Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. This week we're going to look at
Speaker 1: North Korea, and in particular the leader of North Korea,
Speaker 1: the fascinating and eccentric Kim Jong Lun. Who is Kim
Speaker 1: Jong Lun? We have this tendency to think of him
Speaker 1: as a kind of wild eyed, tyrant, ridiculous, pot bellied,
Speaker 1: more or less a child with an eccentric love of
Speaker 1: the Chicago Bulls, a love that's led him straight into
Speaker 1: the arms of the almost equally eccentric Dennis Rodman. At
Speaker 1: the same time, we also think of Kim Jong Lun
Speaker 1: as a dangerous guy. Tortures his own citizens, killed off
Speaker 1: his uncle, tortures Americans who happened to find their way
Speaker 1: into North Korea, and, perhaps most frighteningly, commands a nuclear
Speaker 1: arsenal and increasingly sophisticated missiles that have the range to
Speaker 1: attack Japan and maybe even someday the United States itself.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is also interested in Kim Jong Lun, and
Speaker 1: in fact, it's hard to think of any other world
Speaker 1: leader except possibly Vladimir Putin who's gotten quite the amount
Speaker 1: of attention that Donald Trump has given to Kim Jong Un.
Speaker 1: On some level, Trump treats Kim Jong Un like a
Speaker 1: dangerous wild man. On the other hand, often it sounds
Speaker 1: like our present has a lot of love for Kim
Speaker 1: Jong Un. I just received a beautiful letter from Kim
Speaker 1: Jong Un. I can't tell you the letter, obviously, but
Speaker 1: it was a very her still, very warm, very nice letter.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, and I'll say it again. I think
Speaker 1: that North Korea has tremendous potential. So is Kim Jong
Speaker 1: un genuinely crazy? Or is he crazy like a fox?
Speaker 1: Is he so clever that he's managed actually to play
Speaker 1: the president of the United States and to use rational
Speaker 1: strategy to gain control over his country, improve the condition
Speaker 1: of his citizens, and advance his interests on the world stage.
Speaker 1: These are questions that Anna Fifield from The Washington Post
Speaker 1: has been trying to make sense of in her new book,
Speaker 1: The Great Successor The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Un. To understand the North Korean leader's rise
Speaker 1: to power, she started by looking at his childhood. When
Speaker 1: he was twelve years old, Kim Jong Un moved to Berne,
Speaker 1: the capital of Switzerland, where his older brother was already
Speaker 1: studying at a private English language school there. He joined
Speaker 1: him there. And you know, he had traveled in the
Speaker 1: outside world before. His mother had taken him to Disneyland
Speaker 1: in Paris and in Tokyo, you know, so he'd been
Speaker 1: out in the world. But this is as Disneyland as
Speaker 1: the world, true. Yeah, maybe just as fake as Pyongyang,
Speaker 1: but a different kind of fake. So he moved there
Speaker 1: to Switzerland, and this was a chance for him to
Speaker 1: experience a little bit of the world and kind of
Speaker 1: have more freedom because ironically, you know, even though he
Speaker 1: was this princeling in North Korea, he was very isolated there.
Speaker 1: He lived on these palatial compounds. He didn't even know
Speaker 1: his half siblings. He only had his older brother and
Speaker 1: old younger sister to play with. He didn't go to school.
Speaker 1: He had tutors exactly. He's like some you know, medici
Speaker 1: from Yeah. So he when he went to Switzerland, that
Speaker 1: was a chance for him to have a little bit
Speaker 1: of normality. So he went to school. He was said
Speaker 1: to be the son of North Korean diplomats. He went
Speaker 1: with his aunt and uncle who they were posed as
Speaker 1: his parents during that time. So, yeah, he played basketball
Speaker 1: every day after school, he sat through classes. You know,
Speaker 1: he struggled to learn German, but he did eventually become
Speaker 1: conversant in it and in English during that period, and
Speaker 1: he was able to have something of a normal life.
Speaker 1: And I actually managed to track down his aunt and
Speaker 1: uncle who looked after him during that period. They defected
Speaker 1: to the United States in nineteen ninety eight while they
Speaker 1: were looking after Kim Jong un. You have a great
Speaker 1: theory about why they did that. Tell us what that was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when I met them, they told me it was
Speaker 1: because partly because they wanted to be a bridge between
Speaker 1: North Korea and the United States, and partly because that
Speaker 1: sounds so an outside of that sounds absurd, and I
Speaker 1: take it you to me, it also sounded absurd, and
Speaker 1: I didn't believe it for a second. They also said
Speaker 1: they were trying to get medical assistance for Kim Jong
Speaker 1: UN's mother, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, And
Speaker 1: I think that's really the truth. They saw that their
Speaker 1: linked to the regime, there the reason that they held
Speaker 1: this privileged status within the regime. You know, had a
Speaker 1: terminal illness, so mainly Kim Jong UN's mother. Kim Jong
Speaker 1: UN's mother was not formally speaking married to Kim Jong
Speaker 1: UN's father. No, she was a de facto First Lady
Speaker 1: of North Korea and very powerful within that regime. So
Speaker 1: I think they saw that their privileged status would not
Speaker 1: exist forever and they took the opportunity to escape. So
Speaker 1: they did, in the middle of the night, take a
Speaker 1: taxi to the American embassy and burn and ask for
Speaker 1: political asylum, and they were granted it. So they've been
Speaker 1: living here since nineteen ninety eight. Now in your book,
Speaker 1: you protect their identities, but you must do an amazing
Speaker 1: job of sleuthing to turn them up, and you do
Speaker 1: have some really fascinating detail about what they're doing with themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. So they arrived in the United States, was
Speaker 1: very limited English. They were obviously the CIA wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to them a lot at the beginning about what
Speaker 1: they knew about the family and the regime. But they
Speaker 1: quickly settled into life in America. By you know, they
Speaker 1: opened a dry cleaners, just like many Korean immigrants to
Speaker 1: the United States, and they quickly adapted to this life.
