Breaking History - How North Korea Got the Nuke

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

As Iranian nuclear ambitions force their way back onto America’s agenda, it’s worth looking at the story of North Korea, the original ‘madman’ nation that bullied its way to the nuclear table. ******* Producers: Alex Miller, Poppy Damon and Bobby Moriarty ******* Buy tickets for SAPIR Debate“Is Donald Trump Good for the Jews?” at  sapirjournal.org/sapirdebate. Listen to Unpacking Israeli History Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump is trying to negotiate away Iran's nukes as the Ayatollahs are perilously close to harnessing the atom's power on the tip of a missile. I hope he succeeds, but if the president fails, he wouldn't be the first POTUS to allow a rogue state to go nuclear. That would be George W. Bush and the rogue state in question, North Korea. Up next, why the world's worst fiends are so enamored with the world's most destructive weapons. Sapir, the quarterly journal edited by Brett Stevens devoted to ideas for a thriving Jewish future is proud to announce the Sapir Debates, a public debate series on the most consequential issues facing Jewish communities in the U.S.,

Israel, and around the world. Presented in partnership with the 92nd Street Y, the Sapir Debates will be hosted and moderated by Brett Stevens and feature world-class thinkers. The topics of the inaugural Sapir Debate to be held on the evening of May 15th at the 92nd Street Y will be, Is Donald Trump Good for the Jews? featuring Jason Greenblatt, Trump's former special envoy to the Middle East, arguing for, and Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago, chief of staff to Barack Obama, arguing against. Watch them duke it out at the 92nd Street Y on May 15th. You can purchase

tickets for the inaugural Sapir Debate at sapirjournal.org forward slash debate. That's s-a-p-i-r journal dot org forward slash debate. From early morning workouts that need a boost to late night drives that need vibes, a good playlist can help you make the most out of your everyday. And when it comes to everyday spending, you can count on the PC Insider's World Elite MasterCard to help you earn the most PC optimum points everywhere you shop. With the best playlists, you never miss a good song. With this card, you never miss out on getting the most points on everyday purchases.

The PC Insider's World Elite MasterCard. The card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. Here we go again. They cannot have a nuclear weapon. Does that include a potential strike on Iranian nuclear facilities?

Of course it does. I think Iran could be a great country as long as it doesn't have nuclear weapons. I do not envy Donald Trump. He has to stop a gang of pious lunatics from acquiring apocalyptic weapons. The Iranians have never been this close. Iranian state media reported Tuesday that the country has started producing 60% pure uranium at the underground Fordow nuclear plant, which is south of Tehran.

And if they go nuclear, it's a cascade of horrors. Even if the ailing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei doesn't launch a first strike at Israel or Saudi oil refineries, no guarantee, an Iranian nuke would be an atomic umbrella for his regime's militias, statelets, and terror cells from the Gulf to the Levant. A license for unbridled chaos. Preventing this catastrophe has animated the last four American presidents. From George W. Bush to Donald Trump, all of them have offered sticks and carrots to seduce or deter the mullahs from going nuclear.

I mean, we've tried sanctions. I'm pleased to sign into law the toughest sanctions against Iran ever passed by the United States Congress. We've tried censure. Today the United Nations Security Council voted overwhelmingly to sanction Iran for its continued failure to live up to its obligations. We've tried sabotage. Stuxnet is an exceptionally sophisticated computer worm

that attacks the software used to control automated systems. Stuxnet's first target may have been Iran's nuclear facilities. We've tried bribery. The Obama administration is still taking a whole lot of heat for a $400 million cash payment to Iran. Additional cash payments totaling $1.3 dollars were made, as first reported by this morning's Wall Street Journal. We've tried diplomacy.

For the first time in a decade, we've halted the progress on Iran's nuclear program. We cannot close the door on diplomacy. And we cannot rule out peaceful solutions to the world's problems. And then Trump came along and thought he'd try something else. In theory, the so-called Iran deal was supposed to protect the United States and our allies from the lunacy of an Iranian nuclear bomb, a weapon that will only endanger the survival of the Iranian regime. In fact, the deal allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium and over time,

reach the brink of a nuclear breakout. None of it has worked. Iran has slowly erected an industrial scale uranium enrichment network, capable of fueling dozens of warheads. And just like Obama Trump too is now signaling that he's willing to let Iran creep right up to the nuclear trigger. Just hearing too much from inside the Trump foreign

policy world. This is Free Press columnist and the author of the 2016 History of Iranian Nuclear Diplomacy, Iran Wars, Jay Solomon. Vice President Vance, Tulsi Gabbard at DNI, their outside whispers from Donald Jr. to Tucker Carlson are just, they're just pushing this line that we're going to unleash Armageddon. And we don't, and America first is not, it's not in its interest to have a Middle East war,

so they will come to some sort of agreement. And what would that agreement look like? Well, think of it like this. Iran gets to make the machines capable of making fuel for nuclear weapons if it promises not to make nuclear weapons. It's not going to work. In fairness, Trump hasn't ruled out using force to take care of Iran's nuclear reactors. But this kind of problem, what if a lunatic gets nukes, is a new version of a nightmare that has haunted America since the

dawn of the atomic age. It's the prospect that a crazed tyrant acquires the means with which to destroy whole cities at the press of a button. What if a madzed tyrant acquires the means with which to destroy whole cities at the press of a button. What if a mad bastard had the bomb is the plot of at least half of the James Bond canon. They have already been given their targets. Within minutes, New York and Moscow will cease to exist. Global destruction will follow, and a Global destruction will follow. The new era will begin."

