Inside North Korea: Then & Now with Lisa Ling (2017) - full transcript

On September 3, 2017,

a man-made earthquake,
6.3 on the Richter scale,

is felt on the Korean peninsula.

The North Korean leadership
boasts a successful test

of a hydrogen bomb.

As long as Kim Jong Un is with us,

the victory, without question,
will be ours.

Much congratulations must be given

to our nuclear scientists and technicians.

The underground explosion

strikes fear and anger
throughout the international community.



The Security Council
must act to stop North Korea.

We have kicked the can
down the road long enough.

There is no more road left.

I think they've come to the conclusion

that they have a much greater
chance of survival

by being a threatening power
than being a cooperative one.

North Korea is the most secretive

and isolated nation in the world,

and its actions have been
vexing America for 70 years.

In 2006, I went undercover there

and found a world
of absolute conformity...

Government minders...

Tomorrow you're going out of our country.

And unimaginable horrors



that people risked their lives
to escape...

I'd never felt as isolated as I did
as soon as I touched down in North Korea.

Then, three years later, it got personal

when my sister Laura was abducted
and imprisoned there

while on assignment for Current TV.

The soldier raised the butt of his rifle

and brought it down on my head,
and I just blacked out.

The next thing I know, I'm in North Korea.

In the light of a new leader
and increased global concern,

I look back on my trip in 2006
and my sister's capture.

Inside North Korea, Then and Now.

When I went into North Korea in 2006,

the dear leader, Kim Jong Il,

ruled with absolute power.

He died on December 17, 2011.

In the capital, Pyongyang,
the funeral procession lasted for hours.

The dear leader's disciples' grief
will last much longer.

His youngest son, Kim Jong Un,
has become the third Kim

to rule this dynastic communist nation.

He is called the supreme leader.

To the watching world,

not yet 30-year-old Kim Jong Un
was an unknown,

and is today still enigmatic
and unpredictable.

When Kim Jong Un took power,

he systematically went out and wiped out
his opposition

with a brutality that we had not
really seen

from his father or his grandfather

and was smart enough to quickly
change his appearance,

his haircut, whatever

to remind everybody of his grandfather,
the country's founder, Kim Il Sung.

He may have been young.
He may have been callow.

He may have been mistrusted.

He came out on top.

It is estimated
Kim Jong Un has assassinated

140 senior leaders,

including an uncle
and likely his half-brother.

His regime has tested over 80 rockets,
successfully launching ICBMs...

Intercontinental ballistic missiles...
That threaten its enemies.

In 2016,

American college student Otto Warmbier,
touring North Korea,

was arrested and sentenced
to 15 years' hard labor.

I beg for forgiveness.

He was freed after 17 months,

but not before mysteriously
falling into a coma.

He died shortly after his release.

President Obama told

then president-elect Trump
that North Korea would be

his most urgent international challenge.

Every time there is
a new American administration,

it seems like the North Koreans

try to test the new administration.

The difference this time is,
Kim Jong Un seems to be

a lot more unpredictable than his father,

and the United States' president,
uh, is sort of an untested entity

and is probably
the most unpredictable president

who has ever sat in that seat as well.

North Korea best not make
any more threats to the United States.

They will be met with fire and fury
like the world has never seen.

What does Kim Jong Un want?

What are his motives?

Across the three Kim dictators,

Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un,

there's been one common theme,

which has been that their development

of missiles and nuclear weapons
and their effort to combine the two

is the ultimate survival strategy,

that their number-one concern is survival.

People treat you differently
as a nuclear power.

The two successful
ICBM launches in July 2017

showed that Kim Jong Un has missiles

that appear capable of reaching
the continental United States.

It puts the U.S. and North Korea
on a collision course

not seen since the Korean War

and proves that its nuclear program
is further along than previously thought.

The nation even issues
commemorative stamps

celebrating the events.

North Korea has one
of the largest militaries in the world.

Parades like this boast
awesome power to its people

and an ominous message to its enemies.

And the North Korean people believe
they are still at war with America,

though fighting ended in 1953.

But the roots of North Korea's antagonism
toward foreign powers

goes back over a century.

In 1910, Korea was colonized by Japan.

The brutal occupation ended
more than 1,000 years

of Korea's reign as a sovereign nation,
and was a major source of shame.

Japan lost Korea in World War II,
and the country was split

between the American-backed south
and the Soviet-backed communist north,

led by a young rebel named Kim Il Sung.