Speaker 1: They were working incredibly hard, their three children went into
Speaker 1: American schools and flourished. You know, they have all gone
Speaker 1: on and graduated from good colleges and are living normal
Speaker 1: kind of Korean immigrant to American dream lives. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can hardly imagine a better cover for people fleeing
Speaker 1: North Korea than mixing in with the community and opening
Speaker 1: a small business and working hard at it. Are they
Speaker 1: financially in need of doing that, do you think? I mean,
Speaker 1: they're working hard as part of their cover. They're working
Speaker 1: hard because they're broken. The only money they have is
Speaker 1: the money they're making from their drakening business. They're not broke,
Speaker 1: They are comfortable. They told me that they received two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars from the CIA at the beginning to
Speaker 1: buy a house, and that they have not received any
Speaker 1: assistance since them. I mean, that's what they told me.
Speaker 1: That's all I have. But you know, that's incredible. I
Speaker 1: mean that could be the government's certainly a cheap yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, And but they have worked very hard and
Speaker 1: they have lived their own American dream. And presumably, although
Speaker 1: you're not disclosing their their identities, prisumably their identities are
Speaker 1: known to North Korean intelligence or do you think they're
Speaker 1: genuinely missed or skipped out by by North Korean intelligence.
Speaker 1: I imagine the North Koreans would know about them, but
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if they know where
Speaker 1: they are. Yeah, I mean, and that was a big
Speaker 1: part of the reason that I went to great lengths
Speaker 1: to preserve their anonymity and not disclose exactly where they are,
Speaker 1: because yes, I do not want the North Koreans to
Speaker 1: find them the right and I hope you didn't even
Speaker 1: write it down in your notes on any electronic device.
Speaker 1: I did not in my brain all over which they
Speaker 1: can get into. So here's young Kim Jong un. You
Speaker 1: describe how he first went to the American school, and
Speaker 1: then after his aunt and uncle left, he actually switched
Speaker 1: to a public school, to a German speaking Swiss publics
Speaker 1: or state school. You say he had been isolated before
Speaker 1: and this was his chance to interact with other kids,
Speaker 1: But in your telling and from the people you spoke to,
Speaker 1: it sounds like he was actually a pretty lonely kid,
Speaker 1: even in Switzerland. Yeah. I think that he found it
Speaker 1: quite frustrating not to be able to communicate. So when
Speaker 1: he went into this German speaking school after his aunt
Speaker 1: and uncle had defected, and you know that was probably
Speaker 1: the coats. To avoid having to explain why his parents
Speaker 1: suddenly changed overnight. He went into a like a reception
Speaker 1: class where he was learning German, learning his lessons in
Speaker 1: very easy German at the beginning to adjust, and then
Speaker 1: he went into a normal classroom there, but he did
Speaker 1: seem to have some difficulties fitting in. Some former classmates
Speaker 1: described how he would lash out. He would kick their
Speaker 1: shins or spit at them and things in frustration. But
Speaker 1: then he did have a couple of good friends who
Speaker 1: he did invite back to his house, and one of them,
Speaker 1: who was the son of Portuguese immigrants, Kim Jong actually
Speaker 1: told him. He showed him a picture of Kim Jong
Speaker 1: il and said this is my father, and this kid
Speaker 1: laughed and said, yeah, right, your father as the leader
Speaker 1: of North Korea, and Kim Jong wan just let it go.
Speaker 1: And of course this classmate Frand discovered some years later
Speaker 1: that Kim Jong Gond really was telling the truth. So
Speaker 1: it's not a normal childhood by any measure, even though
Speaker 1: it may have been comparatively more normal than it was
Speaker 1: for Kim Jong Gond. Where he lived at home in
Speaker 1: North Korea. Yeah, nothing about his childhood was anywhere And
Speaker 1: what his aunt told me was that from that day,
Speaker 1: his eighth birthday, when he was unveiled as the future
Speaker 1: leader of North Korea, it had just become impossible for
Speaker 1: him to live a normal life. And some of the
Speaker 1: kids who knew him in Switzerland said they did find
Speaker 1: it kind of weird and surprising that when he was
Speaker 1: out on the basketball court after school there would often
Speaker 1: be this little lineup of Korean adults sitting in deck chairs,
Speaker 1: cheering and clapping excessively for him whenever he scored a
Speaker 1: point in the game. Can I actually ask about the
Speaker 1: basketball because that will turn out to be very important
Speaker 1: later on. His obsession with the Chicago Bulls in particular,
Speaker 1: who were the greatest team playing basketball at the time
Speaker 1: that he was a kid, turned out to be relevant
Speaker 1: to his later career and will come to that. But
Speaker 1: why basketball, first of all, any sense of why this
Speaker 1: archetypally American sport, which admittedly was globalizing very much in
Speaker 1: this period of time, in part through the avenue of
Speaker 1: the Bulls and their great star Michael Jordan. But he
Speaker 1: thought on why he became obsessed with basketball and the
Speaker 1: other question I'm dying to know is was he any
Speaker 1: good at it? It's not that easy to play basketball,
Speaker 1: especially if you're a short and slightly round child. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's loving it and then there's loving to play at
Speaker 1: Those aren't exactly the same thing. Yeah, right, So it's
Speaker 1: a funny story how he became interested and there. When
Speaker 1: he was a child, he was really obsessed with machines
Speaker 1: like planes and anything with an engine. Boys, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: He loved to make model airplanes and fly them and
Speaker 1: things like that. But his mother became very concerned that
Speaker 1: he was so obsessive about this. You know, he would
Speaker 1: ring he's making a model ship. He would ring an
Speaker 1: actual naval engineer from the North Korean People's Army to
Speaker 1: ask a question at three o'clock in the morning. You know,
Speaker 1: this is his sense of entitlement, and the admiral would
Speaker 1: answer the phone. Can be hard to read those instructions.
