Dan Snow's History Hit - Inside North Korea

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

With closed borders, a totalitarian regime, electricity blackouts and widespread poverty, North Korea is a brutal place to survive; even looking at a foreign media outlet can get a North Korean citizen sent to a concentration camp. So why, in 2011 did leader Kim Jong Il allow Jean Lee, a celebrated American journalist to set up a news bureau in Pyongyang?In today's episode, Jean is Dan's guide to North Korea. She tells him about her extraordinary experiences living and working in North Korea as the AP bureau chief. She delves into the history of the Korean peninsula, the Korean War and what made North Korea the country it is today- including the mythology of the Kim dynasty and the famine of the 1990s. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW - sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi there everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. You know, in the galaxy of existential threats to the international order at the moment, we've slightly forgotten about North Korea. It's like slipped down the list a few places. We're not quite as focused on North Korea's ballistic missile program, you know, intercontinental rockets which have nuclear tips and can destroy the lives of tens of millions of people. So I thought, you know, let's drag our gaze back onto that little

fly in the ointment. And for that, I've got the greatest. I've got Jean Lee. She's a scholar for the Wilson Center. She's one of the hosts of the BBC World Service hit podcast. This was a hit podcast. It was good. The Lazarus Heist. So she was actually reporting in North Korea in 2008. And she'll tell you why. There was a sort of brief, hopeful thaw in US-North Korean relations. She was able to go to North Korea and actually live there and spend three years on the ground there,

2011, 2012, 2013. And she was the first American journalist allowed to join a very small foreign press corps in Pyongyang. She actually opened the APU Bureau there in January 2012. As you'll hear, her family are Koreans. Her personal history, her personal history,

her professional history is very much tied up with the terrible upheavals of 20th century history in Korea. It is such a fascinating story. We're going to talk about the Kim dynasty, these three father to son despots. We're going to talk about how they descended from a mountain, how the skies crack open, the vault of heaven cracks open when the Kims are born, and how Kim Jong-un was driving a car at the age of three. Jean is an amazing broadcaster. It was a huge treat to have her on the podcast. Here's Jean Lee. Enjoy.

T-minus 10. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the King. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Jean, thank you very much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. It's great to join you. I mean, it can be difficult for us outside to get a sense of the mythology that this ruling family have wrapped

themselves in. Tell me how they'd like to be seen in Korea, but also in the rest of the world. It's an amazing story, really, of a modern day monarchy. North Korea is technically, well, they consider themselves socialist. We consider them to be communist. But for a country to have maintained and mixed this totalitarian hold over the population, while also maintaining a kind of royal family rule is just, I think, unprecedented. And what they want, and it's such an interesting mix of so many of the different traditions that make up Korea, both North and South. They did have many, many years of royal rule. So the Kim family, specifically Kim Il-sung, the first leader of modern day North Korea, when he was thinking about how he was going to build this new regime that we know as North Korea, he brought in all

the different elements that make up Korea, that understanding of royal rule. He brought in Christianity. His family were Christian. They were actually practicing Christians because there had been many American missionaries in Pyongyang during his childhood. And then he drew from Lenin and Marx. And so he brought in a mix of communism, Christianity, and that royal rule that the Koreans were so familiar with. And I think what they want is to portray their family, the Kims, as being heaven sent. We actually see this language in the mythology. They want to convince the people that they have a divine right to rule and that North Korea wouldn't be North Korea if they weren't in power.

And just about everything goes toward maintaining this mythology, maintaining the family's hold on power. And what they say, and I do think that what they believe is that if they don't rule, that North Korean way of life, that system will not exist. And in some ways, they may be right. There's so many urban myths, and you can help me because you're the expert on these things, about they are champion, they're driving cars when they were toddlers. You can't disrespect a piece of paper with their face on it. I mean, what's true? Do everyday people in North Korea really have to abide by these things? Oh, absolutely. I think it's very hard for us, especially coming from the West. It's very hard for us to understand. One of the first things that I got when I first arrived was one of the penal codes, and it's a hard for us to understand. You know, one of the first things that I got when I

first arrived was one of the penal codes. And it's a massive book. So one of the pictures that I show of me in my office in North Korea, so I opened a news bureau in Pyongyang, and there's a picture of me holding and looking at this massive book. And it's the penal code, because there's a huge compendium of laws and regulations. And one of the first things the North Koreans told me was, make sure you understand the rules and regulations. It is impossible. There are so many rules and regulations, and the penalty is so severe. But the first one, as you mentioned, that I was told about was when I made my first trip to North Korea across the border. So we were on this bus.

