WEBVTT
1
00:00:16.429 --> 00:00:20.070
I'm John Batchelor. I welcome Gordon Chang, my colleague and co-host,
2
00:00:20.179 --> 00:00:23.300
and we welcome Greg Scarlato, president and CEO of the
3
00:00:23.339 --> 00:00:26.359
Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. We look at
4
00:00:26.539 --> 00:00:30.559
rumors out of North Korea right now and puzzle, why,
5
00:00:30.699 --> 00:00:33.890
why now, where are we going? The rumor is that
6
00:00:34.670 --> 00:00:40.130
the dictator is dead. And what next? That is the rumor.
7
00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:45.259
It's cheap trash talk, however significant as a data point.
8
00:00:46.179 --> 00:00:50.560
I go immediately to Gordon to remember more than 15
9
00:00:50.560 --> 00:00:55.670
years back when Xi Jinping first was tapped as the
10
00:00:55.750 --> 00:01:01.409
inheritor of Hu Jintao's People's Republic of China and arrived
11
00:01:01.469 --> 00:01:07.049
in Beijing. There were many incidents that suggested assassination attempts, violence,
12
00:01:07.150 --> 00:01:11.799
civil war, death of Xi very early, 15, 16 years ago.
13
00:01:12.900 --> 00:01:16.519
It came to what we have today, a dictatorship under
14
00:01:16.640 --> 00:01:21.540
one man in perpetuity. Gordon, do you recall those moments
15
00:01:21.659 --> 00:01:25.290
when Xi was acting desperate? It doesn't matter if I die,
16
00:01:25.349 --> 00:01:27.950
it's worth the risk. Whatever he was talking about, we
17
00:01:27.989 --> 00:01:31.450
were never sure. Do you recall that? And what did
18
00:01:31.510 --> 00:01:32.930
it add up to at the time? What did we
19
00:01:32.969 --> 00:01:33.549
learn from it?
20
00:01:34.670 --> 00:01:38.269
Good morning, John and Greg. We learned that there have
21
00:01:38.329 --> 00:01:41.459
been a series of rumors, and they continue to this day,
22
00:01:41.599 --> 00:01:47.840
about Xi Jinping, about assassination plots, about strokes, about all
23
00:01:47.879 --> 00:01:52.189
sorts of things. And the Chinese regime has always been opaque,
24
00:01:52.590 --> 00:01:55.769
but Xi Jinping has made it even more so. And
25
00:01:55.829 --> 00:01:58.859
so in that type of environment, you have rumors and
26
00:01:59.019 --> 00:02:01.540
people use rumors for all sorts of things, not only
27
00:02:01.579 --> 00:02:05.859
for entertainment, but also to destabilize the regime. And that
28
00:02:05.900 --> 00:02:09.099
has been a hallmark of Xi Jinping's rule.
29
00:02:10.020 --> 00:02:13.439
Greg, a very good day to you. The rumor is
30
00:02:13.969 --> 00:02:18.650
published as a headline at UPI. Rumors of Kim Jong-un's demise.
31
00:02:18.810 --> 00:02:21.250
Are we ready for what comes next? What do you
32
00:02:21.289 --> 00:02:24.289
make of the rumors of the death of the dictator?
33
00:02:24.430 --> 00:02:25.009
Good day to you.
34
00:02:25.930 --> 00:02:30.719
A very good day to you as well, John and Gordon. Eventually,
35
00:02:31.419 --> 00:02:34.919
this is going to be true. Nobody's eternal. But we
36
00:02:34.979 --> 00:02:40.539
have been through this exercise before during COVID. And some
37
00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:46.650
very respectable representatives of the North Korean defector community, both
38
00:02:46.689 --> 00:02:50.270
of them members of the South Korean parliament at the time,
39
00:02:50.349 --> 00:02:54.030
Taeyong Ho, former DCM in London, former North Korean DCM
40
00:02:54.069 --> 00:02:57.319
in London, and Ji Song-ho, who appeared at the State
41
00:02:57.400 --> 00:03:00.900
of the Union address in 2018, both of them bought
42
00:03:00.939 --> 00:03:05.319
into this, and it did damage their reputation. So sometimes
43
00:03:05.719 --> 00:03:10.150
this type of exercise is meant to damage the reputation
44
00:03:10.539 --> 00:03:16.069
of prominent figures within the North Korean escapee movement, the
45
00:03:16.129 --> 00:03:21.490
North Korean human rights movement, the North Korean expert community.