Speaker 1: And so his mother was concerned that he was becoming
Speaker 1: too obsessive with this, and she wanted to get him
Speaker 1: into sport. And there is this Korean belief, you know,
Speaker 1: South Korean, North Korea, to this day that if you
Speaker 1: play basketball you'll grow taller, and so his mother channeled
Speaker 1: him into basketball. He actually is a few inches taller
Speaker 1: than his father was, so you know, who knows, maybe
Speaker 1: I worked a little, but so she encouraged this, and
Speaker 1: Kim Jong un just basically switched from one obsession to
Speaker 1: the other. So he you know, he had all the gear,
Speaker 1: all the spalleding, you know, official NBA balls. He used
Speaker 1: to sleep with his basketball also, like a lot of
Speaker 1: American kids, right, absolutely, I slap was mine, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? You know that very characteristic of a
Speaker 1: kid who just really loved was a sport. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: And so then he would go out at every opportunity
Speaker 1: he had a basketball hope at his apartment building where
Speaker 1: he was, he would go out to the nearby high
Speaker 1: school and play with other kids every single day after school.
Speaker 1: Joe may have been his only form of social interaction
Speaker 1: that wasn't mediated through language. Yeah, exactly, no lang. I
Speaker 1: mean he was trying. Yeah, but you don't really need
Speaker 1: to speak language. Pay basketball. It enables you to communicate
Speaker 1: in some way through that. That's what you know, the
Speaker 1: NBA would like us to think of that, and I
Speaker 1: think that is sort of true. Yeah, And so I
Speaker 1: think he was not exceptionally good or even very good
Speaker 1: at that time. He did love it, okay, I think
Speaker 1: he was Okay, he wasn't unspeakably bad. No, he put
Speaker 1: in a lot of practice at that time, and he
Speaker 1: really is a really serious fan, as we would come
Speaker 1: to see later. You know, the very first time that
Speaker 1: Dennis Rodman went to North Korea, he took three Harlem
Speaker 1: Globetrotters with him because his people thought, you know, the
Speaker 1: Harlem Globetrotters with all their on court antics would be
Speaker 1: very entertaining and very accessible for North Korean people. Kim
Speaker 1: Jongan hated it. He wanted a serious game. So the
Speaker 1: next time Dennis Rodman went, he took these retired all
Speaker 1: stars because Kim jong n wanted a real, proper game
Speaker 1: to play there. So he is really serious about this,
Speaker 1: and he does follow it very closely. Say something about
Speaker 1: the weird way by which Dennis Rodman, of all of
Speaker 1: the players of the Chicago Bulls from the era where
Speaker 1: Kim Jongan was a kid and a fan, ended up
Speaker 1: being the person you mentioned in the book that the
Speaker 1: CIA actually thought of sending Dennis Rodman in the first place.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you came across that that's a
Speaker 1: fascinating thing. I had never read that anywhere else before,
Speaker 1: but that it didn't work, and yet Rodman still ended
Speaker 1: up going. How did that happen? Yeah, that's right. So
Speaker 1: I think when Kim Jongan took over, American intelligence agents
Speaker 1: and you know, administration officials saw an opportunity to try
Speaker 1: to engage this new leader. So the first wink actually
Speaker 1: knew about it, though, was when Vice Media took Dennis Rodman.
Speaker 1: They had initially tried to convince Michael Jordan, but for
Speaker 1: some reason he was not so keen on going to
Speaker 1: North Korea. They got Dennis Rodman instead. But this was
Speaker 1: down on his luck and needed the money, exactly happy
Speaker 1: to go. But this idea did not originate with Vice.
Speaker 1: First of all, the CIA had talked about taking a
Speaker 1: Chicago ball or sending a Chicago bull to North Korea,
Speaker 1: and they had settled on Dennis Rodman as well, and
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, that didn't work out. But at the
Speaker 1: same time and the last years of the Obama in
Speaker 1: the middle years actually of the Obama administration, outside experts
Speaker 1: were going into the Oval office and one of them
Speaker 1: actually suggested that they take advantage of the Chicago Bull
Speaker 1: fascination and try to, you know, make a bridge that way.
Speaker 1: So it didn't go anywhere that Obama, very excellent basketball player,
Speaker 1: did not appeal to for a long time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it did not appeal to him at that time.
Speaker 1: It took Dennis Rodman and Vice to make that happen.
Speaker 1: Once you brought up Vice and Dennis Rodman, I just
Speaker 1: have to ask you about the surreal scenes that you
Speaker 1: describe in your book on the trip that Vice put
Speaker 1: together at which Rodman went. None of it sounds like
Speaker 1: ordinary journalism. None of it makes Kim Jong un sound
Speaker 1: like an ordinary head of state. Tell me about how
Speaker 1: that happened and about the weirdness that ensued. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: VISs did come up with this idea to take a
Speaker 1: Chicago Bull. They got Rodman, and the North Koreans responded
Speaker 1: without really knowing that Vice News wasn't your standard media
Speaker 1: organization at their time, but they had told their leader
Speaker 1: that Dennis Rodman wanted to go, and he accepted and
Speaker 1: off they went. And yes, there was the basketball side
Speaker 1: of things, but also there was a lot of partying
Speaker 1: that went on during these trips. So it sounds like
Speaker 1: everybody was drunk or drugged out of their minds. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know, one stage during the course of
Speaker 1: the evening on that Vice trip, Dennis Rodman had to
Speaker 1: tell the Vice entourage, you know, the Vice team, to
Speaker 1: tone it down a little. They were so out of control.