They had shut all the curtains so we couldn't look out the window and see what the countryside looked like. And one of the things they told us on that bus trip was, if you pick up or receive or buy any North Korean publications, don't throw them in the garbage when you're in North Korea. Don't crumple them because the leader's face is on every publication. And if you crumple up that paper, you're defacing the leader and that could carry a severe punishment. And this is just mind blowing. So what they told us was just lay it gently on top of a waste paper basket, do not crumple it up. And that's the kind of thing we don't think about. We recycle, we throw newspapers away. But in North Korea, that could be a crime because the leader's

face is on the newspaper, on every single newspaper. Well, we're going to hear about these three remarkable men, Kim Il-sung, then we're going to hear about Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, because you have been very kind. You must be a masochist. We're going to rampage through modern Korean history here. Before we even get to the end of the Japanese occupation, when of course Korea was all one place, it was under Japanese power. Korea, it's in a super tough neighborhood, right? I mean, you've got Russia, Japan, and China. And the last 150 years have seen those three powers circling and vying for domination in the Korean peninsula.

It's a tough hand. That's very well put. And you make it sound like they're sharks circling, looking for prey. But the Koreans have thought of themselves as a shrimp among whales. So they've always seen these superpowers as being whales and Korea being this tiny little country that is at the risk of being swallowed up by these superpowers if they don't consider very carefully what their strategy will be. I mean, you know, the Koreans have had different strategies around this for millennia because they've been dealing with these superpowers for millennia. And it's interesting how South Korea and North Korea have come up with different strategies for remaining relevant.

And I think they absolutely, the Koreans absolutely over centuries have felt that if they could very easily be absorbed by another country, and there were attempts over the millennia to absorb Korea because it's strategically located. For Japan, it was seen as a possible stepping stone to the rest of the Asian continent, right? For Russia, it could provide useful access as well to the rest of the Pacific. So absolutely, I think you're right, but I like how you described them as sharks in a sense, because I do think that's how the Koreans have seen it, that there are these sharks that are circling and that their very existence was under threat. So very much a question of their own existence.

Well, you have personal family memories of a time when Korea's existence was, well, Japanese attempts to wipe it off the map. It was part of the Japanese empire. At the end of the war in August 1945, VJ Day, tell me about what your family remember as occupied Koreans remembering the news that Japan had unconditionally surrendered. You know, to be honest, I am a second generation Korean American. I was born and raised in the United States, as you can probably tell by my accent. And I didn't think that much about the Korean War or the Japanese occupation growing up. My father was very, very little. He was a toddler. When the Japanese left, the Japanese surrendered during World War II. And as part of that surrender, they gave up control

of Korea. But my older uncles were in school. They were in elementary school, and they remember it very well. And I only know this, you know, my uncle, as many Koreans did. Instead of the Lee's, they were the Shibamuras. And he recounts how they were not allowed to speak Korean at their school. They were reprimanded and punished if they spoke Korean. So really an attempt to wipe out Korean culture and language by the Japanese. And when they found out on August 15th, 1945, which is known as Liberation Day in both Koreas, they heard an announcement made by the Emperor of Japan. They were ordered to gather around the radio and heard this announcement of Emperor Hirohito announcing the surrender of Japan. I mean, just absolutely a stunning moment that I don't think that they could comprehend as children. But when they went out into the streets,

