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The New Yorker Radio Hour
At the Brink with North Korea
00:23:18
Donald Trump mocked Kim Jong Un by calling him “rocket man,” and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if the U.S. or its allies were attacked. Kim, in turn, dismissed Trump as a “barking dog Evan Osnos recently reported from Washington and Pyongyang on the tensions between the United States and North Korea. Osnos tells David Remnick that North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons; they are no longer a bargaining chip but a source of national identity and security. Despite the forceful rhetoric and threats, Osnos found little appetite for war in either government, concluding that North Korea is not “a suicidal cult.” And he predicts that Trump will contain the risk, rather than eliminate it. Plus, critic Amanda Petrusich picks a book, a T.V. show, and an album for the end of summer.
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- [00:01]
Amanda Petrusich
This is Rural Trainer bound One World Observatory. Observatory straight up the block for West.
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Evan Osnos
Boulevard and make that right.
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David Remnick
They didn't break that, but they have pretty good access to those people.
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Evan Osnos
She subconsciously mocks that lineage.
- [00:19]
David Remnick
So that's happening.
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Amanda Petrusich
It seems like an incredible story here on many front.
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Narrator/Producer
From One World Trade center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC studios and the New Yorker.
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David Remnick
Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The provocations by Kim Jong Un's government keep escalating, and Donald Trump's rhetoric is following suit. He said at the United nations that we would totally destroy North Korea if the US or its allies were ever attacked. Staff writer Evan Osnos has been reporting from Washington and from Pyongyang, which is no easy feat trying to find out just how close we are to the brink of true disaster. I thought one of the most chilling parts of your long and extraordinary piece in the New Yorker was when various sources would talk about how they felt about what war would look like, and they would talk about how, yes, hundreds of thousands of people would be killed, but a few of us would survive and we'd start all over again. In essence, what would war really look like if that horrible outcome were to come about.
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Evan Osnos
The war, if it ever happened between North Korea and the United States today would be a horror. There's been, just to take one study, a look at what would happen if North Korea used its artillery that is now positioned on the border with South Korea. And the best estimates are that in the first day, 65,000 people would be killed and there would be tens of thousands more each of the days that followed. And that's just with conventional weapons. North Korea also has chemical weapons and biological weapons, to say nothing of the possibility of actually using the nuclear weapons which we know they have. They have between 20 and 60 nuclear warheads, and they have the capability to put them, at least in South Korea and Japan and perhaps beyond. I should say that the Obama administration studied the question of whether or not there was a way to pursue a war of choice, a preventive war, and to limit those risks in some way to limit those casualties. And they concluded it was impossible. The Trump administration, without showing its hand, it's sort of playing a type of nuclear brinkmanship where it says, we believe we have military options.
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David Remnick
Military options that would avoid huge casualty counts in the first few days of war.
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Evan Osnos
They believe that they have options that would avoid huge casualty counts, but they're not talking about it. And this, David, is one of the.
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David Remnick
Isn't that the great fantasy that we've seen over and over again in interventions past?
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Evan Osnos
It is. The idea that there would be a quick and simple solution is one of the dangerous myths of this process. Nobody and I've talked to, talked to everybody more or less involved in these issues over the course of the last five months, and nobody has come up with a coherent example of a military option that is not going to kill large numbers of civilians and military personnel. And Steve Bannon, as you remember in one of his final interviews before he was fired in August, said as much. He said, there is no military option here. They've got us, is what he said about the North Koreans. And in some ways, that was a candid reflection. I'll tell you, David, my view after talking to people in the administration is that that even though they are talking tough right now in private and in public, that they are not actually prepared to use a military option, as it's known. They really don't have a good answer to that question, and they're not willing to initiate a war without a war that by any reasonable calculation, would kill a tremendous number of people.
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David Remnick
So what's the outcome here? The Japanese prime minister just published an op ed in the New York Times in which he said that solidarity, international solidarity, is required. Okay, fair enough. But more dialogue with North Korea will be a dead end.
- [04:21]
Evan Osnos
The prime minister of Japan published that point of view, and it was not a surprise. That's what Japan would say. And I think in this case, he's going to be on his own on that one. The truth is that actually the United States is oriented towards more dialogue, despite what Japan wants. The reality is that the United States has outlined a policy that it calls maximum pressure and maximum engagement. And so far it's pursuing the maximum pressure side. It has added more sanctions now, the ninth round of sanctions in 11 years. It has continued to raise the possibility of a military confrontation. But what it has not done is actually begun the process of achieving some diplomatic contact. And that is a part of the plan. It is a part of the administration's plan.
- [05:09]
David Remnick
What's the disadvantage in sending an emissary?