Speaker 1: And one of them said to me, you know, we
Speaker 1: knew things were bad when Dennis Rodman was telling us
Speaker 1: to cool it. Yeah. There was a lot of drinking.
Speaker 1: There was karaoke. Apparently Kim Jong un sang some James
Speaker 1: Brown get on up during this evening. One of the
Speaker 1: people who was on the Vice team was playing the saxophone.
Speaker 1: Kim Jong UN's uncle, uncle Jong Song Tech, the one
Speaker 1: he would later have executed, was there that night, and
Speaker 1: there were a lot of quite brazen toasts. I mean,
Speaker 1: Dennis Rodman stood up and said something about how Kim
Speaker 1: Jong UN's father and grandfather had done some screwed up things.
Speaker 1: I'll paraphrase there. Can I see what says in your
Speaker 1: book your father and grandfather did some fucked up shit
Speaker 1: he did, and everybody was holding their breath. And to
Speaker 1: get away with saying that to the leader of North
Speaker 1: Korea and walk away cleanly, what I don't know is
Speaker 1: how the Korean translated translated that sentence you purely one
Speaker 1: would hope, I would hope. Yeah, although you were saying
Speaker 1: that Kim jonglen can speak English. Yeah, he seems to
Speaker 1: be able to understand some English. Who we've seen him
Speaker 1: when he was talking to Donald Trump. He seemed to
Speaker 1: be nodding and getting the jokes first. I don't know
Speaker 1: how his curse words are and whether he got that,
Speaker 1: but anyway, early in one's education to speak English on
Speaker 1: the basketball Yeah, yeah, you're right. But anyway, once it
Speaker 1: was translated, he laughed and everybody breathed aside of relief,
Speaker 1: and on they continued. So I think you know the
Speaker 1: story is of that trip, and as well the vice
Speaker 1: film that they made out of it contributed to a
Speaker 1: kind of deepening of the perception that Kim jongn was
Speaker 1: not the kind of person who was going to be
Speaker 1: able to consolidate power and then actually govern as essentially
Speaker 1: a monarch, because once you've got not one, not too
Speaker 1: but three rounds of succession, you can call it a dictatorship,
Speaker 1: but it has monarchic components. And you make a great
Speaker 1: point in the book that there's an imagined bloodline that
Speaker 1: takes all of the Kim Jong's family and takes them
Speaker 1: back to a mythical birth on Mount Pectu, which is
Speaker 1: a kind of site of kings. So it really really
Speaker 1: is monarchic, and I guess I want to turn now
Speaker 1: to this question of how he actually pulled it off
Speaker 1: and surprised everybody. So let me start by asking you
Speaker 1: whether you think that it's to do with Kim jongon's
Speaker 1: own personal qualities ultimately that have enabled him to consolidate power,
Speaker 1: or whether it's really a product of a recognition in
Speaker 1: the senior echelons of the regime, not so senior as
Speaker 1: to be executed or assassinated, but just below that that
Speaker 1: the monarchy works better with a figurehead at the top
Speaker 1: of it, and they're better off keeping him than they
Speaker 1: would be with the uncertainty and disorder that would follow
Speaker 1: his removal. Yeah, I think he has shown a natural
Speaker 1: aptitude for this. There is a reason why he was
Speaker 1: the son who was chosen as the successor. There weren't
Speaker 1: so many choices, no, but there were three, and the
Speaker 1: third son should have been the last choice, right, but
Speaker 1: he rose to the top. You know, he very shrewdly
Speaker 1: used that North Korean brains trust the people who had
Speaker 1: been supporting his grandfather and then his father. You know,
Speaker 1: if we look at the man who walked around the
Speaker 1: hearse at his father's funeral with Kim Jong On at
Speaker 1: the front of the car, those people had been propping
Speaker 1: up this regime forever they were They were the regime,
Speaker 1: and Kim Jong iarn had their support. They helped in
Speaker 1: the transition process. They made sure that power remained with him,
Speaker 1: and once they had served their purpose, he got rid
Speaker 1: of because these were the powerful people who had their
Speaker 1: own potential factions and power bases and could theoretically pose
Speaker 1: a challenge to him. So there was the head of
Speaker 1: the Korean People's Army had helped Kim Jong An, had
Speaker 1: helped his father. He was disappeared and never seen again.
Speaker 1: And then we had the propaganda chief, the guy who
Speaker 1: was in charge of perpetuating all of this mythology about
Speaker 1: the bloodline and the exceptional gun skills. At the age
Speaker 1: of five, he also disappeared from view, never seen again.
Speaker 1: Uncle Jong Song Tech, who was close to his older
Speaker 1: Kim Jongn's older half brother Kim Jong nam, and who
Speaker 1: had been very much in charge of economic relations with
Speaker 1: China and appears to have been kind of a reformist
Speaker 1: minded person, very charismatic, gregarious character. I've heard so many
Speaker 1: stories about his drinking and his karaoke skills and things.
Speaker 1: He had a really sizeable power base. He is. He
Speaker 1: doesn't just disappear from view. He is hauled out of
Speaker 1: a politbureau meeting very publicly. There's this long dire tribe
Speaker 1: against him of like Shakespearean kind of rhetoric, calling him
Speaker 1: a thrice cursed treacherous being, and then he has executed
Speaker 1: a few days later. If you are somebody powerful in
Speaker 1: that regime and you see all of these other people
Speaker 1: humiliated and executed in this way, you are going to
Speaker 1: think twice about questioning this guy and challenging this guy.
Speaker 1: So partly it's through this fear and Kim Jong uns
Speaker 1: showing that nobody is safe, not even his own family members,
Speaker 1: that he's been able to look after this regime. But
Speaker 1: the other part of it is that he has made
Speaker 1: sure that the people around him, the people who keep
Speaker 1: him in power, have become rich under him. They are
Speaker 1: living a life much better than ever before. They have
Speaker 1: been able to use their positions in a very corrupt
Speaker 1: way to earn a lot of money on the side
Speaker 1: through business dealings and you know, making money during their travels.