they heard people screaming and running through the streets, shouting manse. Manse is, so this is something that we hear in North Korea, you don't hear it so much in South Korea, but essentially it means 10,000 years, essentially celebrating the sudden liberation of Korea, just running through the streets. I think it was both a time of chaos and celebration, because of course, the Koreans didn't know what was going to happen next. They had been under so many years of both either royal rule and then Japanese rule, and suddenly they were free. So it was a period of both intense celebration and I think intense chaos, but a period as well for the Koreans to regain their sense of Korean-ness and to celebrate

their independence for the first time in 35 years. First time for my uncles, of course, in their life. We've done multiple podcasts here on the Korean War, so I'm not expecting you to give us the whole load on the Korean War in the next five minutes. But briefly, Korea was partitioned, if you like, occupied by the Western and Soviet power, if you like. It's a little unlike Germany. And then the North Koreans invade the South in an attempt to reunify. Just briefly tell me, over the next three years,

I think many people might have forgotten the intensity of that war, the effect on the civilian population on both sides of the front line, but also in the rear areas. Here in the United States, we call it the Forgotten War, which I find so ironic because it is the one war that hasn't ended. It has not ended after more than 70 years, but it was the start of the Cold War. And this was a time when the Americans were very concerned about the spread of communism. It was at the start of that period where they were worried about the spread of communism. So when the Japanese left in 1945, you had the Soviets coming in from the north, the Americans who were based in the region coming in from the south, and they made an agreement to divide the peninsula at the 38th parallel, which was a lot of fighting between the North and the South Koreans as they tried to gain control over the entire Korean Peninsula. So you have skirmishes across that 38th parallel. And it turned into full-blown war when the North Koreans staged a surprise attack on June 25th, 1950. So the Koreans call this Yu-Gi-Oh. So they just call it, Yu-Gi-Oh means 625. And that's the day when the war began. It took the North Koreans three days to come rampaging

across that 38th parallel and seize Seoul. Now, my family, this is something that I interviewed my father about last year, because I had never asked him about his experience. He was 10 years old. Actually, he was just about to turn 10 years old. And so for me, it was an incredible family story as well to hear what my father went through the day that they found out that the North Koreans had crossed that 38th parallel and were heading toward Seoul. And what happened was the North Koreans pushed so far back that the Americans and supported by the United Nations

sent in troops to try to push and repel those forces back up the peninsula. Now, they did that fairly successfully in those early months of 1950, made it all the way back past the 38th parallel, this is the US-led UN forces, captured Pyongyang, had thought they had wrapped this all up. The soldiers, US soldiers were sending letters back home saying, we'll be home by Thanksgiving, we'll be home by Christmas. And unfortunately, what happened was that the Chinese, realizing that the Americans were just about at the Yalu River dividing them from Korea, decided to pour troops in. absolutely destroyed the US-led UN forces in the northern part of North Korea. And this war ended up going on for two more years. Now, they did start armistice negotiations. They started those in 1951. It took two years. And they finally signed an armistice, a ceasefire in 1953, on my dad's birthday, July 27th, 1953. But after three years of fighting, millions were dead on the North Korean and the South Korean

side. In terms of the U.S. toll, 40,000 U.S. soldiers were killed, many, many more wounded. It was a brutal war. This was a country where they were dealing with extreme winter. You cannot even imagine how cold it is in the north of North Korea, just bitterly cold. And I've experienced it myself. And I'm from the coldest place in America. And not only is it bitterly cold, but it was a particularly brutal winter that first winter. And then they had extreme drought. So they were just either thirsty or freezing cold. So really difficult conditions in a terrain that they didn't know, with people that they didn't know. Certainly a lot of uncertainty for the Koreans. My family suffered, certainly trying to traverse the peninsula looking for safety.