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Evan Osnos
You have to do it at the right moment, because if you send it, when the North Koreans are not prepared to receive an emissary or they're not prepared to give anything up, you may be losing time. You may also be ultimately missing out on an opportunity to have a more substantive dialogue. Look, the North Koreans said to me when I was there, we're not ready for talks right now. And that doesn't mean they're not ready for talks ever. It means that they're waiting until they think they can get the best possible deal. So things actually keep getting. Getting better for them the longer they wait. I know that sounds perverse, but initially the US Was saying to them, we will only sit down at the table if you agree at the outset to give up nuclear weapons. The US has now essentially put that expectation aside, and they're saying, we will only sit down at the table if the hostilities subside, which is a much lower level of expectation. So from North Korea's perspective, it's actually working what they're doing, and that's dangerous because it means they'll continue down this track. We have to expect that they will continue testing at the pace that they've been testing over the course of this year. But I think that the result is most likely going to be some form of diplomatic negotiation.
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David Remnick
But it's not just testing. It's the most provocative kind of testing. You can test a missile without sending it over Japanese airspace.
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Evan Osnos
No, it's true. There are technical reasons why they want to. At this point, they're testing. I mean, what they're trying to do is to show that they have greater and greater capability. And one of the ways you do that is by firing it over Japan into the Pacific. They tested what' sthat was an intermediate range ballistic missile, and there are actually not that many directions. You can fire an intermediate range ballistic missile and not send it over Chinese territory or South Korean territory, or send it in the direction of Guam, which would be considered a provocation to the United States. So what they did is sent it in a direction that, from their perspective, is the most benign of the options.
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David Remnick
I don't think the Japanese found it benign. Hillary Clinton said to me last week, and I interviewed her, that President Trump is being played by Kim Jong Un. Is she right?
- [07:16]
Evan Osnos
She's right. Up to a point, I think she's right that it is. It's a big mistake for the United States to be engaging in the same kind of rhetorical mayhem that the North Koreans do. When Donald Trump talks about fire and fury over Pyongyang, or the idea that the US Is, as he put it, locked and loaded for a confrontation. It is. It is sending a very confusing message to the North Koreans. For one thing, it makes us look unserious in the world. And the theory has always been that big powers are not supposed to project craziness. They're not supposed to project Unpredictability, because they have too much to lose. Small powers can do it. You know, you don't have that much to lose if you're North Korean. Nobody expects you to be a steward of the international interest. But the United States, if it becomes regarded as unserious, unable to back up its threats and commitments, then it loses a whole range of other things. So when Hillary Clinton says that Donald Trump is being played, she's right, because he is doing things that bring America's overall role in the security picture into question, and that's costly.
- [08:25]
David Remnick
So you're spending days in Pyongyang, and all day long, you're in the presence of your shadow. You've got a guy from the security apparatus with you, and you've got somebody from the Foreign Ministry with you, and you're having conversations at lunch, and you're going to weird museums and taking walks and riding to the dmz. Tell me how these guys, when you're having conversations with them, as disciplined as they are, how American behavior affects the.
- [08:52]
Evan Osnos
Way they react, they're acutely sensitive to what America says and does. And even though they want to be seen as composed and aware of all the possible circumstances they could encounter, the simple fact is that when you spend that much time with somebody, they begin to ask you questions. And one of the things that I found fascinating was that they would try to understand what was going on in Washington. They sort of started delicately. They would say things like, how common is it for a Secretary of State and a secretary of defense to offer a position that's different from the President's? And I would say, it's not that common. We're into a new phase. And then they would ask questions about the nuclear codes. And one point, sort of late in the evening, and after a few rounds of toasts, the North Koreans asked me, is it true that HR McMaster, the national security Advisor, controls the black bag, as they put it, the nuclear codes? And I said, no, no, the President controls the nuclear codes. And what they were trying to get at was, look, anybody can figure that out. There's a public version of that which is easily available, and they know that. But what they were hunting for here was some indicator of what's going on behind the scenes in Washington. They're really struggling with the idea that the Trump that they see and read about is the full picture. He's so at odds with everything that they've come to understand about American power that they're finding it very, very hard to process.
- [10:27]
David Remnick
Not to be glib, but join the club.
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Evan Osnos
No, I said that at one point. I said, look, frankly, I think you now know what it feels like to be an American. And they didn't think that was funny. They. Yeah, but we imagine they wouldn't. They said, we have no choice but to ask that question. And I, you know, I sort of sympathize with the predicament that they're in.
- [10:47]
David Remnick
Give us a sense of the ubiquity of the idea of nuclearization and nuclear power and almost military fatalism in North Korea as it plays itself out on television and billboards and the people you meet.