It would be nice if these scenarios were only grist for 007's exploits. But it has actually happened before. A rogue state did acquire an apocalyptic arsenal nearly 20 years ago. It was the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea, a totalitarian relic, a murderous blend of Stalinist cult of personality and Dr. Evil malevolence. In 2006, North Korea tested its first fission-powered bomb, and they've been perfecting them ever since. Frankly, we should probably be more worried about it than we are. I'm Eli

Lake and you're listening to Breaking History, After the Break, How the Hermit Kingdom Went Nuclear and What It Tells Us About Iran's Quest to Do the Same. Thank you for the words, thank you for your passion, how you lead our hurt. Thank you for the buildings towering above. We are father's children, basking in your love. Marie and true believer, service of the leader, Fortress of a family, Your love son is you and me. For decades, the Shalom Hartman Institute has been the preeminent destination for Jewish ideas, leadership, and learning across North America and Israel.

I want to tell you about two incredible Hartman podcasts that are shaping the discourse about Israel and Jewish life. Identity Crisis with Institute President Yehuda Kurtzer as host is home to dynamic conversations about the issues facing contemporary Jewish life. Join Yehuda for weekly discussions with key leaders and thinkers like Yair Golan, Tal Becker, and Rabbi Felicia Sol. And then there's For Heaven's Sake. It's the award-winning number one Judaism podcast featuring senior fellow Yossi Klein Halevi and Danielle Hartman, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute. Don't miss their thoughtful discussions on political and social trends in Israel and

Israel-Diaspora relations. Discover these chart-topping podcasts at shalomhartman.org forward slash podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East. That was President Harry Truman announcing the dropping of the first atomic bomb in world

history. The US military called it Little Boy and it was unleashed on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. If you want to understand the destruction of a nuclear bomb, just look at Hiroshima. The bomb was detonated before it hit the ground, an explosion that turned the sky into fire. A 4.7 square mile area flattened. Just one bomb destroyed an entire city. Between 70 and 80,000 died instantly in the blast. Another 60 to 70,000 died because of severe burns and radiation poisoning.

Until atomic weapons, the process of destroying a city took time. In World War II, Tokyo was devastated with fire bombs. But that took weeks of dangerous bombing sorties to accomplish what one bomb did to Hiroshima. First record of the Dome of Nagasaki, targeted for Atom Bomb number two, is filmed from a super fortress many miles away. atomic bombs Nukes today, like hydrogen bombs, are hundreds of times more powerful. Atomic weapons changed warfare forever

as former National Security Advisor and Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton explains. The power of nuclear weapons and the destruction and death However, as former national security advisor and ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton explains. John Bolton, Former U.S. Secretary of State for the United Nations The power of nuclear weapons and the destruction and death that they can cause far outweigh anything we've got in conventional weapons or are ever likely to have. That's why it's called a weapon of mass destruction.

When we dropped nukes on Japan, it forced Emperor Hirohito to surrender, avoiding a land invasion where hundreds of thousands of RGIs would have likely perished. But it also established the United States as the world's only nuclear power. It was the apex of American hegemony in the 20th century. Between 1945 and 1949, the USA created the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Global Financial System, NATO, the CIA, and the Marshall Plan. There were four glorious years for American dominance. And then, like many things in the 20th century, the Soviet Union had to go and ruin it. After World War II, the best scientists from Japan and Germany fled to America, maintaining our scientific and military superiority. But Moscow had one thing going for it, a very shrewd intelligence service. On their hunt for the bomb, the KGB unspooled a web of spies who stole America's nuclear

secrets ending our republic's nuclear monopoly. On August 29, 1949, the Soviets tested its first plutonium-based bomb. At first, the Russians kept it a secret, but a month later, President Truman announced it to the world. I believe the American people, to the fullest extent, consistent with national security, are entitled to be informed of all developments in the field of atomic energy. That is my reason for making public the following information. We have evidence that within recent weeks, an atomic explosion occurred in the USSR. Ever since atomic energy was first released by man, the eventual development of this new force

by other nations was to be expected. This probability has always been taken to account by us." And that was the real beginning of the nuclear era. America was no longer the only military to have harnessed the power of the atom. A new balance of terror began. Our ideological rival possessed the same ability to bring forth Armageddon as we did. Over the next 15 years, the nuclear club expanded. To Dr. Penny and his team, great credit is due for this mighty British achievement. The spectacular success of the operation furthers our hopes of peace. For it seems that by the possession of such deadly weapons, peace can be maintained in this troubled world.

