CIA North Korea Expert: Kim Jong Un Is Pulling Off Something Impossible

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This is a conversation with Dr. Jung Pak - a former senior analyst at the CIA where she specialized on North Korea and who later served as the Special U.S. Representative for North Korea in the Biden Administration. Today she is a Distinguished Associate Fellow at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy, and Strategy at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, and author of the book “Becoming Kim Jong Un and someone with more insight into the country than almost anyone in the world.

Which is why it’s kind of incredible what she argues today: that North Korea is winning. In just a few years, North Korea went from a basket case to a country that’s never been wealthier with an army and military industry that’s never been more dangerous, fighting a war in Europe in which it plays an increasingly crucial role and a country that’s being courted by Russia, China and maybe even the U.S. to get Kim on their side.

With Dr. Pak we talk about how and why did that happen, what is North Korea really doing in Ukraine and what both Russia and North Korea get out of it, why is North Korea’s military so much more capable today than a few years ago, why is the Trump administration cancelling exercises with South Korea to not provoke North Korea or why are North Korea concerned about what Kim Jong Un might do with all this newly found power he now has. And much more.