In 1950, Kim Il Sung invaded the south
to unify the country,

and the U.S. opposed
communist expansion at all costs.

As many as four million people
died in the Korean War,

which included some of the most
brutal warfare the world has known.

In a four-month period alone,

the U.S. dropped
nearly one million gallons of napalm.

Most major cities in North Korea
were at least half obliterated,

including Pyongyang.

In 1953, after three years of fighting,
Korea remained divided

in almost exactly the same place
as it had been before the war began,

the 38th parallel.

There never was a peace treaty,
rather a perpetual state of ceasefire.

The joint security area on the border
is the one place where North Korean forces

stand toe to toe
with the rest of the world.

On one side of this concrete marker
is North Korea,

on the other, the joint
American-South Korean forces.

Every flinch is monitored.

Neither side wants to blink,
and nobody has for over 60 years.

You can see on the North Korean side

how they're set up.
They have two soldiers watching

each other so neither of them defect.

And then they have their leader
to the north, making sure

that no one else from the North
will come down and defect.

With everyone
watching, no one can cross here.

And defecting anywhere else
along the DMZ is nearly impossible.

The DMZ, or de-militarized zone,

is a two-and-a-half-mile-wide buffer

along the border of north and south Korea.

With more than a million landmines,
high voltage electric fences,

and nearly two million soldiers,
crossing over is almost certain suicide.

South Korea's capitol, Seoul,

is less than 40 miles
away from the border,

but what makes this place so dangerous
is the uncertainty of what lies

north of the divide.

North Korea, officially
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,

is regarded
as an "intelligence black hole."

I think you
could certainly make a strong argument

that North Korea has been

the biggest intelligence failure
for the United States

since Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The American intelligence agencies
don't take much heat for this

because everyone understands
that North Korea is a very hard target...

But we know some basic facts:

North Korea is roughly
the size of Mississippi.

It has 25 million people,
a showcase capital, Pyongyang,

but vast poverty most everywhere else.

All three Kims were
and are absolute dictators,

and worshipped in a personality cult

perhaps more extreme
than any other in history.

Not only do you have a population

that has largely bought into the myth

that this family is keeping them safe

against the Americans who would
overrun their territory,

but that the myth all comes

out of the founding myth of Kim Il Sung,

and that everybody else's authority

comes from the fact
that they descend from him.

I'd never experienced
a kind of roboticism

like I experienced in North Korea.

Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Un.

And it was really difficult
to tell whether people really felt, um,

as passionately about their dear leader

or they felt compelled to act
like they did.

Everyone is trained from birth
to love the leaders,

and virtually no outside sources
of information are allowed.

Newspapers and television
are controlled by the state.

Many here don't even know
a man has walked on the Moon.

While the elites at the very top
of North Korean society may have access

to the global Internet,
for millions of ordinary North Koreans,

there's no way to connect
to the outside world.

And those elites with cell phones
can only speak within its borders.

It is this isolation from the
rest of the world

that earns North Korea the moniker,
"The Hermit Kingdom."

I had always been so curious
about North Korea

because it's just been
this enigma in the world,

the country about which
the least is known.

And so, when my renowned
cataract surgeon friend Dr. Sanduk Ruit

invited me to follow along with him
and his medical team,

I jumped at the opportunity to go.

The caveat, though, was that
I couldn't say I was a journalist.

I had to go under the auspices
of being part of his medical team.

Thousands of people in North Korea
go blind

due to a lack of even the most basic
medical facilities.

The annual number of surgeries performed

is just, just very little.

And the blindness magnitude is one
of the highest in the world.

Dr. Sanduk Ruit planned
to travel from Nepal to North Korea

to do more than 1,000 surgeries
in less than 10 days.

His mission was purely humanitarian.

Our entire crew posed as members
of Dr. Ruit's medical team.

We were going to document his work
and show the world what life

was like inside North Korea.

- ...send it back.
- I'm sure you...

This meeting in a Kathmandu hotel room

was the last time our team
could converse in private.

So there will be a North Korean man

traveling with us the entire time?

- Yes.
- From here to Pyongyang?

From here to Pyongyang
and back to Kathmandu.

North Korean minders met us in Nepal

and monitored every step
until the trip was over.

Dr. Ruit knew our South African cameraman,
Brian, and I

would be watched very carefully.

Do you think that Brian
and I will be followed?

I'm sure.

And he was concerned that the cameras

would attract too much attention

as we entered the country...

We can put the camera down there.

And wanted to pack them more carefully,

buried beneath the medical equipment.