The United Kingdom got the bomb in 1952, France in 1960. France moves ahead toward its goal of equal rank with Britain, Russia, and America in the Great Powers Nuclear Club. Four years later, China followed. It is no coincidence that by 1964, the five nuclear powers also happened to be the five permanent veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council. It was an elite group that had no interest in letting anyone else in. Because that's the thing about nuclear weapons. The more countries who possess them, the more likely it is they end up in the hands of a villain who wants to watch the world burn.

Since then, American presidents have tried to dissuade other countries from chasing the mushroom cloud. So, for decades now, since the beginning of the Cold War, the U.S. and others, but particularly the U.S., have tried to limit the number of countries that have nuclear weapons on the very sound theory that the fewer countries that have nuclear weapons, the lower the danger that they'll actually be used and will have an outbreak of nuclear war. Here's John Bolton again. That whole theory of nonproliferation is now being challenged by people who say it's inevitable, but that was true 80 years ago too when we started this. So my view is that the fewer countries that have nuclear weapons, the better,

not because I don't trust our friends, but because I know how proliferation works. When one country gets it, it's an inspiration to other countries to get it. The Big Five Nuclear Club lasted for only two years. Israel has never acknowledged the possession of nuclear weapons, but it's widely believed the country began fielding its bombs sometime between the Beatles' release of Revolver but before Sergeant Pepper, 1966 or 1967. To this day, Israel's diplomats and prime ministers speak in riddles when asked about their nukes. Their nuclear capacity is probably the worst kept secret in the world.

To keep a lid on the inner demons of the nuclear curious nations, the US, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union came up with a pretty good plan, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It worked as a bribe. If you promise not to build a bomb, we will share our technology for nuclear energy. We will give your nation the power to build a big battery to run your electric grid, but nothing with which you can smite your enemies. And so, Mr. Secretary, on this historic occasion, let us trust that we will look back and say

that this was one of the first and major steps in that process in which the nations of the world moved from a period of confrontation to a period of negotiation and a period of lasting peace. Frankly, it's a great deal. In 2025, it seems fantastical that anything as positive and considered would have ever been embraced, but it was. Over the next 25 years, nearly every country in the world ended up signing up.

Pandora unleashed the evils of the world from her box, and having seen the damage they could do, the world calmly herded them back inside. But the story, of course, does not end in 1995. Two nations who had held out against the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Pakistan and India, each terrified of the other and both worked diligently for years on obtaining the ultimate deterrent. In May 1998, both countries decided to come out of the closet. India tested nukes on the 11th and the 13th. Pakistan followed with tests on the 28th and 30th.

Mazel Tov. So now there was an elite nuclear club of eight, if you count Israel, which didn't acknowledge their nukes. It wasn't great that some of those countries hated each other, but this order was largely more or less stable. The nightmare scenario was what would happen if a real madman got their hands on a nuke? You know, somebody like Iraq's Saddam Hussein, or Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, or Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or North Korea's Kim Jong-il. Well, soon one of those crazy bastards was going to have their nuclear dreams fulfilled.

After the break, how a basket-case nation mastered the, and terrified the world. Hey there, it's Eli. With a constant barrage of alarming headlines, wars, a warming planet, and high stakes politics, it might feel like we're teetering on the edge, but the world contains a lot more good news than you hear on mainstream media. If you're looking for another show that questions the status quo, then I recommend What Could Go Right? The twice-weekly news podcast hosted by Zachary Carabelle and Emma Varvaloukas. Recently nominated for Best Politics or Opinion Podcast at the Ambi Awards, What Could Go Right provides a balanced view of what's going on across the globe, even during difficult

times. Each Wednesday, they sit down with leading minds, like bestselling author John Green and environmental reporter Emily Atkin, to discuss today's biggest challenges with nuance and insight. And on Fridays, they highlight the latest progress reports from around the world, from life-changing medical advancements to groundbreaking efforts to combat climate change. If you need a place to start, check out their recent episode with economics expert Matt Stoller, who breaks down the 100-year war between monopoly power and democracy.

It's an enlightening conversation that's perfect for breaking history fans. So fight the urge to doom scroll. Tune in to What Could Go Right wherever you get your podcasts. Right. North Korea. Jesus, what a mess. For decades, the entire planet has been looking over its shoulder at the isolated, strange country with a mixture of terror and grim fascination. Documentarians have thirsted over footage of its total weirdness. Humanitarians have sweated over the brutality and misery that civilians have to endure. Its neighbors in South Korea live in constant fear of its potential for madness.

And about a decade ago, Dennis Rodman kept visiting for some reason, which is probably a sign that something strange and terrible is going on. So how did we get here? Well, let's get back to the first and only times a nuclear weapon were actually used in war. The day of days for America and her allies. Crowds before the White House await the announcement from the president that the Japs have surrendered unconditionally. I have received this afternoon a message from the Japanese government in reply to the

message forwarded to that government by the Secretary of State on August 11. I deem this reply a full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan. In the reply there is no qualification. Reporters rush out to relay the news to an anxious world and touch off celebrations throughout the country. Washington is jubilant and in Chicago more than a million sing and dance in the streets in the biggest celebration the windy city has ever seen. Joy is unconfined.

