I

35:03

mean very successful. I think he's

35:06

been in the driver's seat the entire time, and

35:08

he's really figured out how to play Trump.

35:10

I mean, he knows how to push the president's buttons.

35:13

You know, the North Koreans have as

35:16

you know, the Chinese and the Japanese, on the South

35:18

Koreens, everybody, they've devoted a lot of

35:20

energy to try to figure out Donald

35:22

Trump. You know, they were so mystified

35:24

by all these tweets at the beginning and what

35:26

did this mean. But the

35:28

North Koreans, the people on the

35:30

top of the regime, they have read the

35:33

Art of the Deal. I've heard about

35:35

instances where North Korean officials

35:37

have quoted Donald Trump's tweets.

35:39

They have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything he

35:42

said. They're officials who have

35:44

read Fire and Fury, Michael

35:46

Wolf's account of inside the White House. So they

35:48

have really studied how to deal

35:51

with him and what he responds to. So

35:54

after Kim Jong n, you know, completed

35:56

as he said, his nuclear and

35:58

missile program and

36:01

was ready to turn to diplomacy.

36:04

He figured out how to flatter the president.

36:06

You know, all of these like beautiful love letters

36:09

that Donald Trump talks about, enormous

36:11

physically enormous love letters, you point out right,

36:13

not just you know, flowery flattery,

36:16

but physically enormous, like comedic sized

36:19

envelopes. He's sent a million dollar check from

36:21

publishers bearing exactly, but

36:23

Donald Trump responds to it. He shows everybody

36:26

who goes into the Oval office these letters

36:28

because he's so proud of it, and it's enabled

36:30

Kim Jong on. You know, look at that first summit in

36:32

Singapore, they agreed to almost

36:35

nothing. It was so vague, but Donald

36:37

Trump walked out explaining

36:39

away the human rights abuses of North

36:42

Korea, saying that you know, there are a lot of rough

36:44

places out there, you know, dismissing

36:47

what happened to Otto Wambiera as a way. You

36:49

know that that's what how they got back to

36:51

talks and things. And that's the

36:53

American who died after being in a

36:55

comma exactly, a healthy young man who left

36:57

North Korea brain dead. Through

37:00

this flattery, Kim Jong n

37:03

has managed to win over Donald Trump,

37:05

and you know, the style worked

37:08

without Jong Leon ever having

37:10

to get to the substance. Kim Jongon certainly

37:12

seems to have captured a lot of Trump

37:14

mind share. I think immediately

37:17

of something that you reported for the first time

37:19

in your book, namely that Kim Jong

37:21

Nam, his older brother who was assassinated,

37:23

had actually been in contact with the CIA,

37:27

And shortly after you reported

37:29

that in your book, Donald

37:31

Trump went public with the statement

37:33

that if it were under his auspices, he would

37:35

never have allowed this connection to

37:37

take place. I saw the information

37:40

about the CIA with respect to his

37:43

brother or half brother, and

37:45

I would tell him that would not happen under

37:48

my auspices. So there you have

37:51

the President United States responding to your book

37:54

specifically in reference to Kim

37:56

Jong Leon. Why do you think he's doing that? Is he trying

37:58

to defend him his friendship,

38:00

as it were, from the idea that he would mess

38:03

with Kim Jongon's older brother by

38:05

via the CIA. I cannot

38:07

explain Donald Trump's thanking on that. That

38:10

may not be part of your job, but if you fueled it,

38:13

so you have to say, oh, yeah, no, no, I mean you could

38:15

hear the Champagne corks popping in Pyongyang.

38:17

Right, The CIA agents call North

38:19

Korea the hardest of the hard

38:22

tasks. Right. They true for journalists

38:24

too, isn't it. I mean, when

38:26

you're North Korea correspond There is like almost

38:29

zero human intelligence on North Korea,

38:31

like in vast contrast to almost every other autocratic

38:34

regime around. So the fact that the

38:36

CIA had managed to recruit

38:38

Kim Jong Nam, somebody who,

38:40

though he didn't have contact with

38:43

his brother, still had good

38:45

contacts at the top of the regime.

38:47

He was still in close contact with senior

38:50

officials, that was a real

38:52

coup for them to have been able to get

38:54

any information from somebody

38:57

so senior and so well connected. So

39:00

for Donald Trump then to say that the

39:02

US would not try to gather this kind of intelligence

39:05

about a man who's threatening to

39:07

like send nuclear tipped missiles

39:10

to the Capitol or to the White House.

39:12

You know, can you imagine in

39:15

your account, Kim Jonguan is the dictator

39:17

who has everything. He's rational,

39:20

he's reforming, he's improving the standard

39:22

of living for his people. He need to do it more, but he's

39:24

doing it. And he's played the President

39:26

of the United States beautifully.