- [11:03]
Evan Osnos
This was a surprise to me. It was a big part of the experience because I've lived in China that has had nuclear weapons for a long time, but you never hear about it. It's never talked about in North Korea. It's talked about constantly. It is impossible to understand why North Korea talks about nuclear weapons and is sort of seemingly obsessed with them without appreciating their history. I mean, like, all these things, it's informed by their perception of themselves. And they see themselves as gritty survivors. From their perspective, they survived the Korean War, in which, let's remember, their own mythology is that the US Invaded. That's not the case, but that's how they tell their story. And they survived the famine in the mid-90s. And as a government official said to me, we survived both of those and we would survive a nuclear exchange. And I asked, I really pressed. I said, really? Do you honestly believe that? And he said, yes, I do. And this is the part that is the hardest to pierce, and I don't presume to have really been able to do so in a short trip, but to what degree are they actually prepared to do that? I concluded that they're not. I concluded this is not a suicidal cult.
- [12:13]
David Remnick
Now, I know that you really hustled for months to get this trip. It's not easy to get a visa for a journalist to North Korea. But you also knew that these trips have a certain ritualistic aspect to them. They're going to take you to the demilitarized zone. The hotel is going to be weirdly empty. Television is what it is. Your interviews are going to be circumscribed. Was there anything about the trip that came to you as a shock or that was revelatory in any way? The actual trip?
- [12:44]
Evan Osnos
I was surprised by the degree to which the ordinary North Korean officials, who I was dealing with, the rank and file, you know, these are guys whose job is to. To analyze the United States when They're not taking me around. They're spending their days looking at Donald Trump's Twitter feed, literally, and they are reading everything they can about the US and they were free to talk to me. And that was a surprise. I didn't know that was going to be the case. And that turned out to be in many ways the most revealing part of the trip, because we can sometimes get impressions of North Korea by visiting either as under formal journalistic terms like this trip, or as a tourist and so on. But to be able to engage them in conversation over the course of a few days and to get a glimpse into their thought process, their decision making, the way that they deal with us on the most granular level, is really helpful.
- [13:35]
David Remnick
What did you think that they wanted you to leave knowing about them?
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Evan Osnos
I think their most important message to me was that they are never giving up their nuclear weapons. And on some level, I would expect them to say that, but I didn't expect to be as persuaded that it's true. I really believe it's true. For a long time, Kim Jong Il was prepared, the late leader was prepared to give up his nuclear weapons. They were a bargaining chip. But the sun, the current leader of North Korea, is in a very different phase. He is now so close to the finish line, in effect, so close to having the ability to really use nuclear weapons, to strike out at another country or to protect himself, that it transforms the whole nature of it. And so it stopped being a bargaining chip a few years ago. We didn't recognize it entirely at the time. It is now actually a part of their self definition. It's a part of their security picture. And it's not something they're going to give away. And I've come to believe that now.
- [14:37]
David Remnick
Evan, journalism is not always well served by prediction. It's a low form of journalism. But all the same, how do you think this sense of crisis will play out?
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Evan Osnos
I really do believe that despite all of the rhetoric and the intensity right now, that these two sides are both seeking to avoid war. And for that reason, I think they will end up in some form of diplomatic engagement.
- [15:06]
David Remnick
But it's a diplomatic engagement that ends with North Korea having nuclear capacity to hit American territory. How does Donald Trump in a reelection campaign go forward and campaign on that?
- [15:20]
Evan Osnos
Because, ironically, he's probably going to end up in a situation where he is talking about his handling of North Korea someday the way that the Obama administration talked about its handling of Iran, which is that we took a situation that was very hard to deal with, and we prevented war. The United States made a deal with Iran that has limited the development of its program and has averted the short term risk of conflict. And Donald Trump, though he can't admit it now, is on the trajectory towards that sort of arrangement where we will come to coexist, come to live with North Korea's capability, its nuclear threat, much the way that we lived with the Soviets, and we controlled it in a combination of diplomacy and deterrence, meaning threats. We actively protected ourselves against the Soviets. We didn't pretend that they would be trustworthy and we would just live with it. We created a system that would protect ourselves. And I think that's where we're headed with North Korea. But for diplomatic reasons and for political reasons, Donald Trump is going to be very slow in embracing that fact.
- [16:26]
David Remnick
Evan, thank you so much.
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Evan Osnos
My pleasure. Thanks, David.
- [16:40]
David Remnick
The New Yorker's Evan Osnos. You can find Evan's article on the Brink with all his reporting from pyongyang@newyorkerradio.org Amanda Petrusich is mainly known as a music critic, but she's a person of wide interest. She's written for the New Yorker about Kid Rock's campaign for the Senate and about spending the night in Donald Trump's childhood home, which had been listed on Airbnb. And if you ask what she's watching these days, it's not exactly Emmy material.
- [17:17]
Amanda Petrusich
Season one of the television series Jackass. Are you familiar?
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Evan Osnos
Yes.
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Amanda Petrusich
Are you a fan?
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David Remnick
Wait, related to the movie?