After America's bombs led to Japanese surrender in the Second World War, its colonial possessions were divided by the victors, America and the Soviet Union. In the case of Korea, which was a colony of Japan between 1910 and 1945, this meant drawing a line on the 38th parallel, dividing the peninsula into two. The Soviets occupied the North and the Americans occupied the South. The Soviets occupied the North and the Americans occupied the South. Three years later, in 1948, North and South Korea were born. Southern Korea and General MacArthur, accompanied by his wife, is welcomed in Seoul, the capital, by the President of the recently formed Republic.

Now, to understand the birth of North Korea, and frankly South Korea too, one must keep in mind just how utterly brutal the Japanese Empire was. Its Imperial Army conducted Mengele-esque experiments on Chinese and Korean prisoners of war, exposing them to extreme temperatures, the blasts of artillery, and early crude biological weapons. One of fascist Japan's more loathsome practices was to force women, and in particular Korean women, into sexual slavery. They would be brought into what were euphemistically known as comfort stations where Japanese soldiers

would rape these women and girls. It was into this awful context that a man called Kim Il-sung would rise to become the first ruler of North Korea, and technically he still is that ruler even after his death. This was a man who embodied this anti-Japanese fighting spirit. The official story of Kim Il-sung goes like this. The Great Leader was born near Pyongyang in 1912, on the day the Titanic was sunk. He became an anti-Japan activist at the age of six. By the age of 20, he was the supreme commander of the anti-Japanese resistance, the Korean People's Revolutionary Army. Kim established a rebel

camp at Mount Paektu, an almost holy site in Korean culture because it is the birthplace of Daengun, the founder of the first Korean kingdom. And from there, he led a successful campaign to drive the Japanese out of the peninsula, leading his army in 1945 to finally liberate Korea. But Kim was not only a great military commander, according to the official story, he was also a genius. Throughout the course of his life, he penned thousands of books. He was an expert in all matters of human knowledge, from physics to farming.

He was able to give the national ping-pong team invaluable direction on their serves and volleys. What an amazing guy! And we haven't even gotten to his magical powers. When Kim led the resistance, he once chopped down a tree with his sword in one fell swoop as if it were a bean curd. He could turn pine cones into bullets and sand into rice. He once crossed a river stepping only on fallen leaves.

Well, with a leader this wonderful, it's no wonder that Korea couldn't let go. After his funeral, he was declared the country's eternal leader. And North Koreans are still required to have a portrait of Kim Il-sung in their homes, where the pictures are inspected by state minders to make sure that they are cared for. The real story is that Kim Il-sung was born Kim Sung-ju in 1912, not on the day the Titanic sank, to Korean Christian missionaries who fled to Chinese Manchuria to escape Japanese oppression. Kim was a rebel fighter, and he did fight heroically.

But he did not lead a military force. He was a mid-level officer who took orders from the Soviets and the Chinese. The North Koreans insist that the Japanese in Korea were defeated by the Korean Communist forces, which never existed. This is Andrei Lankov, author of The Real North Korea, based in part on his time as a Soviet student studying in Pyongyang in the late 1980s. According to the official history, the Soviet army played a sort of marginal auxiliary role in fighting for independence of Korea, and Koreans liberated themselves. It's, well, understandable fantasy, but it's a complete fantasy.

Because not a single Korean soldier was participating in the battles in August 1945 in the battles for the liberation of Korea from the Japanese colonial rule. The Soviet army had some ethnic Koreans who were Soviet soldiers and officers, but, well, none of former guerrillas, nobody subordinated to Kim Il-sung in any way, has taken part in these operations.

So in a sense, they invented a victorious war which never happened. But once again, having said that, we should never forget that Kim Il-sung in his youth was a tough, brave, devoted person, a real hero. And forgetting everything which happened later, he probably would have maybe a rather modest but very respected place in the Korean history textbooks. Untangling the truth about Kim Il-sung from the myth is easier than untangling facts about

the country today. After Kim Il-sung died, his son Kim Jong-il took over. In 2011, when Kim Jong-il died, his throne was inherited by his son, the Swiss-educated Kim Jong-un. Throughout these generations of terrible leadership, North Korea's misery has been discernible only through a blizzard of monstrous lies. At the center of this eternal deceit is the state's driving ideology, Juche. It's roughly translated as self-reliance. There's nothing wrong with a national credo proclaiming economic, military, and political independence. The reality, though, was that North Korea was a poorly run communist dystopia that has been reliant from its inception on the largesse and charity of the former Soviet Union and later communist China.

In his book, The Real North Korea, Lankov explains how it worked. The Soviets would trade military parts, grain, fuel, and other valuable commodities for worthless North Korean junk, like vats of impotent fertilizer, and other things their hobbled industrial base would produce. Like the set-piece Soviet towns shown to gullible tourists known as Potemkin villages, this was Potemkin international commerce. To conceal Moscow's subsidy of North Korea's economy, both sides pretended foreign aid was foreign trade.