46
00:03:22.050 --> 00:03:27.250
Sometimes these are just journalists that just want to get
47
00:03:27.310 --> 00:03:29.960
a number of hits and just go all the way
48
00:03:30.400 --> 00:03:33.520
on this type of rumor. I believe that if you're
49
00:03:33.539 --> 00:03:38.360
referring to the UPI story authored by Colonel Maxwell, David Maxwell,
50
00:03:39.199 --> 00:03:42.680
what he was drawing attention to was not the rumors,
51
00:03:42.879 --> 00:03:47.159
but the fact that we need to be prepared for
52
00:03:47.210 --> 00:03:51.530
the time we actually see this type of crisis unfolding.
53
00:03:52.210 --> 00:03:55.610
I have no doubt that the North Koreans are prepared
54
00:03:55.949 --> 00:04:01.020
for succession. This is a humongous bureaucracy. They have already
55
00:04:01.080 --> 00:04:07.039
accomplished two hereditary transmissions of power in July 1994 and
56
00:04:07.099 --> 00:04:10.949
December 2011. They will be ready for the next one,
57
00:04:11.009 --> 00:04:14.650
no doubt about it. The best reference for this is
58
00:04:15.169 --> 00:04:20.449
a report available on our website hrnk.org. It's a report
59
00:04:20.500 --> 00:04:25.639
by Robert Collins on the Organization and Guidance Department, the OGD.
60
00:04:26.439 --> 00:04:31.360
There is one chapter dedicated to succession, to how the
61
00:04:31.560 --> 00:04:34.199
actual succession process would unfold.
62
00:04:34.819 --> 00:04:35.720
Gordon, you have a question.
63
00:04:37.079 --> 00:04:42.430
So, Greg, how would the succession process unfold according to
64
00:04:42.529 --> 00:04:44.509
the Organization and Guidance Department?
65
00:04:45.389 --> 00:04:49.649
You would have the OGD in the boardroom. with several
66
00:04:49.689 --> 00:04:54.759
names on the table. A couple of names would be
67
00:04:54.800 --> 00:04:59.560
the names of women from within the inner core of
68
00:04:59.639 --> 00:05:02.149
the Kim family regime. Of course, the ones who come
69
00:05:02.189 --> 00:05:06.050
to mind are Kim Yo Jong, the leader's sister, and
70
00:05:06.089 --> 00:05:08.870
the daughter, Kim Joo Ae, who is very young, 13
71
00:05:08.870 --> 00:05:12.569
years old, at least according to Dennis Rodman, based on
72
00:05:12.829 --> 00:05:16.149
what he says, he held her in his arms. while
73
00:05:16.170 --> 00:05:18.550
she was a baby 13 years ago. Anyway, she would
74
00:05:18.649 --> 00:05:22.149
possibly be a candidate as well. So somebody in the
75
00:05:22.189 --> 00:05:24.050
room is going to say, no, no, no, this is
76
00:05:24.129 --> 00:05:28.290
not going to work. The Democratic People's Republic has never
77
00:05:28.350 --> 00:05:31.649
had a woman as a leader. Somebody else is going
78
00:05:31.670 --> 00:05:35.129
to say, no, wait a minute, look, Amrit Kim Yo Jong,
79
00:05:35.189 --> 00:05:39.230
the leader's sister, was highly dedicated. Remember, he was getting
80
00:05:39.290 --> 00:05:42.149
off the train on his way to Vietnam, smoking, she
81
00:05:42.310 --> 00:05:47.589
was holding his ashtray. She was first vice director of
82
00:05:49.509 --> 00:05:54.949
the propaganda and agitation department of the organization and guidance department.