- [17:25]
Amanda Petrusich
Well, the TV show that eventually birthed the movie. It aired on MTV for two years in 2000, 2001, and I believe it went off the air in 2002. It was starring a guy named Johnny Knoxville and his kind of crew of sort of skate punks, I guess we will call them. That right there is the best damn roller skater there ever was, maybe in the whole town. And they basically just sort of, you know, trampled each other for sport. My name is Johnny Knoxville, and today.
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David Remnick
I'm going to jump the LA river on roller skates. Help me. Help.
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Amanda Petrusich
The entire show is kind of comprised of these short skits in which they would set up sort of pratfalls for each other.
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David Remnick
I'm gonna try and jump it again without the rain. Wait, wait, wait. They weren't just pratfalls. They were incredibly painful.
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Amanda Petrusich
That's true. I think I'm understating it. I mean, they're just, you know, shoving. It's sort of buddies shoving each other in shopping carts and then launching the shopping carts across parking lots.
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David Remnick
Sounds like High school years.
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Amanda Petrusich
Yeah, it might be all of our high school years. Yeah. Laughs kind of emerge from a place within me that I didn't know I could access. When I watch it, it's.
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David Remnick
So this is for you what the Three Stooges was for me?
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Amanda Petrusich
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think it's a very similar yet kind of humor.
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David Remnick
Okay, now we've. We've watched two guys run around in a parking lot and try to destroy themselves. What's next?
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Amanda Petrusich
Well, I just returned from a trip to Albania, and prior to departure, I read a book called High Albania by a writer named Edith Durham. Durham was sort of born of British aristocracy. She was a kind of well groomed woman from a fancy family. Her father was a surgeon, but she. She was kind of an adventurous woman. And she. In 1908, she set sail for Albania and wrote this sort of wild, kind of thrilling, sort of strange and swashbuckling book about traveling around the accursed mountains of northern Albania.
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David Remnick
So how did Albania match up to the travel narrative that you were reading? How did the real Albania match up?
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Amanda Petrusich
It's incredible, actually, how much I felt like, you know, I was recognizing from that book when I was traveling. You know, there are kind of pockets of Albania, particularly in the mountains, where I think people are living now the way they have lived for hundreds of years.
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David Remnick
How do you beat a trip to Albania one summer? I don't. How can you go back to the Bahamas again after that?
- [19:48]
Amanda Petrusich
Yeah, it's true. It's quite true. I will say I drank a great deal in Albania, perhaps more than I have drank on any other voyage I've ever drank.
- [19:57]
David Remnick
What do you drink in Albania?
- [19:58]
Amanda Petrusich
They drink a brandy there. A kind of. I mean, I will call it a brandy. It's a sort of civilized word for it. It's a kind of moonshine because it is often made in people's homes. Called Rocky.
- [20:06]
David Remnick
Then they should do Jackass in Albania. I think it would go over big.
- [20:12]
Amanda Petrusich
I mean, after a couple glasses, frankly, I was ready to stuff myself into a shopping cart and, you know, see where it led me.
- [20:19]
David Remnick
What's your third pick?
- [20:20]
Amanda Petrusich
It's a new record from a rock band called the War on Drugs, which is based out of Philadelphia. And it's called A Deeper Understanding. I feel like, as a critic, it's always sort of fun and interesting for me to kind of see the new things and the new kind of influences that are getting sort of chopped up and consumed and sort of reimagined. And they're a band that draws really heavily from the 80s. I mean, they're really synthesizer heavy. There's a sort of ineffable, kind of John Henley esque quality to it. I know. Well, for so long, I feel like those, you know, that era was kind of untouchable. It was deeply uncool. You know, no one wanted to sound like sort of mid career Rod Stewart. But they're doing it. I mean, they're sort of synthesizing that stuff, I think, in a way that's really interesting. I think you might dig it. I mean, it's a.
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David Remnick
Is there a particular cut on the album that we should listen to?
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Amanda Petrusich
Yeah, I think the song is called holding on and I would love to listen to it.
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David Remnick
Car is on Route 17, right? Windows are Down.
- [21:27]
Amanda Petrusich
Yeah, it's a great end of summer record.
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David Remnick
And here we are in the office.
- [21:31]
Amanda Petrusich
At the end of summer Dreaming of the road Dreaming of the windows down.
- [21:42]
Evan Osnos
Once I was alive I could feel.
- [21:48]
David Remnick
I was holding on to you Staff writer Amanda Petrusic. The recent record by the band the War on Drugs is called A Deeper Understanding. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. I'm David Remnick and you've been listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thank you for joining us. Next week I'll talk with David Simon about his terrific new show the Deuce and his remarkable run of gritty TV dramas drawn from real life. See you then.
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Narrator/Producer
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Bottin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfiel, Maitha Lee Rao and Steven Valentino, with help from Sarah Sandbach and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Tsarina Endowment Fund.