Private markets were also phony in North Korea. They were technically allowed for luxuries, you know, like chicken breasts or tablecloths, something almost no North Korean is able to afford either in the early 80s or today. In reality, the nation creaks on under a terrible system of rationing, with families deemed most loyal to the regime receiving the most rice and cornmeal. Nonetheless, the Kim family did like to put on a show for outsiders. One could travel to Pyongyang, as I did when I was a correspondent for UPI in the year 2000, and find department stores.

But inside the department stores, there were no shoppers. The shelves were not stocked. It looked like the set for a movie about a department store in North Korea. I remember sitting down for lunch at my hotel and being handed a menu of 25 pages describing in English and Korean the various delectables that awaited. But when I tried to order these items, I was told the kitchen was out. The only thing on the menu was kimchi and a very salty noodle dish.

And I was a guest of the state, I was part of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's press delegation on a historic visit, someone they likely wanted to impress. Imagine how poorly the subjugated North Koreans were being fed. Not only did this extreme corruption and incompetence subject his people to generations of chronic malnourishment, but Kim Il-sung created a state with a level of surveillance and control that would make even the Soviets think he was being extreme. One which his family has happily maintained.

I would say that Kim Il-sung, the founder of the North Korean state, was more Stalinist than Joseph Stalin himself. This is Andrei Lankov again. It was shocking for somebody from the 1980s Soviet Union, and it would probably look excessive to somebody from Stalin's Soviet Union. Like demand, which was really enforced back in the 1980s, not later, but in the 1980s it was enforced, to get a government permission for any trip outside your city or province of residence. If you wanted to visit your uncle in living in a different province, you should first get permission from your workplace,

second from an official, a petty official responsible for you in your place of residence, then you would get a police clearance and formal paper, and only as long as you had this paper in your pocket, it was safe to travel. Nothing is free in North Korea. Consider the policy on radios. Tunable radios are illegal. Radio sets in North Korea only carry the official state broadcasts. And I should say this is a little bit outdated because Koreans now also have

DVD players that are not connected to the internet, which is a separate issue. But after people learned how to jerry-rig the radios to allow them to pick up signals from South Korea, the BBC Korean Service, or Radio Free Asia, an internal surveillance organization known as the Inminban began checking to see that the official radios were not tampered with. The Inminban was largely made up of middle-aged women who would police the families living in her area of responsibility. They would file reports on the status of a marriage, whether or not the family's obligatory portrait of Kim Il-sung in

the apartment was kept clean, how much money was earned, and what meals were served. Once a week, the minder would host a family-specific weekly review session, based on Soviet and Maoist struggle sessions where regular citizens would have to confess to impure thoughts and misdemeanors, both real and imagined. Most North Koreans, of course, soon learned that one should never actually confess to something serious in these struggle sessions, like doubting the official Juche ideology or hoarding extra rice rations because political infractions were harshly punished. Whole families would be whisked away to labor camps for the crimes of a son or a father.

These camps are still operating today and you can actually see them from space. They're best compared to Stalin's gulags. Prisoners are given a pitiful ration of a watery and salty soup, and according to testimony of those lucky enough to ever get out, in order to survive, prisoners are forced to forage for edible weeds and hunt for rats. The inmates dig mines with crude hand-held shovels or sew clothing for 18 hours a day. And if you don't make the quota, the punishments are brutal. Beatings, torture, sometimes confinement in a box so small, one can neither stand nor

sit for weeks at a time. But if you're a member of the Kim family or one of the regime elites, well, life is sweet. Just consider a typical menu for the family of Kim Il-sung's son and successor, Kim Jong-il. Here is an extract from Anna Fifield's 2019 book, The Great Successor. The meals prepared for Kim Jong-il by a team of chefs were lavish. There was grilled pheasant, shark fin soup, Russian-style barbecued goat meat, steamed turtle, roast chicken and pork, and Swiss-style cheese melted on potatoes. The royal family ate only rice produced in a special area of the country.

Female workers handpicked each grain one by one, making sure to choose flawless grains of equal size. What makes this passage even more galling is that these meals were prepared for Kim Jong-il, known as the deer leader, while his country endured a famine in the late 1990s. Remember, the Juche state was always reliant on the charity of the Soviet Union. When the evil empire fell on December 26, 1991, the phony trade that kept North Korea afloat collapsed along with the propped-up economy the Soviets subsidized. The result was a famine where at least 400,000 Koreans perished. Just a few miles to the south, across the most militarized border on Earth, South Korea was emerging as an economic tiger.