My father was sent by his mother on foot as a little boy to one of their family houses farther south. During that period, they sought refuge in one of their old family homes. Didn't have anything to eat. of their old family homes, didn't have anything to eat. He had a younger brother who gorged himself on ginkgo, which are toxic when eaten in great quantity, and ended up dying. And so there was a lot of death, starvation, hunger, tragedy. I had a great uncle who was taken by the north koreans this was a huge threat for any young korean man was that they will be seized by the north korean army this happened to a great uncle of mine and we still don't know what happened to him and he has a

family in north korea and i had another great uncle who is a sympathizer, as many intellectuals of the era were, and sympathized with the cause of a free Korea and willingly went north and created a whole new family in North Korea. North Korea. So this was for the Koreans, for the Americans, for the UN forces, and for the North Koreans, it was a devastating time. The conflict itself was, there was so much bombing that it completely destroyed both South Korea and North Korea. When I see pictures of what South Korea and Seoul, my parents' hometown, looked like. There was an exhibition of AP photographs from the era staged in Seoul while I was there as the bureau chief. And it's stunning for me to look at those pictures of absolute devastation. This is the devastation that my parents grew up in. And to try to equate that with the Seoul of today. It's mind-boggling. But it was left in rubble. Now, South Korea has, as you probably know, rebuilt. It's rebuilt into this truly modern

city. North Korea, vast parts of it, never rebuilt from 1953. And when I show my mother pictures of what North Korea looks like today, you know, she says that's what it looked like in South Korea in 1953 where the mountains were just completely destroyed. And she says as a child, she was sent along with her classmates to plant trees to try to rebuild all the forests that were completely destroyed by bombing. But they haven't been able to do that in North Korea. So when you go to North Korea, it's were completely destroyed by bombing. But they haven't been able to do that in North Korea. So when you go to North Korea, it's like stepping back in time

and going back to the 1950s. You listen to Dan Snow's history. Don't go 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed. And I guess that was a fork in the road for North Korea, right? The benefactor went bankrupt. And then almost at the same time, Kim Il-sung died and Kim Jong-il took over. What happened then at that critical moment? I would say the early 1990s were a difficult time. I mean, difficult is putting it mildly. I mean, North Korea had been struggling for quite some time because even though, you know,

there's this amazing statistic that of the two Koreas, North Korea was the stronger one economically until the early 1970s because they did rebuild after the war with the support of members of the Soviet bloc, particularly East Germany. East Germany helped them rebuild quite a bit. So the Koreans in North Korea really relied on that umbrella that the Soviet Union provided, not just the Soviet Union, but the broader Eastern bloc. And so when that started to fall apart in the early 1990s, they lost that safety net. They lost the support that they got, not only from the Soviet Union, but from all the other countries that were trying to figure out this new world without this massive network and all the sense

of order that was coming from Moscow. I think for North Korea, it was devastating. It was devastating to suddenly have to fend for themselves. And they would never admit it. The North Koreans would never admit it. But it really was the sudden loss of that safety net and the Soviet support was just crushing. It did really set them on a period of famine. And during that period, not only did they lose that support, but they also went through a period of climactic disasters, which is something that North Korea deals with. They just were not blessed when it comes to where they're situated and climactic conditions. So they had a series of droughts and heavy rains, which is very typical for Korea. And because they just didn't have the right agricultural practices in place, those rains just led to landslides that just destroyed any farming that they had, destroyed whole

villages. This is actually something that they still deal with today, and they haven't quite figured out how to handle their climate. And that did trigger a massive famine in the mid-1990s. The number is, it's really hard to get an accurate figure, but we believe that up to 2 million North Koreans died of famine. Now, I have to put this into context. For example, when we talk about the Korean War, it's believed that up to 5 million Koreans died. North Korea is a country that had a population of about 24 million. So, you talking about a 10th of the population dying of starvation during the 1990s. And as you said, what was also happening was Kim Il-sung, who was treated like the god, the person that the North Koreans never imagined would die, just did that. He had a heart attack

and died suddenly in 1994. And so not only did you have the loss of the Soviet support in the early 1990s and 1991 onward, you suddenly had your God dying with no real sense of what was going to happen next. And now Kim Jong-il, his son, who had been vying for power for many years, went into, I still find this so amazing, a three-year period of mourning. Now, this is traditional in Korea, but for the leader of the country to disappear for three years in a period of mourning, it's really hard. It wasn't there. It's really hard to understand what was happening. But what you can guess is that there was just a period where there was very little rule, so much uncertainty, things were starting to fall apart.