83
00:05:55.610 --> 00:05:59.750
The first vice director, the bubujang, is a very important position.
84
00:06:00.810 --> 00:06:03.949
If this were a ship, this would be the XO.
85
00:06:04.860 --> 00:06:09.259
So they would say, no, she's qualified. Imagine what would
86
00:06:09.379 --> 00:06:13.089
happen to the guy who said, a woman leader is
87
00:06:13.230 --> 00:06:16.050
never going to work in North Korea if a woman
88
00:06:16.290 --> 00:06:19.910
actually becomes leader of North Korea. And the woman would
89
00:06:19.949 --> 00:06:24.000
have to be 10 times tougher than her male predecessors
90
00:06:24.100 --> 00:06:28.800
in order to establish herself. If the OGD decides that
91
00:06:29.060 --> 00:06:34.879
no members of the Kim family are eligible for leadership,
92
00:06:35.759 --> 00:06:40.490
then who knows? Perhaps the director of the OGD or
93
00:06:40.589 --> 00:06:44.490
some other member of the top ranks of the DPRK
94
00:06:44.529 --> 00:06:47.050
regime might be the chosen one, but I doubt that
95
00:06:47.089 --> 00:06:50.310
would be the case. It would have to be another
96
00:06:50.910 --> 00:06:55.100
hereditary transmission of power to a member of the Kim
97
00:06:55.129 --> 00:06:59.980
family regime. We do have to remember that this is
98
00:07:00.160 --> 00:07:04.680
a humongous bureaucracy. They're in the business of maintaining their
99
00:07:04.740 --> 00:07:09.029
power and their privileges. And the Kim family regime is
100
00:07:09.069 --> 00:07:12.459
at the forefront of this, but there are truly several
101
00:07:12.560 --> 00:07:16.800
building blocks, four building blocks of this regime. The inner
102
00:07:16.860 --> 00:07:20.819
core of the Kim family, the military, the party, and
103
00:07:20.860 --> 00:07:24.889
the security agencies, with the party being at the very
104
00:07:24.990 --> 00:07:29.209
center of the Kim family regime. There's a symbiosis between
105
00:07:29.410 --> 00:07:34.089
party and supreme leadership. I have absolutely no doubt that
106
00:07:34.110 --> 00:07:36.449
the succession plan is in place.
107
00:07:36.990 --> 00:07:39.629
Greg, we just have a minute. I'm checking on the
108
00:07:39.709 --> 00:07:43.290
arsenal and also the bank account. Are the weapons still
109
00:07:43.379 --> 00:07:47.720
flowing to Russia's hands to attack Ukraine? Are the missiles
110
00:07:47.759 --> 00:07:52.139
still being offered to Russia for a fee? 30 seconds.
111
00:07:53.230 --> 00:07:57.709
North Korean weapons and munitions are still flowing to Russia.
112
00:07:58.250 --> 00:08:03.290
North Korean soldiers are still engaged in aggression against Ukraine.
113
00:08:03.589 --> 00:08:07.850
And according to President Zelensky, up to 50,000 North Korean
114
00:08:07.889 --> 00:08:11.230
troops may be eventually deployed to the front lines, which
115
00:08:11.290 --> 00:08:16.149
makes sense. There are 100,000 in the 11th Armed Corps
116
00:08:16.189 --> 00:08:19.689
that has provided troops for this endeavor.
117
00:08:19.709 --> 00:08:24.519
Greg Scarlato, Gordon Chang. podcast of our conversation about the
118
00:08:24.600 --> 00:08:28.120
rumor of the demise of the dictator, always available at Apple,
119
00:08:28.180 --> 00:08:32.129
at Amazon, at Spotify, at Spreaker, and other distinguished venues.
120
00:08:32.909 --> 00:08:33.840
I'm John Nashler.