This is the context of the first North Korean nuclear crisis. After the break, what the Kim family did to save its prison state. Hi, I'm Eli Lake. I want to tell you about a great podcast that I think you'll appreciate, Unpacking Israeli History, hosted by Noam Weissman. If you read the headlines about Israel, you're only getting a tiny slice of a long and complicated story without depth, context, or sometimes even the basic facts. Much like breaking history, unpacking Israeli history uncovers the history behind the headlines, diving into the fascinating and sometimes controversial events and figures that have

shaped Israel's past and present. Gnome examines each subject from a variety of perspectives, leaning into the complexities and layers around topics like how the state of Israel was founded and debates around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So if you're looking for a nuanced, thought-provoking take on Israel, one that avoids the oversimplifications and political spin, you'll love this show. Find Unpacking Israeli History wherever you listen to your podcasts or watch it on YouTube.

gonna get caught. Look, let me get him in. It's the 90s! It's hammer time! Come on! Let me get him! Let me get him! Jerry! Jerry! For Americans, the 1990s were a kind of golden age. We had won the Cold War, Germany was reunified, our intellectuals proclaimed the end of history, and we became sidetracked by our president's affair with an intern and O.J. Simpson pretending he couldn't put on a glove. For North Korea, a communist dictatorship, the 1990s were a nightmare. In 1994, Kim Il-sung expired, although of course he remains the eternal ruler of North Korea, and his portly son Kim Jong-il took over. He inherited a famine and the end of Soviet subsidies.

All of the old communist dictators were being rudely ousted from power in this period. Some were even executed by firing squad. Kim Jong-il and his family were running out of options and the stakes were dire. So they decided to play some hardball. Nuclear hardball. The story begins in March 1993. Across the demilitarized zone that divides North and South Korea, the U.S. and South Korean military engage in joint exercises known as Team Spirit.

This unnerved the North Koreans. The heir apparent Kim Jong-il, who at that time was the grand marshal of the army, put his nation on a quote, semi-war footing. Rallies inside the capital Pyongyang featured thousands of soldiers with their heads shaved shouting their desire to protect the homeland. A popular song of the time praised the leader in waiting. Without you there is no us. Without you there is no country.

Takes care of our children and our hopes. Our nation's fate. Marshal Kim Jong-il. Even though the world has overturned a hundred times, still the people believe in Marshal Kim Jong-il. This saber rattling wasn't posturing. It was a threat. As early as 1959, the North Koreans had a plutonium reactor built for them by the Soviets

and by the end of the 1990s. There were signs that the Kim family was working on a weapon, albeit very quietly. North Korea had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985 under Soviet and Chinese pressure. But in 1992, the International Atomic Energy Agency discovered that plutonium for a nuclear power plant was being diverted to what looked to be a separate weapons program. Would Kim come clean and face the consequences? Instead of a mea culpa, Pyongyang's emperor on March 8, 1993 announced what until then seemed unthinkable.

His regime said North Korea was pulling out of the Nuclear Non-Deliveration Treaty. This was the first time that a member of the NPT had announced intentions to withdraw. America was desperate to avoid that scenario. Here are the first lines from the New York Times editorial from March 16th, 1993. North Korea may not be in a position to use those nuclear weapons that it's allegedly been developing, but for the past few days,

Pyongyang has been flirting with diplomatic suicide and scaring a lot of people. Many Americans do not fully appreciate that in the 1990s America came very close to going to war with North Korea. Madeleine Albright, who was then the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, recalled in her memoir that the Clinton administration did consider military strikes seriously on the Yongbyong reactor. But war was averted. Negotiations began instead,

and in 1994, the North Koreans accepted a kind of bribe. It was called the agreed framework. If North Korea remained in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, shut down the Yongbyong reactor, and sealed the plutonium fuel rods that were being reprocessed before, then America would send fuel shipments and help it construct two civilian nuclear power plants. The regime solved its fuel crisis and got the benefit of American nuclear tech. But this national triumph did nothing at all to ease the famine in the late 1990s. The Kim family could of course live with a few hundred thousand North Koreans starving to death. They dined on grilled pheasant and steamed turtle, celebrated their success at bending America

to its will and consolidating the Kim family's power. This is a crucial point when trying to understand exactly why rogue states pursue nuclear weapons. It's not really just about destruction. It's about preservation. Preservation of the regime. If the Kims didn't threaten to build an A-bomb, then it's very likely that their regime would go the way of East Germany. Why would any nation want to lift a finger for the survival of this Orwellian prison state if it couldn't threaten a mushroom cloud over Tokyo or Seoul.

And it is for this reason that the Kim family also cheated on the agreed framework that they signed in 1994. The agreed framework was intended to supply energy and light water reactors, if you can believe it, to North Korea in exchange for a pledge not to build nuclear weapons. This again is John Bolton. It was a very bad deal. But it was premised on not allowing the nuclear reactors spent fuel to be reprocessed to get plutonium from it.

But what our intelligence found was that North Korea was doing something completely separate and as an alternative route to nuclear weapons, setting up uranium enrichment capabilities so that they would have enriched uranium whether they extracted plutonium from the spent fuel of the Yongbyon reactor or not. And that was evidence that was conclusive that North Korea had a nuclear weapons intention.

The nuclear reactors, you could say, well, they're for peaceful civil uses to generate electrical power. That was never true anyway. But there was no excuse for a need to have uranium enrichment other than building nuclear weapons. As it became clear that North Korea was in fact pursuing the bomb, the green framework collapsed. By the early 21st century following the 9-11 attacks, President George W. Bush and his administration, which included John Bolton, became singularly focused on one cause. Preventing Bond villains from getting weapons of mass destruction.