Okay, and pack it with linens.

A North Korean official
checks our luggage

where our cameras are hidden.

And everything is okay with the luggage.

Two North Korean minders

are already keeping an eye on things.

All of us will be watched very carefully.

I think you should
shut the camera down now.

In retrospect,
I think I was a little naive.

I was surprised that
no one Googled who I was,

because I was working
for National Geographic at the time.

But I thought that if
it was ever discovered

that I was a journalist,

I would just be expelled from the country,

so while I had my concerns,
I wasn't that scared.

But maybe I should have been.

After hours in the air,
we stole these shots

as we approached North Korea.

Normally, Americans were not
welcome there,

and I was told I would be the only one
in the entire country.

On the ground, we got
our first glimpses of Pyongyang

and shot undercover footage,

no easy task with minders in the car.

We passed 12-lane highways
with hardly any cars

and saw images of Kim Il Sung
and Kim Jong Il everywhere.

Pyongyang was and still is
a city of the relatively privileged.

The government rewards strong supporters
by letting them live there.

And unless you're
a high-ranking official,

you need a permit to travel
anywhere in the country.

So from the moment we landed in Pyongyang,

I could tell I was in a place

unlike any place I'd ever been before.

All of our technological devices
were removed from our possession.

We had to check them into the airport.

And we were assigned
eight government minders,

and they followed us everywhere.

They even stayed in the guest houses
where we were housed.

And at a certain point,

I realized that I was
in Kim Jong Il's North Korea.

When we reached the hospital,
hundreds of blind people

had already gathered for surgery.

This hospital was probably
as fancy as it got in North Korea.

Most of the cutting-edge equipment
had been donated by other countries,

but few doctors knew how to use it.

This one is from America.

Iris. Iris.

The government let
Dr. Ruit and his team come

because it was a way for Kim Jong Il
to get services to his people.

Our team had to bring
most of our equipment

and supplies with us.

And because blackouts were common,
even here in the capital,

we brought our own generator for power.

I hoped we could see
what life was really like here,

but the government
controlled our every move.

And the rare times that it had granted
foreigners access,

they had only been shown
idealized versions of the country,

like in this Dutch documentary
called A Day In The Life.

In this scene, a mother sings
nursery rhymes

as she walks her child to school.

Sing along.

♪ The pathetic Americans
kneel on the ground ♪

♪ They beg for mercy ♪

The film shows only the cheerful façade,

because here, image matters.

Back at the hospital,
Dr. Ruit continued his mission.

In the developed world, cataracts rarely
get so bad, especially in young people,

that they result in blindness.

But here, because of poor care
and likely poor nutrition,

the incidence is as much
as 10 times higher than in the West,

and afflicts young and old alike.

But in North Korea, cataracts
are only a small part

of the humanitarian nightmare.

German physician and human rights activist
Norbert Vollertsen

worked for over a year in North Korea.

He shot pictures
of the horrible medical conditions.

Bloody old operating tables...

beer bottles for IVs...

no antibiotics or anesthesia.

Of course,
the North Korean government will tell you

everything is free in North Korea.

It's not true because it's not available.

There is no medicine.
There's no running water.

There's even no soap in the hospital.

But it was the lack
of food, and its effect on children,

that made the most lasting impression.

When I was
a medical doctor in North Korea,

I saw a lot of starving children.

I saw children dying under my hands

when I was too late,
when there was no more need

for any emergency duty because the child
was dying when I came into the room.

So I felt so helpless.

In the mid-1990s,

natural disasters
and government mismanagement

created a famine
that killed up to three million people,

about 10% of North Korea's population.

Taking place in the heart
of prosperous east Asia,

it was one
of the worst famines of the century.

Surveys done in the early 2000s

showed that nearly
40% of North Korean children

were chronically malnourished.

The average 7-year-old boy in
North Korea was nearly 8 inches shorter

and 22 pounds lighter
than his brother in South Korea.

I'd say
the damage to his bones is permanent.

They were called
"the stunted generation."

It's a tragic situation,

and it's extraordinary,

because same race, same people,
same basic diet,

and that's all malnutrition.

Over time, the Kims isolated the country

from much of the world,

even cutting off foreign aid

and communications with the neighbors
to the south for long periods of time.

So the way we were able to convince
our North Korean minders

that we needed to have our cameras
with us at all times is,

uh, that I said I was a medical student

and I had to document
everything that was happening.

I thought that I would get
a very skewed perspective of what life

in North Korea would be like.