Speaker 1: So those people are living a better life than ever before.
Speaker 1: So through you, through loyalty, developing this loyalty and keeping
Speaker 1: everybody fearful, he's managed to keep it together. So you're
Speaker 1: describing what sounds to me like a two track strategy.
Speaker 1: The first track is rely on the people who think
Speaker 1: they need you to get into power and to consolidate
Speaker 1: your power, and then one by one knock them off.
Speaker 1: You call that the Richard the third strategy, as long
Speaker 1: as you're being Shakespearean, Yeah, and the good thing about
Speaker 1: that strategy is you knock off your potential opponents. The
Speaker 1: risky thing about that strategy, see Richard the third is
Speaker 1: that you've knocked off your potential opponents, and there's the
Speaker 1: danger that you won't have a base once you've done that.
Speaker 1: And then that leads to the second strategy that you're describing,
Speaker 1: which is actually to improve the status of the people
Speaker 1: who you are relying the new people, as it were,
Speaker 1: the ones who were rising by virtue of your position
Speaker 1: and who therefore will owe what they have to you
Speaker 1: in particular, and not to your father. How has Kim
Speaker 1: Jong un gotten that new rising class of elites to
Speaker 1: be so much better off than they were in the past. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's allowed a lot or tolerated a lot more kind
Speaker 1: of market based activity. So there's now a lot of
Speaker 1: trading that happens between China and North Korea. And if
Speaker 1: you are senior in the regime and involved in any
Speaker 1: kind of trade whatsoever, and so many people are, Like
Speaker 1: all of these huge apartment towers in North Korea have
Speaker 1: been built, a lot of it through military labor, but
Speaker 1: Chinese money and Chinese investments, So they are selling these
Speaker 1: contracts to Chinese investors and taking a cut on the side.
Speaker 1: So these people have been able to earn a lot
Speaker 1: of money. People who are sent to or to earn
Speaker 1: money for Kim Jong earn, and he has a whole
Speaker 1: special unit setting up just to filling his coffers. They
Speaker 1: have also been able to enrich themselves on the side.
Speaker 1: So because these people have been allowed to be corrupt
Speaker 1: and making their money, yeah, they have more reason than
Speaker 1: ever to be loyal to Kim Jong ear And they
Speaker 1: had this new band of loyal people who would not
Speaker 1: enjoy this privileged position. And these riches if they were
Speaker 1: to defect to South Korea and drive a taxi. So
Speaker 1: from what you're describing, it sounds like he's created a
Speaker 1: one percent via corruption. And to do that, there has
Speaker 1: to be a part from which you can steal, and
Speaker 1: the part is trade. Increased economic activity and increased trade
Speaker 1: more than existed previously. And in your account, by allowing
Speaker 1: that relatively small tranche of people to get a bit
Speaker 1: of the pie as it comes into him, I mean
Speaker 1: he may get the line share of it, but allowing
Speaker 1: them to scrape off a certain amount and make real money,
Speaker 1: he's built an elite class that is loyal to him
Speaker 1: in a way that looks a bit like the model
Speaker 1: that the senior ranks of the Chinese Communist Party followed,
Speaker 1: not in the last decade, but in two or three
Speaker 1: decades before then, when China was just beginning its market opening,
Speaker 1: when of course, party senior party officials became tremendously rich
Speaker 1: and created an elite that then consolidated itself and supported
Speaker 1: the government. Do you think he's copying China in that
Speaker 1: regard In some respects, yes, but in some respects no.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think he would like some economic development
Speaker 1: and that sense that life is getting better, but he
Speaker 1: can't have even Chinese style reform and opening like even
Speaker 1: that is too risky for him because the difference there
Speaker 1: is that there is a kind of jockeying for power
Speaker 1: within the Chinese Communist Party. You know, they not every
Speaker 1: leader has been called Mao in China, right, There is
Speaker 1: a competition, and Kim Jong un cannot have that kind
Speaker 1: of competition within the ranks of North Korea because it
Speaker 1: would be very hard for him to say, or would
Speaker 1: have been very hard for him to say that a
Speaker 1: twenty seven year old marshall who's never spent a day
Speaker 1: in the military and has no political experience is the
Speaker 1: best guy for the job. But he could allow competition
Speaker 1: for the second rank, as it were. I mean, if
Speaker 1: he's treated more or less as a monarch, he could
Speaker 1: allow among the elites some jockeying for power in his
Speaker 1: regime by do you do a good job, do you
Speaker 1: bring in money, do you show loyalty to me? I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe he is and there has been some changes there people.
Speaker 1: You know, in the Communist Party ranks, people do rise
Speaker 1: and fall there, and so we have seen a number
Speaker 1: of people disappear from the Politburo people rising, so he
Speaker 1: has tried to make his own. Every place has politics,
Speaker 1: I mean, even an authoritary and dictatorship has parted. North
Speaker 1: Korea has hawks and doves, you know they do. There
Speaker 1: is this, you know, he has to manage that. Let's
Speaker 1: talk now about his expansion of market reforms more broadly,
Speaker 1: to reach a larger and larger segment of the population
Speaker 1: through gradual marketization. That seems to be in a way
Speaker 1: both the most brilliant and also the most high risk
Speaker 1: aspect of his policy, the attempt to sort of improve
Speaker 1: the standards of living not just of a one percent
Speaker 1: but of a growing entrepreneurial class. You're in a country
Speaker 1: in North Korea where historically entrepreneurship was completely prohibited and punished,
Speaker 1: and if people did it on the sly, they were
Speaker 1: very limited in what they could get away with. And
Speaker 1: now there's been a gradual but very meaningful opening of
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial opportunities. Is it working, Yes, it is working to
Speaker 1: an extent. This trend started after the famine at the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteen nineties. Out of necessity, people were
Speaker 1: like literally starving. Today, the whole generation was malnourished and
Speaker 1: a shorter exactly exactly. He brand damaged. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: was lerated at the time out of necessity, but Kim
Speaker 1: jongn has allowed that to expand under quite constrained circumstances though.