The government was not able to feed the people under the rationing system that had been in place, and that it just was total chaos. Now, this was the time in the mid-1990s that we started to see foreign aid groups come into North Korea for the first time, including U.S. humanitarian groups, and try to help feed the North Koreans. And so it's a really incredible period where the Kims also, I think Kim Jong-il and the leadership had to pivot and try to figure out how they were going to regain strength and power. And with Kim Jong-il, what he decided was that he was going to lean on the military. And that ushered in a period that we think of as the military first period. It's a time when Kim Jong-il based his legitimacy and his right to rule not only on that divine legacy that the Kims tried to create, but also on military might. So during this period, we saw a huge escalation in pouring resources into the military. And with that military effort, it also meant ballistic missiles.

So then we're entering this period of really ramping up use of ballistic missiles and building up nuclear weapons as a way to regain power, reset the narrative, and to reshape foreign policy. Why did they let you into North Korea? That's a good question, right? So as I mentioned, the Korean War hasn't ended. So, technically, the United States and North Korea are still enemies. We forget this in the United States because it's been such a long time, but they haven't forgotten in North Korea. The North Koreans use the Korean War narrative as a way to kind of create this fear of the outside world and to justify the building up of all these nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. So that means

that the United States doesn't have diplomatic relations with North Korea. And so one of the challenges, of course, as a journalist has been, how do you get into North Korea? How do you cover this story that is actually so important for the region, for South Korea, and for U.S. policy as well, if you can't get into the country? And so when I became the AP Seoul Bureau Chief, I was told on my first day that that would be my mission, was to find a way to not only get into North Korea, but to open an AP Bureau there. an AP bureau there. How did I do it? I mean, I think that I certainly presented a very different picture of an American than any other foreign correspondent before me. I'm an ethnic Korean. I'm very clearly a Korean American. So I don't seem, I don't look or sound South Korean to them. My Korean isn't very good. And so in some ways they looked at me and they saw somebody that they thought they could work with, somebody they perhaps thought was going to be a pushover and serve as a useful vehicle for their propaganda. So it was always a challenge to try to explain to them how we do journalism in the West, that we don't do propaganda, and that what we do is that they have to respect what we do and the kind of journalism that we do in the West.

But I think absolutely, aside from the fact that I presented a different picture of who an American journalist was, it came at a time, and this is what I strategically negotiated, was it came at a time when Kim Jong-il wanted to have a different relationship with the United States. Now, one thing I have to mention is that on my first day of work, it happened to be the day of the 60th anniversary of the founding of North Korea, major, major anniversary. There was a huge parade in Pyongyang as we expected. We were watching this on the screen on a feed of North Korean state TV. And this is a time when we were expecting to see Kim Jong-il saluting the troops, and he didn't appear. The cameras panned across that viewing platform, and he wasn't there. And immediately we went into news alert mode, because for the leader of North Korea not to appear at a major celebration like that meant something was wrong.

And what we found out that day was that a couple of weeks earlier, he had suffered a stroke and had fallen into a coma. I mean, how amazing is it that a leader of a country could be in a coma for weeks and the rest of the world and their own country wouldn't know? And so that ushered in this period of uncertainty about the future of North Korea. Again, the concern, of course, of what you do with a country where we don't have a leadership system or a succession plan in place, but they've got nuclear weapons. What could happen if there's chaos or there's a power struggle? And I think that when Kim Jong-il finally emerged from this illness, it was months,

and we did not see him until the following April. So for months. But there was a new plan hatched. There was an heir apparent who was tapped. We didn't know at the time who he was. But there was also a plan in place. And part of that plan was to try to find a way to force the Americans to the negotiating table. to force the Americans to the negotiating table. And so we saw a period of provocations, missile launches, I should say rocket tests, and then a period where there was some very clear outreach to the United States as Kim Jong-il was trying to set his son up to take over as the third Kim, so to inherit this legacy. You mentioned engagement there, that the Koreans wanted a deal with the Americans. What did they want out of that deal? One of the stories that I broke in December 2011 was that the Americans and the North Koreans were working on this landmark deal that was a freeze in exchange for aid. And this did eventually become