This obsession, of course, led to the Second Iraq War in 2003. Coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war. This war was waged on the assumption that the country's tyrant, Saddam Hussein, possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and still maintained an active nuclear program. This assumption was wrong. The stockpiles were never found and the reconstruction of Iraq became a bloody and expensive slog. But the war did do one thing. It convinced two

nations who had previously been interested in joining the nuclear club to reconsider. In Iran, the war persuaded Khamenei to pause his weapons program and focus on enrichment for nuclear energy. In Libya, the effect was even more dramatic. Here is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair explaining some recent history of Western diplomacy with Muammar Gaddafi. This evening, Colonel Gaddafi has confirmed that Libya has in the past sought to develop weapons of mass destruction capabilities, as well as longer-range missiles. Libya came to us in March following successful negotiations on Lockerbie to see if it could

resolve its weapons of mass destruction issues in a similarly cooperative manner. Nine months of work have followed with experts from America and Britain, during which the Libyans discussed their programs with us. As a result, Libya has now declared its intention to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction completely and to limit the range of Libyan missiles to no greater than 300 kilometers in accordance with the parameters set by the missile technology control regime. This decision by Colonel Qadhafi is an historic one and a courageous one and I applaud it. Qadhafi reached out to the West after Saddam Hussein was found hiding in a spider hole by coalition forces.

He gave up everything. Through his confessions, the West didn't just learn about Libya's nuclear ambitions. It also learned that Pakistan's nuclear program wasn't just about deterring India. Pakistan's leading physicist, A. Q. Khan, was running a nuclear black market for the world's worst bond villains. Late 90s, early 2000s, you start to really get the concern that Khan had been sharing

nuclear technology with Iran, with North Korea, with the Libyans. This is Jay Solomon again. And that really exploded after 9-11 and early 2000. One of the key parts of that was when the Libyans basically said, okay, we're giving up our program. And I think that gave the US a lot of intel, like, wow, the Khan was all over the place. It was ironic. Bush never found nukes in Iraq, but the invasion prompted Libya to disclose how Pakistan's

nuclear godfather aided four rogue states. Iraq, Iran, Libya, and North Korea. Half a world away in Pyongyang, Kim Jong-il was unshaken by Operation Iraqi Freedom. Instead, in 2003, he made good on his threat from 10 years earlier. North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Once again, this policy worked well for North Korea. The Bush administration responded with more diplomacy. And for a hot minute, it looked like maybe talking would work?

In 2005, North Korea signed a joint statement with America, China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia pledging to abandon nuclear weapons in exchange for more foreign assistance. But this was another ruse. On October 9, 2006, North Korea tested its first nuclear device. It had the power of the little boy bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The president, obsessed with stopping rogue states from going nuclear, allowed North Korea to do just that on his watch.

And even after a nuclear test, in 2007, the Bush administration was back at the negotiating table. The North Koreans agreed to shut down the Yongbyon reactor, and the U.S. agreed to more fuel aid to flow into North Korea. Kim Jong-il was more right than he knew. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi gave up his entire program in 2005. Sanctions were lifted and his regime was welcomed into the international community. But six years later, he was apprehended by rebel forces, hiding in a drainage pipe beneath a highway. The dictator may have

been able to suppress the popular uprising in his country after the Arab Spring in 2011, but after he threatened to wipe out Benghazi, his second largest city, NATO and America abandoned him. Gaddafi was the guy who gave away his nukes and he died in a ditch. The message to every other Bond villain was clear. Nuclear weapons provide security that diplomatic handshakes do not. After Bush left office, Barack Obama, too, was vexed by the rogue nuke problem. But by then, America was exhausted and exasperated with the Kim family. While Obama focused on containing Iran's nuclear

program, he largely ignored North Korea's. This approach was called strategic patience and was premised on the view that Pyongyang's nukes were just a means for shaking down the international community every few years. Besides, there were no signs that the Kim family would go backwards and actually disarm. why bother with a charade? When a Kim wants to talk, they thought, well, we'll listen. The North Korean leadership sincerely believe that if they surrender nuclear weapons, it will be only a question of time before they suffer the fate of Saddam and Gaddafi. Again, this is Andrei Lankov.

And of course, they are not happy about it. So all talks about North Korean denuclearization, as I have been saying for 20 odd years, is a pipe dream. North Korea is nuclear and will remain nuclear for the foreseeable future. Donald Trump, of course, did try diplomacy in his first term with Kim Jong-un, son of Kim Jong-il. But tensions boiled before Trump met with Kim in 2018 and 2019. His military tested an intercontinental ballistic missile on July 4, 2017, America's birthday. Trump belittled Kim,

calling him Rocket Man. But then the American president and the new leader of North Korea, quote, fell in love. Perhaps our president really did learn to stop wearing and love the bomb. I was really being tough and so was he. And we would go back and forth. And then we fell in love. Okay? No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they're great letters. We fell in love. After the break, what North Korea's nuclear arsenal might tell us about a nuclear Iran. The all-new all-electric Can-Am Pulse motorcycle is your cheat code for the city. Light, agile, and stylish for all you smart commuters. Find your pulse today. Learn more at CanAmMotorcycles.com. Since North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, it has conducted five more, each one yielding a more devastating blast.