1
00:00:16.429 --> 00:00:20.070
I'm John Batchelor. I welcome Gordon Chang, my colleague and co-host,
2
00:00:20.179 --> 00:00:23.300
and we welcome Greg Scarlato, president and CEO of the
3
00:00:23.339 --> 00:00:26.359
Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. We look at
4
00:00:26.539 --> 00:00:30.559
rumors out of North Korea right now and puzzle, why,
5
00:00:30.699 --> 00:00:33.890
why now, where are we going? The rumor is that
6
00:00:34.670 --> 00:00:40.130
the dictator is dead. And what next? That is the rumor.
7
00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:45.259
It's cheap trash talk, however significant as a data point.
8
00:00:46.179 --> 00:00:50.560
I go immediately to Gordon to remember more than 15
9
00:00:50.560 --> 00:00:55.670
years back when Xi Jinping first was tapped as the
10
00:00:55.750 --> 00:01:01.409
inheritor of Hu Jintao's People's Republic of China and arrived
11
00:01:01.469 --> 00:01:07.049
in Beijing. There were many incidents that suggested assassination attempts, violence,
12
00:01:07.150 --> 00:01:11.799
civil war, death of Xi very early, 15, 16 years ago.
13
00:01:12.900 --> 00:01:16.519
It came to what we have today, a dictatorship under
14
00:01:16.640 --> 00:01:21.540
one man in perpetuity. Gordon, do you recall those moments
15
00:01:21.659 --> 00:01:25.290
when Xi was acting desperate? It doesn't matter if I die,
16
00:01:25.349 --> 00:01:27.950
it's worth the risk. Whatever he was talking about, we
17
00:01:27.989 --> 00:01:31.450
were never sure. Do you recall that? And what did
18
00:01:31.510 --> 00:01:32.930
it add up to at the time? What did we
19
00:01:32.969 --> 00:01:33.549
learn from it?
20
00:01:34.670 --> 00:01:38.269
Good morning, John and Greg. We learned that there have
21
00:01:38.329 --> 00:01:41.459
been a series of rumors, and they continue to this day,
22
00:01:41.599 --> 00:01:47.840
about Xi Jinping, about assassination plots, about strokes, about all
23
00:01:47.879 --> 00:01:52.189
sorts of things. And the Chinese regime has always been opaque,
24
00:01:52.590 --> 00:01:55.769
but Xi Jinping has made it even more so. And
25
00:01:55.829 --> 00:01:58.859
so in that type of environment, you have rumors and
26
00:01:59.019 --> 00:02:01.540
people use rumors for all sorts of things, not only
27
00:02:01.579 --> 00:02:05.859
for entertainment, but also to destabilize the regime. And that
28
00:02:05.900 --> 00:02:09.099
has been a hallmark of Xi Jinping's rule.
29
00:02:10.020 --> 00:02:13.439
Greg, a very good day to you. The rumor is
30
00:02:13.969 --> 00:02:18.650
published as a headline at UPI. Rumors of Kim Jong-un's demise.
31
00:02:18.810 --> 00:02:21.250
Are we ready for what comes next? What do you
32
00:02:21.289 --> 00:02:24.289
make of the rumors of the death of the dictator?
33
00:02:24.430 --> 00:02:25.009
Good day to you.
34
00:02:25.930 --> 00:02:30.719
A very good day to you as well, John and Gordon. Eventually,
35
00:02:31.419 --> 00:02:34.919
this is going to be true. Nobody's eternal. But we
36
00:02:34.979 --> 00:02:40.539
have been through this exercise before during COVID. And some
37
00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:46.650
very respectable representatives of the North Korean defector community, both
38
00:02:46.689 --> 00:02:50.270
of them members of the South Korean parliament at the time,
39
00:02:50.349 --> 00:02:54.030
Taeyong Ho, former DCM in London, former North Korean DCM
40
00:02:54.069 --> 00:02:57.319
in London, and Ji Song-ho, who appeared at the State
41
00:02:57.400 --> 00:03:00.900
of the Union address in 2018, both of them bought
42
00:03:00.939 --> 00:03:05.319
into this, and it did damage their reputation. So sometimes
43
00:03:05.719 --> 00:03:10.150
this type of exercise is meant to damage the reputation
44
00:03:10.539 --> 00:03:16.069
of prominent figures within the North Korean escapee movement, the
45
00:03:16.129 --> 00:03:21.490
North Korean human rights movement, the North Korean expert community.