I thought that I would just be resigned
to just surgical facilities,

but I decided after a few days

to ask our minders
if we could visit the home

of a typical North Korean family.

And to my complete shock,
they agreed to take me to visit a family.

Our minders led us
to the home of a blind patient.

The blind woman lived
in a sixth-floor apartment

in the heart of Pyongyang.

Since I was told I was the only American
in the country, I felt lucky,

but a bit surprised, that the minders
were willing to take me here.

What a beautiful home!

There were six government officials
watching our every move.

But it was still a rare chance to see
inside a real North Korean home.

Like others in Pyongyang,
this was a privileged family.

The woman lived there
with four of her family members,

including her two granddaughters.

The first thing I noticed was
that there weren't any family pictures...

just image after image
of Kim Jong Il and his father.

Of all their pictures,
which is your favorite picture?

Every picture is our favorite.

Every, every photo of...

Of course, every picture, absolutely.

We were warned to photograph
the dear leader carefully...

So from here up?

What happens if it's only half?

What happens?
Why not?

No?
Oh, okay.

We weren't supposed to ask why.

We were supposed to sit down
and be entertained by the granddaughter.

We wanted to talk to people,
but under the watchful eye of the minders,

this was what we got.

Wow, that's amazing.

Finally, we sat down with the family
and asked a few questions.

How difficult is life
for your mother without sight?

The son-in-law
answered without missing a beat.

The most difficult
thing for my mother-in-law

is not seeing Kim Jong Il,
the Dear Leader.

Why do you want to see
this supreme leader so much, so bad?

My children and I live happily

due to the honor of our Great Leader,

so I want to see him,

even a glimpse of him,
so I can thank him.

She was obviously
moved, but what surprised me was,

so was everyone else.

This party official is crying.
Even this government minder.

As I listened to her, I started to cry.

If our nation and leader didn't exist,

we might as well be dead.

My father was killed,

so I was raised in the arms of
our Dear Leader,

and now I'm a party member.

Uh, I just wonder...

can the Great Leader do anything wrong?

What?

Can the Great Leader do anything wrong?

Is there anything wrong?

Or he's always,
what he says is, is magical?

I couldn't understand
what you are saying.

Okay.

I truly believe that our minder
did not understand my question,

because I think he may have perceived me

to be questioning the authority
of the Dear Leader

and that was something
just incomprehensible,

and so he didn't even understand

how to translate such a question.

North Korea is a very small country.

How does the Great Leader
defend it against big powers like America?

Even though North Korea is small,

we serve the greatest leader in the world.

We have a strong arm of unity

which is stronger than America's
atomic bombs.

America has no idea how to deal with us.

This is all because we have
General Kim Jon Il

as the leader of our nation.

As the conversation wound down,

I wondered,
where did North Korea's willingness

to face down the entire world come from?

Our country's unity is stronger

than a nuclear weapon,

so we're not afraid.

How did this powerful mindset take hold?

North Korea's defiant stance
toward the rest of the world

stems from a philosophy created
by Kim Il Sung, called Juche.

The Juche philosophy basically means

"up yours" to the outside world.

We can make everything ourself;
we don't need you.

And from an outsider's perspective,
it's a peculiar thing.

Why make such a big deal
out of being independent?

Your people are starving.

You've got no economy.
You've got no trade.

But in the Korean context,

it has a profound resonance,
because Korean history

is one of invasion and all sorts of abuse

from major powers.

So the North Koreans
turned this history around

and said, "We're not going
to take it anymore."

And for Koreans,
there is a very profound thrill

that somebody would have the guts
to stand up and be like that.

Juche ideology
is still used to run North Korea

with an iron fist,

and for each Kim leader
to wield absolute power.

It also supported the god-like status
of Kim Il Sung during a 50-year reign.

The Great Leader's hearse is approaching.

When Kim Il Sung died in 1994,

he left behind a traumatized nation.

The Great Leader, is this true?

Are you leaving without us?

His son, Kim Jong Il, took power

in the world's first communist
dynastic handover.

Following in his father's footsteps,
Kim Jong Il ruled by fear.

And now his son Kim Jong Un continues
to use the Juche ideology of self-reliance

to unify the nation and crush all dissent.

On our final evening in North Korea,

Dr. Ruit worked late into the night

to reach his goal
of operating on 1,000 patients.

He believes in humanitarian engagement
with all the countries of the world,

whatever their politics.

The North Korean people have
two eyes, like you and me,

they have a mouth,
and they have teeth, you know.