Speaker 1: So now there are markets. There are more than four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty marketplaces around the country, more than double
Speaker 1: the number than when he took over. Every major city
Speaker 1: in town has one at least one, and this has
Speaker 1: become the life. Kind of marketplaces are you describing, Well,
Speaker 1: this is a thing that they've become, you know, quite institutionalized.
Speaker 1: There are huge buildings built by the state. The state
Speaker 1: rents out the stalls. They take may make money from
Speaker 1: the rent. They tax the sales in there, so the
Speaker 1: state is really enriching itself. And what's being sold everything, Yeah, everything.
Speaker 1: Able to visit one, I have not been allowed to
Speaker 1: visit one, but I've seen a lot of secret footage
Speaker 1: from inside these markets and talk to people about them.
Speaker 1: You know, there's the daily necessity, So a lot of
Speaker 1: people are selling food. There's rice that's coming in. You
Speaker 1: can buy electronics from China. You can buy rice cookers,
Speaker 1: and you can buy glittery cell phone cases. You can
Speaker 1: buy if you have the money and more and more
Speaker 1: people do. You can buy everything, So this is a
Speaker 1: way that people are able to earn their own living
Speaker 1: independent of the state. This is a huge change in
Speaker 1: North Korea. I mean, it's giving up on the core
Speaker 1: notion of self reliance through radical Marxian and communism exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, even though they stick to that in their propaganda,
Speaker 1: it's not happening in effect anymore. But there are still
Speaker 1: constraints and people do have to be kind of very
Speaker 1: careful not to run a foul of the system, like
Speaker 1: if you are seen to be living too large or
Speaker 1: you know, it's not so much the authorities, you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about the authorities. But in a bigger
Speaker 1: risk is that is jealousy. You know, where once people
Speaker 1: in North Korea were equally poor, now there are more
Speaker 1: and more middle class people. There's more conspicuous consumption, you know,
Speaker 1: and if your neighbor sees you living too good at life,
Speaker 1: they might rat on you and try and make up
Speaker 1: something about you or tell people that you are corrupt
Speaker 1: and then us necessary feature of all inequality. But inequality
Speaker 1: has turned out to be, for a better or worse,
Speaker 1: a necessary feature of all relatively marketized economies. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: when you're told every day that you live in a
Speaker 1: socialist paradise and that the leader is, you know, taking
Speaker 1: great care of you, that can be even more hard
Speaker 1: to stomach. I think I'm sure that's true. China pulled
Speaker 1: it off, though. I mean, there in China you still
Speaker 1: have the rhetoric of state socialism even as you've got
Speaker 1: increasingly marketized economy, and you've got it vastly greater inequality
Speaker 1: than previously existed. Yeah, I mean. And the reason I
Speaker 1: say that it is working in North Korea and that
Speaker 1: people are now much more entrepreneurial and aspirational is because
Speaker 1: Kim Jong un hasn't really had to do anything to
Speaker 1: allow this improvement. You know, people have been able to
Speaker 1: trade and earn their way to a better standard of living.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes life is a little bit better, you know,
Speaker 1: better than horrible, you know, slightly less horrible. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: a lot better, depending on how successful these people are.
Speaker 1: But he has been able to take all of the
Speaker 1: credit for this. He's been able to say that under
Speaker 1: his great leadership, people's lives are improving without having to
Speaker 1: do very much at all. The next challenge for him
Speaker 1: is how he sustains that improvement. Because I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the fascinating things I discovered when I went to
Speaker 1: Switzerland and I leafed through the curriculum from the time
Speaker 1: that Kim john Lund was at school and burn and
Speaker 1: all students in Switzerland learn about the French Revolution. They
Speaker 1: learn about rising expectations and how you know those expectations
Speaker 1: going unmet can lead to revolution. And I wonder if
Speaker 1: he remembers those lessons and now if he is thinking
Speaker 1: about how he sustains the sense of things getting better.
Speaker 1: And that is why I conclude that he needs to
Speaker 1: press ahead with economic development. He needs to try to
Speaker 1: attract foreign investment. He really needs to get rid of
Speaker 1: those American led sanctions and allow trade and money to
Speaker 1: flow unfettered, because you know it will run out of steam.
Speaker 1: You're describing somebody who has the perfect training, as it were,
Speaker 1: for his job. You know, maybe growing up part of
Speaker 1: the time in Switzerland didn't teach him to eliminate his enemies.
Speaker 1: Maybe he had to learn that by watching The Godfather
Speaker 1: or just by watching his father do it. And he
Speaker 1: managed to do that. But the marketized reforms, the gradual
Speaker 1: marketized reforms, sound very much like what one would expect
Speaker 1: from someone who grew up in the West, who saw
Speaker 1: the capitalism was delivering much greater standard of living than
Speaker 1: anyone in North Korea was experiencing, and when he came
Speaker 1: to power, decided to open things up. Not politically by
Speaker 1: any stretch of the imagination, but economically. I mean, is
Speaker 1: that what you're saying, that's connecting the dots. No. I
Speaker 1: think that his time in Switzerland taught him that if
Speaker 1: he lived in a democracy, he'd be in nobody. He'd
Speaker 1: just be another kid struggling to get by. He wouldn't
Speaker 1: be loved and adored at every turn. You know that
Speaker 1: the Swiss or the Western liberal democratic model was not
Speaker 1: for him. I think it showed him that he needed
Speaker 1: to keep his bizarre family personality cult intact if he
Speaker 1: was going to continue to enjoy this very privileged position
Speaker 1: at the top. But does it have to Can I
Speaker 1: just push back a moment? I mean, someone is raised
Speaker 1: to be a prince, he's told from an early age
Speaker 1: that his destiny is to become a prince. He does
Speaker 1: then does prince like things, you know, succeeding to power,
Speaker 1: killing off his enemies. Eventually we haven't talked about it,
Speaker 1: but killing off his own brother in this spectacular airport assassination.