46
00:03:22.050 --> 00:03:27.250
Sometimes these are just journalists that just want to get
47
00:03:27.310 --> 00:03:29.960
a number of hits and just go all the way
48
00:03:30.400 --> 00:03:33.520
on this type of rumor. I believe that if you're
49
00:03:33.539 --> 00:03:38.360
referring to the UPI story authored by Colonel Maxwell, David Maxwell,
50
00:03:39.199 --> 00:03:42.680
what he was drawing attention to was not the rumors,
51
00:03:42.879 --> 00:03:47.159
but the fact that we need to be prepared for
52
00:03:47.210 --> 00:03:51.530
the time we actually see this type of crisis unfolding.
53
00:03:52.210 --> 00:03:55.610
I have no doubt that the North Koreans are prepared
54
00:03:55.949 --> 00:04:01.020
for succession. This is a humongous bureaucracy. They have already
55
00:04:01.080 --> 00:04:07.039
accomplished two hereditary transmissions of power in July 1994 and
56
00:04:07.099 --> 00:04:10.949
December 2011. They will be ready for the next one,
57
00:04:11.009 --> 00:04:14.650
no doubt about it. The best reference for this is
58
00:04:15.169 --> 00:04:20.449
a report available on our website hrnk.org. It's a report
59
00:04:20.500 --> 00:04:25.639
by Robert Collins on the Organization and Guidance Department, the OGD.
60
00:04:26.439 --> 00:04:31.360
There is one chapter dedicated to succession, to how the
61
00:04:31.560 --> 00:04:34.199
actual succession process would unfold.
62
00:04:34.819 --> 00:04:35.720
Gordon, you have a question.
63
00:04:37.079 --> 00:04:42.430
So, Greg, how would the succession process unfold according to
64
00:04:42.529 --> 00:04:44.509
the Organization and Guidance Department?
65
00:04:45.389 --> 00:04:49.649
You would have the OGD in the boardroom. with several
66
00:04:49.689 --> 00:04:54.759
names on the table. A couple of names would be
67
00:04:54.800 --> 00:04:59.560
the names of women from within the inner core of
68
00:04:59.639 --> 00:05:02.149
the Kim family regime. Of course, the ones who come
69
00:05:02.189 --> 00:05:06.050
to mind are Kim Yo Jong, the leader's sister, and
70
00:05:06.089 --> 00:05:08.870
the daughter, Kim Joo Ae, who is very young, 13
71
00:05:08.870 --> 00:05:12.569
years old, at least according to Dennis Rodman, based on
72
00:05:12.829 --> 00:05:16.149
what he says, he held her in his arms. while
73
00:05:16.170 --> 00:05:18.550
she was a baby 13 years ago. Anyway, she would
74
00:05:18.649 --> 00:05:22.149
possibly be a candidate as well. So somebody in the
75
00:05:22.189 --> 00:05:24.050
room is going to say, no, no, no, this is
76
00:05:24.129 --> 00:05:28.290
not going to work. The Democratic People's Republic has never
77
00:05:28.350 --> 00:05:31.649
had a woman as a leader. Somebody else is going
78
00:05:31.670 --> 00:05:35.129
to say, no, wait a minute, look, Amrit Kim Yo Jong,
79
00:05:35.189 --> 00:05:39.230
the leader's sister, was highly dedicated. Remember, he was getting
80
00:05:39.290 --> 00:05:42.149
off the train on his way to Vietnam, smoking, she
81
00:05:42.310 --> 00:05:47.589
was holding his ashtray. She was first vice director of
82
00:05:49.509 --> 00:05:54.949
the propaganda and agitation department of the organization and guidance department.