what we call the Leap Day deal. So they signed it on February 29th, 2012. And I think if you look at that deal and some of the previous deals, yeah, the North Koreans were looking for a deal with the Americans that would not only provide them with food and fuel, which they desperately needed in exchange for freezing aspects of their nuclear program, but also to try to establish a different type of relationship with the Americans. Now, what happened, and I should explain, is that this is a deal that Kim Jong-il worked on before he passed away. And just days after I broke that story, he did pass away. And so I think I broke that story, he did pass away. And so I think that the new leader, his son Kim Jong-un, had a very different approach.

And so he abandoned that deal and embarked on a period of a much more tense relationship with the United States. And I think this is counterintuitive when we look at the provocations, but I think we just need to look at what happened as well in 2018 with Kim Jong-un and those unlikely high-level summits that he had with President Trump to serve as a reminder that the North Koreans do, at the end of the day, want to have a negotiation with the United States, but they want to make sure that they're in a stronger position so that they can extract more concessions. And so all of this buildup is about trying to beef up their position before they sit down again with the Americans. I do believe that Kim Jong-il was trying to set the stage for a better relationship with the United States. And that's when I went in.

That's good timing. And what did they let you see? How free were you to look at stuff and report on stuff and take pictures? So I was allowed to join the Foreign Press Corps in 2011. And that meant that I could join the Chinese and Russian journalists. So certainly very different access than we normally have. Normally when we go in as American or foreign correspondents, we're taken on these very highly orchestrated trips in Pyongyang and shown the most beautiful aspects of Pyongyang. It is in some ways a fascinating city, and they can kind of control or try to control what it is you see, where you go. When we talk about rules and regulations, I mean, the rules for foreign visitors are really strict. You know, you can't even go for a walk without permission. I mean, I sometimes like to say that you can't even go to the bathroom without permission. And that's absolutely true in some cases, depending on where you are. Now, what I negotiated having the right to report on the ground meant that I had a lot of special permission to see things that

most correspondents can see. I mean, I lived and worked with my staff 24-7 for weeks on end, and there's only so much they can control. And I certainly got tired of keeping a close eye on me. And so I certainly, I was able to not only walk around Pyongyang, and I had to shop there to build our bureau. I had to shop for the food that we ate every day. I had to shop for my staff. So I got to be part of the economy and part of the society. On every trip, I also requested visits to the countryside, which is something that can be very difficult to do. You need permission to do that. And so I tried to get to as many villages, towns, cities, farms, factories, schools, military academies that I could to see the places in North Korea that most people can't see. And pretty much everywhere I went, they would say,

you're the first American who's been allowed to visit. And so it was important to me to get beyond that pretty picture that the regime likes to present in the capital, and for us to see what the reality of life was like every day for the average North Korean. And this is a big generalization. What was it like? Were you pretty shocked? Was it as you might have predicted? It was harsh. It's a harsh life. And I think that if you just look at state media and the propaganda, or if you just go on a short trip where you're in the capital, you could get the idea that actually life isn't so bad.

The reality is life is incredibly harsh, even if you live in Pyongyang. But it is even more difficult when you leave the city, which they call their socialist fairland. And once I left Pyongyang, I knew that I wouldn't have electricity. I wouldn't have heat. I wouldn't have running water. I wouldn't have plumbing. It's basically, like I said, going back in time. And you do see it in the faces of North Koreans, the harshness of life, not only in their gaunt frames, the blotchiness of their skin, the fact that it's clear that they're not getting the nutrients and the food that they need to really thrive. You see it in the children. You know, some people are always surprised that when I show my photos that they're smiling,

because I do try to explain that these are people who are trying to make the best of a really tough situation in a country where their leadership has prioritized nuclear weapons over their well-being. And I think Kim Jong-un, you know, he's playing a long game. In his head, the nuclear weapons are part of the future well-being of North Korea, because they'll help ensure his hold on power. But for the North Koreans I met who were in the most freezing cold places without gloves, without hats, without mittens, without heat, it's a brutal, brutal existence. And yet, amidst all that, you also stumble across one of the most advanced