39:30

What's next for him, and

39:32

what's the succession plan beyond him if

39:34

any Yeah, I mean, I think now

39:36

he is getting into quite tricky

39:39

territory because the

39:41

economic side of it is challenging,

39:45

you know, to try to allow

39:48

more economic development without

39:50

allowing opening, without allowing more

39:52

damaging information coming into the country.

39:55

That's something that's going to be a real challenge

39:57

for him because as these

39:59

bags of rice and you know, solar

40:02

panels come across the border from North Korea,

40:04

so too do USB drives and SD

40:07

cards that contain movies

40:09

and dramas and music from the outside

40:12

world. Some opening is happening. You show that convincingly,

40:14

yes, So he has to balance that. But

40:17

he also has to try to balance

40:19

this diplomatic side. He's

40:22

managed so far to

40:24

string along Donald Trump. He also

40:26

has the South Korean president playing a

40:28

mediator role. But I think you know,

40:30

Kim Jong und does not want to go up his nuclear

40:32

weapons. There's no way he's going to feel secure

40:35

enough to do that anytime soon.

40:37

Just to push back on that, it would never be sensible

40:39

for him to give up his nuclear weapons. Giving them

40:42

up is an invitation to regime

40:44

change. Keeping them is a guaranteur of

40:46

regime such it would seem to me as

40:49

close to a truth of political

40:51

science as one could imagine that if

40:53

you've got nuclear weapons, you don't give

40:55

them up. Kim John was taking over in two

40:57

thousand and eleven as the Arab spring

41:00

was exploding. You know, he saw Mohamma

41:02

Gadaffi, who gave up his nuclear

41:05

capability and a deal with the United States,

41:07

dragged from a ditch, and you know that

41:10

must be burned in exactly,

41:12

burned in his brain. So now,

41:14

I mean, I think he does want to make

41:16

it look like he is willing to give up

41:19

something, and maybe he is willing to give up something,

41:21

some hardware. You know, all of

41:23

these missile launches and nuclear

41:26

tests have shown he has a lot of capability.

41:29

He's getting all the parts he needs. He can retain

41:32

the capability while looking like he's giving

41:34

up some ICBMs

41:36

and things there. So the

41:38

challenge for him now is to sustain

41:40

this, to make the US look like they

41:42

are getting something so that he can

41:44

get something in return. You know, he desperately

41:47

needs sanctions relief because

41:49

these sanctions have been hurting North Korea

41:51

like never before. How's

41:54

his health? His health is not great.

41:56

I mean look at him and the times he's been coming

41:58

out in Vladivostok in South

42:00

Korea in the DMZ there, he

42:03

is not a healthy man. He's a chain smoker.

42:05

He's struggling for breath, and this

42:08

is one of the most puzzling things to me, like, if

42:10

Kim Jong un is concerned about leading

42:12

for the rest of his natural life, he's

42:15

not doing much to take care of himself,

42:17

because if there's one thing that poses a risk to

42:19

him, it's his health. Thank

42:22

you very much, enam really super fascinating.

42:24

Thank you for that avenue and window into

42:26

the thought process of somebody who comes

42:28

across from your account as hitting

42:31

all the right notes. Thank you, No, it was my great

42:33

pleasure to be here. Talking

42:41

to Anna Fifield and reading her book really

42:43

made me deeply reconsider my instinct

42:46

to think of Kim Jong un as a bit of a

42:48

buffoon. She's made a

42:50

very convincing case to me that he's actually

42:52

deeply rational. That has major

42:54

consequences for how we think about our interactions

42:57

with North Korea going forward. A

42:59

rational actor is not to be addressed

43:02

by silly symbols like basketball

43:04

summits or oversized letters.

43:07

The fact that he uses those symbols doesn't

43:09

mean he takes them seriously. It just means

43:11

that he thinks that our president takes them seriously.

43:14

What we need to do if Kim Jong un is a

43:16

very careful, thoughtful dictatorial

43:18

leader is meet him

43:21

with the tools that influence the behavior

43:23

of dictators, that is strength

43:26

and incentives. Perhaps we

43:28

can give him the right set of interests

43:30

to encourage the development of his

43:32

own economy and gradually

43:35

slowly and cautiously lead

43:37

him towards some opening

43:40

so that the country that he runs

43:42

is no longer the brutal dictatorship that

43:44

it still remains to this day. Even

43:47

as we do that, though, we have to keep in mind

43:49

that he will be thinking about one thing, and one

43:51

thing only, the interests of Kim

43:53

Jong un. Deep

43:59

Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries.

44:01

Our producer is Lydia Genecott, with engineering

44:03

by Jason Gambrell and Jason Rostkowski.

44:06

Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon. Our

44:09

k is composed by Luis GERA special

44:11

thanks to the Pushkin Brass Malcolm Gladwell,

44:13

Jacob Weisberg and Mia Lobel. I'm

44:15

Noah Feldman. You can follow me on Twitter at

44:18

Noah R. Feldman. This is

44:20

deep background