83
00:05:55.610 --> 00:05:59.750
The first vice director, the bubujang, is a very important position.
84
00:06:00.810 --> 00:06:03.949
If this were a ship, this would be the XO.
85
00:06:04.860 --> 00:06:09.259
So they would say, no, she's qualified. Imagine what would
86
00:06:09.379 --> 00:06:13.089
happen to the guy who said, a woman leader is
87
00:06:13.230 --> 00:06:16.050
never going to work in North Korea if a woman
88
00:06:16.290 --> 00:06:19.910
actually becomes leader of North Korea. And the woman would
89
00:06:19.949 --> 00:06:24.000
have to be 10 times tougher than her male predecessors
90
00:06:24.100 --> 00:06:28.800
in order to establish herself. If the OGD decides that
91
00:06:29.060 --> 00:06:34.879
no members of the Kim family are eligible for leadership,
92
00:06:35.759 --> 00:06:40.490
then who knows? Perhaps the director of the OGD or
93
00:06:40.589 --> 00:06:44.490
some other member of the top ranks of the DPRK
94
00:06:44.529 --> 00:06:47.050
regime might be the chosen one, but I doubt that
95
00:06:47.089 --> 00:06:50.310
would be the case. It would have to be another
96
00:06:50.910 --> 00:06:55.100
hereditary transmission of power to a member of the Kim
97
00:06:55.129 --> 00:06:59.980
family regime. We do have to remember that this is
98
00:07:00.160 --> 00:07:04.680
a humongous bureaucracy. They're in the business of maintaining their
99
00:07:04.740 --> 00:07:09.029
power and their privileges. And the Kim family regime is
100
00:07:09.069 --> 00:07:12.459
at the forefront of this, but there are truly several
101
00:07:12.560 --> 00:07:16.800
building blocks, four building blocks of this regime. The inner
102
00:07:16.860 --> 00:07:20.819
core of the Kim family, the military, the party, and
103
00:07:20.860 --> 00:07:24.889
the security agencies, with the party being at the very
104
00:07:24.990 --> 00:07:29.209
center of the Kim family regime. There's a symbiosis between
105
00:07:29.410 --> 00:07:34.089
party and supreme leadership. I have absolutely no doubt that
106
00:07:34.110 --> 00:07:36.449
the succession plan is in place.
107
00:07:36.990 --> 00:07:39.629
Greg, we just have a minute. I'm checking on the
108
00:07:39.709 --> 00:07:43.290
arsenal and also the bank account. Are the weapons still
109
00:07:43.379 --> 00:07:47.720
flowing to Russia's hands to attack Ukraine? Are the missiles
110
00:07:47.759 --> 00:07:52.139
still being offered to Russia for a fee? 30 seconds.
111
00:07:53.230 --> 00:07:57.709
North Korean weapons and munitions are still flowing to Russia.
112
00:07:58.250 --> 00:08:03.290
North Korean soldiers are still engaged in aggression against Ukraine.
113
00:08:03.589 --> 00:08:07.850
And according to President Zelensky, up to 50,000 North Korean
114
00:08:07.889 --> 00:08:11.230
troops may be eventually deployed to the front lines, which
115
00:08:11.290 --> 00:08:16.149
makes sense. There are 100,000 in the 11th Armed Corps
116
00:08:16.189 --> 00:08:19.689
that has provided troops for this endeavor.
117
00:08:19.709 --> 00:08:24.519
Greg Scarlato, Gordon Chang. podcast of our conversation about the
118
00:08:24.600 --> 00:08:28.120
rumor of the demise of the dictator, always available at Apple,
119
00:08:28.180 --> 00:08:32.129
at Amazon, at Spotify, at Spreaker, and other distinguished venues.
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I'm John Nashler.