cyber facilities on earth. What is going on there? Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that we saw in the shaping of the narrative around this heir apparent at the time, 10 years ago, when Kim Jong-un was completely unknown to the North Korean people, they didn't grow up with him. They had no idea who he was. And suddenly, he was being thrust upon them as the future leader of North Korea. And the way they painted that picture was that he was this modern military genius who was a computer expert. That's what we were told. He's a computer expert. investment, not only in nuclear weapons, but also in computers and technology. You go to these computer labs and they'd all have this little red label to show that they were a gift of the Kim family. And I was very, very curious to know. I mean, this is absolutely amazing that they're trying to create a generation of computer geniuses. But I'm sorry, but I couldn't help

but wonder, is there another purpose for this? The North Koreans are always thinking about strategically using their monies for purposes that are both, I think, positive and negative. And so one of the things that I did after leaving North Korea was try to understand whether this was part of a larger strategy to use cyber, both as a form of asymmetric warfare and as a way to make money. And so it's really mind-boggling. So, you know, we have heard in recent years that the North Koreans have become adept cyber hackers. And it's mind-boggling, because when you're in North Korea, as I mentioned, the electricity gets cut off even in the capital around 10pm, right? So this is a country where there's not a lot of electricity in the country, not even in Pyongyang, not a lot of electronics. And they're not connected to the internet. It's very, very hard to connect to the internet. You have to have permission. I had internet access, but I'm sure I was one of very few, which made me very self-conscious because they were probably watching everything I was doing online.

watching everything I was doing online. So how are they creating some of the world's most adept cyber hackers? And so this is something that we explore in my podcast. It's called Lazarus Heist on the BBC World Service. We use this narrative, which is the attempt by suspected North Korean hackers to steal a billion US dollars from the Bangladesh Bank. And they just about made it. So we not only follow the trail of how they try to steal a billion dollars, but for me, the question is not only how they did it, which is fascinating, but why? Understanding the motivation and understanding what it means when you've got a nation state supporting this effort. And then that question like you hint at, how does a country that's so cut off from the rest of the world and cut off from the internet manage to train cyber hackers? And so really looking at that as well, how do they learn how we live? How do they take advantage of

our dependence on technology and the internet? And how does that make us vulnerable? Well, speaking of vulnerable, what about your safety? I listened to the podcast and I thought, hang on, the North Koreans are going to come for you. Do you worry about that? Thank you for worrying about that. I think this is a huge concern. This is always a huge concern for us and anyone who deals with North Korea, to be honest. I've been dealing with it for a very, very long time. I do hope that the North Koreans recognize that what we do as journalists is not to demonize, but to really shed light and to explain the history, exactly as you're doing as well. as well. The history, the motivations, the thinking, it's not going to be propaganda. It's not going to be to their liking, but we're not making anything up. Everything that I share in the podcast is something that I have experienced or seen myself, or one of my interviewees has experienced or seen themselves. And I think it is a risk that we take. And I'm going out on a limb

every day by talking about these things, but I think it's absolutely important to provide that balanced look at North Korea, both what their lives are like, what their motivations are, what the strategy is, and also providing the options for engagement and how to think about them as human beings rather than as these caricatures and robots. And so I hope that they recognize and respect that that's what we're trying to do. We try to share this other side of North Korea. So you're not in hiding currently?

In my bedroom? No. Your house is on Google Maps. Don't share it, please. Do not do a location identifier. No, I think it's a risk that we all take when it comes to North Korea. And there are certainly far more defectors who share their personal stories at far greater risk than I face. And so that's something that is important to remember, that when North Koreans who have left the country speak out, that they are putting themselves under, not only themselves, but their families in North Korea at great risk just to share with us and tell the world what's truly happening to help us get beyond that propaganda that the North Korean regime is pumping out. Well, thank you so much for doing that with us today. That was extraordinary.

Thanks so much for having me on, and I appreciate that you're taking an interest in this topic.