Speaker 1: These are all things that are in the script for
Speaker 1: a prince. It doesn't require, I don't think, for us
Speaker 1: to explain this behavior to think that, you know, he saw,
Speaker 1: he saw that he couldn't have made it into democracy.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just natural. If this is your destiny,
Speaker 1: you proceed along this destiny. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the bottom line is that, especially since so many people,
Speaker 1: including the President of the United States, since we're coming
Speaker 1: to him, I said that he's a rational or crazy
Speaker 1: in some way. I mean, the conclusion that I very
Speaker 1: much draw is that he has not. He has acted
Speaker 1: perfectly rationally and in a calculated manner. With all of this,
Speaker 1: with the brutal executions, with the gradual opening on the
Speaker 1: economic side, and the tolerance of markets, all of the
Speaker 1: stuff exactly, It makes perfect sense if you are a
Speaker 1: totalitarian leader whose primary goal is staying in power. So
Speaker 1: your rationalist. Kim Jong un has his great interlocutor today
Speaker 1: in Donald Trump, whom you just mentioned, and I want
Speaker 1: to ask you about their dance. They're in some very
Speaker 1: complex and intricate dance where they're close and they're far,
Speaker 1: and they're close and they're far. How rationally do you
Speaker 1: think Kim Jong un has acted in that engagement and
Speaker 1: how successful do you read his efforts as having been,
Speaker 1: I mean very successful. I think he's been in the
Speaker 1: driver's seat the entire time, and he's really figured out
Speaker 1: how to play Trump. I mean, he knows how to
Speaker 1: push the president's buttons. You know, the North Koreans have
Speaker 1: as you know, the Chinese and the Japanese, on the
Speaker 1: South Koreens, everybody, they've devoted a lot of energy to
Speaker 1: try to figure out Donald Trump. You know, they were
Speaker 1: so mystified by all these tweets at the beginning and
Speaker 1: what did this mean. But the North Koreans, the people
Speaker 1: on the top of the regime, they have read the
Speaker 1: Art of the Deal. I've heard about instances where North
Speaker 1: Korean officials have quoted Donald Trump's tweets. They have an
Speaker 1: encyclopedic knowledge of everything he said. They're officials who have
Speaker 1: read Fire and Fury, Michael Wolf's account of inside the
Speaker 1: White House. So they have really studied how to deal
Speaker 1: with him and what he responds to. So after Kim
Speaker 1: Jong n, you know, completed as he said, his nuclear
Speaker 1: and missile program and was ready to turn to diplomacy.
Speaker 1: He figured out how to flatter the president. You know,
Speaker 1: all of these like beautiful love letters that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: talks about, enormous physically enormous love letters, you point out right,
Speaker 1: not just you know, flowery flattery, but physically enormous, like
Speaker 1: comedic sized envelopes. He's sent a million dollar check from
Speaker 1: publishers bearing exactly, but Donald Trump responds to it. He
Speaker 1: shows everybody who goes into the Oval office these letters
Speaker 1: because he's so proud of it, and it's enabled Kim
Speaker 1: Jong on. You know, look at that first summit in Singapore,
Speaker 1: they agreed to almost nothing. It was so vague, but
Speaker 1: Donald Trump walked out explaining away the human rights abuses
Speaker 1: of North Korea, saying that you know, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of rough places out there, you know, dismissing what
Speaker 1: happened to Otto Wambiera as a way. You know that
Speaker 1: that's what how they got back to talks and things.
Speaker 1: And that's the American who died after being in a
Speaker 1: comma exactly, a healthy young man who left North Korea
Speaker 1: brain dead. Through this flattery, Kim Jong n has managed
Speaker 1: to win over Donald Trump, and you know, the style
Speaker 1: worked without Jong Leon ever having to get to the substance.
Speaker 1: Kim Jongon certainly seems to have captured a lot of
Speaker 1: Trump mind share. I think immediately of something that you
Speaker 1: reported for the first time in your book, namely that
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Nam, his older brother who was assassinated, had
Speaker 1: actually been in contact with the CIA, And shortly after
Speaker 1: you reported that in your book, Donald Trump went public
Speaker 1: with the statement that if it were under his auspices,
Speaker 1: he would never have allowed this connection to take place.
Speaker 1: I saw the information about the CIA with respect to
Speaker 1: his brother or half brother, and I would tell him
Speaker 1: that would not happen under my auspices. So there you
Speaker 1: have the President United States responding to your book specifically
Speaker 1: in reference to Kim Jong Leon. Why do you think
Speaker 1: he's doing that? Is he trying to defend him his friendship,
Speaker 1: as it were, from the idea that he would mess
Speaker 1: with Kim Jongon's older brother by via the CIA. I
Speaker 1: cannot explain Donald Trump's thanking on that. That may not
Speaker 1: be part of your job, but if you fueled it,
Speaker 1: so you have to say, oh, yeah, no, no, I
Speaker 1: mean you could hear the Champagne corks popping in Pyongyang. Right,
Speaker 1: The CIA agents call North Korea the hardest of the
Speaker 1: hard tasks. Right. They true for journalists too, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you're North Korea correspond There is like
Speaker 1: almost zero human intelligence on North Korea, like in vast
Speaker 1: contrast to almost every other autocratic regime around. So the
Speaker 1: fact that the CIA had managed to recruit Kim Jong Nam,
Speaker 1: somebody who, though he didn't have contact with his brother,
Speaker 1: still had good contacts at the top of the regime.