And it's for the world in general
to understand that in North Korea,

we have a lot of people who need our love.

At the hospital, the cataract patients

were waiting for Dr. Ruit

to remove their bandages.

But they still didn't know
if they would be able to see.

It was so fascinating to be in this room.

It was almost like a theater,

and as they were removing the bandages
from the patients,

one would think that they would be so

expressive of gratitude
to the surgical team

that restored their vision, um, but what
I saw was something entirely different.

We did a little more than 1,000 surgeries

and all with very good results,

no infections.

That aspect, I feel okay.

The minder gave us one last warning

to shoot only the full image
of the dear leader.

The moment of truth came first
for a 23-year-old woman.

She came with her father

and had been completely blind for years.

Ask her to open her eyes.

Can she touch my nose?

Ask her where is her father?

Dad!

Can you see?

Yes!
I can see very well.

It's all because of the Great General.

We must bow to our Great General for this.

Yes, Dad.

Thank you, Great General!

I want to show
my gratitude to our Great General!

♪ Thank you very, very much ♪

♪ Our Great General Kim Jong Il ♪

♪ Thank you very, very much ♪

♪ Our Great General Kim Jong Il ♪

We praise you!

We praise you!

Then we spotted
the grandmother we had visited at home.

She had been waiting for years
to see the dear leader.

And she was not disappointed.

Thank you!

Thank you!

Great Leader, I wish you great health.

How kind you are to hold an old woman
like me in your arms.

It was just so, it was so surreal.

And I couldn't tell
if they truly believed it

or they felt like they had to do it,

because if they didn't do it,
they might pay the consequences.

With these eyes that I've received,

I will grab a gun and kill every one
of the American enemies

and terminate them far from this Earth!

After I left
North Korea, I certainly breathed

a huge sigh of relief,

and I never thought that I would
have any dealings with that country again.

Then our family went into crisis
when my sister Laura

was abducted and imprisoned there.

In March of 2009, I was working on
a documentary

about North Korean defectors,

people who are fleeing

the very desperate conditions
in North Korea.

And during that time,
we were filming along the Tumen River.

This is the river
that separates China and North Korea.

And it was frozen at the time.

And so, we were literally standing
on that frozen river

when two North Korean soldiers spotted us.

They chased us into China

and then very violently dragged
my colleague, Euna Lee, and me,

across that river into North Korea.

In the middle of the night,
while my husband and I were sleeping,

my sister's husband called, and he said,

"Laura was abducted
by North Korean soldiers,"

and my heart just sank.

And I was
pretty bruised up, and bloodied.

And I just tried to keep my wits about me,

but I was so scared.

We were eventfully transferred
to Pyongyang.

Euna and I were separated
for the remainder of our captivity.

And that's when
the real formal interrogation began.

And I was grilled every day,
for hours on end, day after day.

One of the most difficult parts was trying
to convince them that I was not a spy.

It didn't help that the co-founder
and chairman of the company

that I worked for at the time, Current TV,
was former vice president Al Gore,

so that immediately made them suspicious
that I had ties to the government.

One day, my interrogator came in,
and he was carrying a file.

And it was all about my sister,
and the projects she had worked on.

He was very upset.

Very upset, very suspicious,

and he immediately accused
both Lisa and me

of trying to bring down
the North Korean government.

Euna and I became the first Americans

to be tried in North Korea's
highest court.

And on the day of our sentencing,
the judge and his two associates

left the room to deliberate.

They left for five minutes,
and they returned with their judgment,

and that was 12 years of hard labor.

Back in 2006,
we interviewed a North Korean defector

who had spent time

in one of the notorious
North Korean prisons,

and he described it
as just an absolutely heinous

and insidious place to be,
and so the thought

of my sister going there
was just unimaginable.

And I was terrified,
I was absolutely terrified.

The judge shouted,
"No forgiveness, no appeal."

And I just clutched onto the podium.

I was standing at a podium,
and I just clutched onto it

to keep from falling over.

And I told my interrogator.

I said, "Let me talk to my sister.

"I don't know what it is that you want,

but whatever it is, I can try to convey
to her

what you may want
and maybe she can help out here."

The consensus from the State Department,

from Vice President Gore,

from every official-type person
that we'd spoken to was, keep it quiet.

We don't want to antagonize
the North Koreans,

we don't know what happened,

so let's keep this out of the press.

And one of the first things I said
to my sister was,

"We've been keeping this quiet."