As the great leader masters the power of the atom, his military is also perfecting its missiles. Today, North Korea is said to have as many as 70 nuclear weapons, and they keep getting better. This is what Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said about North Korea's arsenal just last week in Washington. The program is no longer the complex at Yongbyon, it's Gangseong, it's other places also in the country. It's a light water reactor, it's a second and perhaps a third enrichment facility being built at the moment.

It's a reprocessing campaign which is ongoing as we speak and there's a nuclear arsenal that exists. You cannot have a country like this, which is completely off the charts with this nuclear arsenal and with such a big program, nuclear program, with all these facilities, without us having any clue of any safety or security measure which is being applied to it. Obama's optimistic policy of waiting failed. Trump's love bombing the bomb lover also failed. North Korea is more dangerous now than they've ever been. As we look at their expanded arsenal, it's worth asking, is this where Iran is heading?

There's no reason to assume they're not. This is the dictator insurance policy, right? Where is Iran heading? There's no reason to assume they are not. This is the dictator insurance policy, right? Why would you be a Gaddafi in the dirt when you could be a Juche emperor with a nuke? If Trump is actually committed to negotiating an end to Iran's nuclear program, he's delusional. Bonvillains don't give up their doomsday machines, they make them more ferocious, as the Kim family has proven. So what would an Iran with a North Korean nuclear arsenal look like?

We are listening to an Iranian video recently released that depicts the dramatic enactment of the kidnapping of Israel's Prime Minister. The two and a half minute trailer ends with Benjamin Netanyahu tied to a chair somewhere in Iran about to be tortured. By Iranian standards, this kind of information warfare is really actually light stuff. Iran, after all, sponsors Hamas, the demons who launched October 7th. But this is kind of the point about both Iran and North Korea.

Nukes are not just a useful bit of blackmail. A nuclear deterrent in the hands of a madman is a weapon of psychological terror that enables actual terror. We all suspect, as does the international community, that Kim or Khamenei may just be crazy enough to use a nuke. So we have to contemplate a very difficult decision. If we don't want Iran to go the way of North Korea, if we don't want Hamas or Hezbollah operating with the benefit of their patrons' nuclear umbrella, well, we have to take matters

into our own hands. And I'm sorry to say this, we have to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. At the same time, that's only really a temporary solution. If Iran's regime survives, it will try and try and try again to get their nuclear insurance policy deprived by American bombs and Israeli saboteurs. And yet even a nuke is not a failsafe dictatorship preservation policy. It does not prevent the consequences of internal rot and popular exasperation. The Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons in 1949 at the height of Stalin's reign of terror. It took 42 years, but the Soviet Union eventually collapsed along with its possessions in Eastern Europe.

So while a nuke can deter NATO or the US Army, it does not protect against popular revolution and regime collapse. And this is a strong argument for attacking the modern Bonn villains at their weakest point, their own popular legitimacy. At least in the case of Iran, there's plenty of evidence that millions of Iranians themselves would rather not live under the reign of fanatics who have predicated their survival on forcing their population to endure the economic devastation that is a consequence of 25 years of nuclear brinksmanship.

Now the news, it's been one month since 22-year-old Massa Ameni was detained by Iran's morality police for improperly wearing her hijab. Since her death in police custody three days later, Iranians have been taking to the streets. At first, the demonstrations led mainly by women vented their anger towards the country's morality police. But they quickly morphed into something much larger. In recent weeks, Iranians of all ages, ethnic groups, and socioeconomic backgrounds have been calling for the Islamic Republic to go.

That was less than three years ago. And before that, Iranians took to the streets to protest corrupt and failing banks. They have marched to oppose stolen elections, unpotable drinking water, mass arrests, and disappearances. Every time the West has written off the Iranian people, they have proven how much they would rather live in freedom. That day may come too for North Korea, but this kind of reckoning is much closer for Iran. So instead of negotiating another deal with the blackmailers, why not align with the Iranian patriots who despise them? The alternative would be to watch another Bond villain acquire the means to threaten Armageddon

as his people starved. Welcome honored Ayatollah. Smell the sulfur, see the bones. Thanks for listening to Breaking History. If you liked this episode, if you learned something, if you disagreed with something, or if it simply sparked a new understanding of our present moment, please share it with your friends and family and use it to have a conversation of your own. And remember, if you want to support Breaking History, follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever

you get your podcasts. And leave us a five-star rating and a nice comment, too. Also, if you loved this episode, there's more great content at TheFP.com. Please become a subscriber today, and until then, I'll see you next time. No confession for your crime. Lies you told so sugar sweetly. Cover up the screams and cries Welcome, honored Ayatollah Meet your victims, hang your heads

The devil wants his loyal soldiers By his side Among the dead