Speaker 1: He was still in close contact with senior officials, that
Speaker 1: was a real coup for them to have been able
Speaker 1: to get any information from somebody so senior and so
Speaker 1: well connected. So for Donald Trump then to say that
Speaker 1: the US would not try to gather this kind of
Speaker 1: intelligence about a man who's threatening to like send nuclear
Speaker 1: tipped missiles to the Capitol or to the White House.
Speaker 1: You know, can you imagine in your account, Kim Jonguan
Speaker 1: is the dictator who has everything. He's rational, he's reforming,
Speaker 1: he's improving the standard of living for his people. He
Speaker 1: need to do it more, but he's doing it. And
Speaker 1: he's played the President of the United States beautifully. What's
Speaker 1: next for him, and what's the succession plan beyond him
Speaker 1: if any Yeah, I mean, I think now he is
Speaker 1: getting into quite tricky territory because the economic side of
Speaker 1: it is challenging, you know, to try to allow more
Speaker 1: economic development without allowing opening, without allowing more damaging information
Speaker 1: coming into the country. That's something that's going to be
Speaker 1: a real challenge for him because as these bags of
Speaker 1: rice and you know, solar panels come across the border
Speaker 1: from North Korea, so too do USB drives and SD
Speaker 1: cards that contain movies and dramas and music from the
Speaker 1: outside world. Some opening is happening. You show that convincingly, yes,
Speaker 1: So he has to balance that. But he also has
Speaker 1: to try to balance this diplomatic side. He's managed so
Speaker 1: far to string along Donald Trump. He also has the
Speaker 1: South Korean president playing a mediator role. But I think
Speaker 1: you know, Kim Jong und does not want to go
Speaker 1: up his nuclear weapons. There's no way he's going to
Speaker 1: feel secure enough to do that anytime soon. Just to
Speaker 1: push back on that, it would never be sensible for
Speaker 1: him to give up his nuclear weapons. Giving them up
Speaker 1: is an invitation to regime change. Keeping them is a
Speaker 1: guaranteur of regime such it would seem to me as
Speaker 1: close to a truth of political science as one could
Speaker 1: imagine that if you've got nuclear weapons, you don't give
Speaker 1: them up. Kim John was taking over in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eleven as the Arab spring was exploding. You know,
Speaker 1: he saw Mohamma Gadaffi, who gave up his nuclear capability
Speaker 1: and a deal with the United States, dragged from a ditch,
Speaker 1: and you know that must be burned in exactly, burned
Speaker 1: in his brain. So now, I mean, I think he
Speaker 1: does want to make it look like he is willing
Speaker 1: to give up something, and maybe he is willing to
Speaker 1: give up something, some hardware. You know, all of these
Speaker 1: missile launches and nuclear tests have shown he has a
Speaker 1: lot of capability. He's getting all the parts he needs.
Speaker 1: He can retain the capability while looking like he's giving
Speaker 1: up some ICBMs and things there. So the challenge for
Speaker 1: him now is to sustain this, to make the US
Speaker 1: look like they are getting something so that he can
Speaker 1: get something in return. You know, he desperately needs sanctions
Speaker 1: relief because these sanctions have been hurting North Korea like
Speaker 1: never before. How's his health? His health is not great.
Speaker 1: I mean look at him and the times he's been
Speaker 1: coming out in Vladivostok in South Korea in the DMZ there,
Speaker 1: he is not a healthy man. He's a chain smoker.
Speaker 1: He's struggling for breath, and this is one of the
Speaker 1: most puzzling things to me, like, if Kim Jong un
Speaker 1: is concerned about leading for the rest of his natural life,
Speaker 1: he's not doing much to take care of himself, because
Speaker 1: if there's one thing that poses a risk to him,
Speaker 1: it's his health. Thank you very much, enam really super fascinating.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that avenue and window into the thought
Speaker 1: process of somebody who comes across from your account as
Speaker 1: hitting all the right notes. Thank you, No, it was
Speaker 1: my great pleasure to be here. Talking to Anna Fifield
Speaker 1: and reading her book really made me deeply reconsider my
Speaker 1: instinct to think of Kim Jong un as a bit
Speaker 1: of a buffoon. She's made a very convincing case to
Speaker 1: me that he's actually deeply rational. That has major consequences
Speaker 1: for how we think about our interactions with North Korea
Speaker 1: going forward. A rational actor is not to be addressed
Speaker 1: by silly symbols like basketball summits or oversized letters. The
Speaker 1: fact that he uses those symbols doesn't mean he takes
Speaker 1: them seriously. It just means that he thinks that our
Speaker 1: president takes them seriously. What we need to do if
Speaker 1: Kim Jong un is a very careful, thoughtful dictatorial leader
Speaker 1: is meet him with the tools that influence the behavior
Speaker 1: of dictators, that is strength and incentives. Perhaps we can
Speaker 1: give him the right set of interests to encourage the
Speaker 1: development of his own economy and gradually slowly and cautiously
Speaker 1: lead him towards some opening so that the country that
Speaker 1: he runs is no longer the brutal dictatorship that it
Speaker 1: still remains to this day. Even as we do that, though,
Speaker 1: we have to keep in mind that he will be
Speaker 1: thinking about one thing, and one thing only, the interests
Speaker 1: of Kim Jong un. Deep Background is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Genecott, with engineering
Speaker 1: by Jason Gambrell and Jason Rostkowski. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon.
Speaker 1: Our k is composed by Luis GERA special thanks to
Speaker 1: the Pushkin Brass Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg and Mia Lobel.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Noah R. Feldman. This is deep background