And she said,
"No, we need to change that."

It became very clear to me

that the North Korean authorities wanted
a visit

from former president Bill Clinton,

that they wanted him to serve
as the envoy.

And so, in a phone call
to my sister, I asked,

"Do you think that President Clinton
can come here to rescue us?"

And she was very quiet.

I mean, there was
a period of just silence,

and I think because she realized that that
was going to be a very tricky request,

especially since Hillary Clinton
was the current secretary of state.

After that first phone call,
I sort of launched

this media campaign of deference

to the North Korean government.

Knowing how sensitive
the North Korean government is,

knowing, as an Asian,
how important saving face is.

I knew that we had to communicate
to the North Korean government

how sorry my sister was
and how we had to beg for mercy,

and beg them publicly
to forgive the mistake

or at least release my sister
and her colleague on humanitarian grounds.

I was also allowed letters.

I devoured each and every word,
memorized every letter that I received.

"I so desperately wanted to reach
right through the phone when you called

"and just pull you back home to me.

I can't believe this is still happening."

My sister's letters were really strategic.

Lisa always expressed messages
of deference and respect

to the North Korean authorities,

always apologizing.

And she knew I was not
the only one reading those letters.

In fact, sometimes they would
arrive with coffee stains on them.

After Vice President Gore

had gotten President Clinton
to agree to go,

we had a conference call.

It was a secret mission to North Korea,
and it all happened very, very quickly.

Images of President Clinton landing
in North Korea

started to emerge on television.

And there to greet him was
a-a jubilant-looking Kim Jong Il.

It became pretty apparent to me

when there was a news report on
in the guards' room.

And I heard the North Korean newscaster,

and I heard her say, "Clinton,"

in this booming voice.

And I looked at the TV, and I could see
the report

about the meeting that had gone on
between President Clinton and Kim Jong Il.

And Euna and I were together at that time,
and I said, "What is she saying, Euna?"

And she said that there was a warm meeting
between Kim Jong Il and President Clinton.

And I looked at her,
and I said, you know, "We're going home."

After 140 days of fear and uncertainty,

Laura Ling and Euna Lee walked away
from North Korea free women again,

looking well and bound for home.

When he met with Kim Jong Il,
Kim Jong Il had told Clinton

that when Kim Jong Il's father,
Kim Il Sung, passed away in 1994,

Clinton was the first leader
to call Kim Jong Il

to offer his condolences,
even before Kim's own allies.

Kim told Clinton
that he always remembered that gesture,

and had wanted to meet him ever since.

And I think that it's so wild to think

that that gesture that happened
so many years before

could have been responsible
for our freedom.

And I think it also shows how there was

a mutual civility between the two leaders
that allowed diplomacy to really work.

Now, a decade later,
Kim Jong Un enjoys the devotion and power

his father and grandfather had.

He also seems to have a penchant
for wanting to be on the world stage.

Kim Jong Un,
like his father and his grandfather,

has played
an extremely weak hand brilliantly.

There are people who are looking
out there and say this man's crazy.

If so, he is crazy,

but a pretty brilliant strategist,
a pretty brutal player,

and pretty savvy at understanding

how small technological edges
in nuclear and in cyber

enable him to have the power to reach out

at the United States and other enemies.

According to North Korea,
their country has technically been at war

with the United States for decades,

and in many respects, I think
that they do need to feel that tension

between our two countries, because
otherwise they would start to question

the regime about why there's
so much poverty and devastation.

By having this enemy to focus on,
it gives, uh, a pass

to their own government

for not providing sufficiently
for its people.

Certainly, the North Koreans want

to be treated with respect
as a significant power,

but they have no illusions
that they will get there by integration,

economic integration, with the West.

Do I think that the North Koreans
would pick up a nuclear weapon

and lob it at the United States?

No, because 45 minutes later,
that would be the end of the regime.

Do I think that they might use the threat

that they could hold
American cities hostage

as a way to get
something else that they want?

Yeah, I think that's
completely within their capability.

According
to the Korean central news agency,

Kim Jong Un says, defiantly,

that North Korea is nearing its goal
of military equilibrium with America.

The United States has
great strength and patience,

but if it is forced to defend itself
or its allies,

we will have no choice
but to totally destroy North Korea.

In 70 years...

As the rhetoric
between the U.S. and North Korea

escalates, the international community

is largely where they've been for decades,

initiating harsher sanctions
that appear to have no effect

on stopping Kim's goal of being
a threatening nuclear power.