North Korea News Podcast by NK News - A North Korean soldier’s defection, and a possible Trump-Kim meeting

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

This week, NK News Correspondent Jooheon Kim joins the podcast to discuss the North Korean soldier who crossed the inter-Korean border over the weekend, marking the first confirmed military defection under the Lee Jae-myung administration.  He also talks about next week’s APEC Summit in Gyeongju. With former U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi […]

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I'm your host, Jack O'Swetsuit, and today it is Tuesday, the 21st of October, 2025, and I'm joined here in the studio today by my colleague Kim Jujan from NKK, Kenyush, welcome back. Thanks for having me. We've got a few news stories to get through today. So let's start with, I think over the weekend, there was a rare North Korean defection by a soldier across the demilitarized zone. Yes, so this North Korean soldier has defected to South Korea by crossing the border.

Do we know where? Somewhere in the military demarcation line, but I'm not exactly sure which city, which region that was. Okay. But the military is checking how he managed to cross. Right, so we don't have a lot of details yet, but yeah, these kind of overland defection, I mean, he didn't swim across the river, right? It wasn't across the Imging Gang, so he walked overland somewhere.

There are a rare defection because of the difficulties, right? Tell us a little bit about that. Right, so I think it's because of the strict border control, so not a lot of defectors go to China or Russia, third countries, and quite a few civilians, North Korean civilians, yeah, cross the border. came here during the E.J.M. Young administration, but this is the first confirmed affection of a DPRK soldier. During this, the E.J.M. Young administration. Okay, and there were several layers of fences. There are landmines. And there are people looking through binoculars, ready to

shoot. Right, right. It's quite a dangerous crossing. It is, yeah. What could motivate a soldier to do that? So I interviewed this former North Korean soldier named Rue Sohion. He read a lot of leaflets while living in the Kuan province around the border. And those leaflets were basically criticizing the North Korean regime, Kim Jong-in, and, yeah, he didn't know much about the corruption, but the leaflets motivated him. When did he defect? 2019, so it was a while ago. Okay, so that means that those leaflets were probably not produced by the South Korean

government because they haven't done that except for that one drone operation over Kyeong-Yang-Yang-un Yun-Sung-Yolos put up. South Korean government hasn't done mass leafleting for a long time. So these were leaflets prepared by South Korean citizen groups,

civic groups, and sent on their own without the South Korean government's tacit permission into North Korea. So, okay, that's interesting. And there's also a movie about a North Korean soldier's defection,

right? Yeah, so, Chongan, he's a pretty famous YouTuber now, and he's also working as an actor. Oh. Yeah, and he participated in this film called Escape, right? And he was also an advisor there.

Yeah, it's about him crossing the DMG as well, just like Yu Song Yung. I wonder, do you happen to know if that film is available online anywhere for streaming? I don't think it's on, probably, but I went to a cinema to watch that. Okay, Escape. What's the Korean title?

Talchu. Talchu. Okay. Very famous movie, yeah. All right, good. And it came out, what, about a year ago? About two to three years ago, really. Right, right. All right. Now we've got, of course, next week coming up is the big apex summer down in Kyeongju.

Xi Jinping will be in town. Donald Trump says he'll be in town. People are asking questions. Will he be reaching out to Kim Jong-un and will Kim Jong-un meet him? What's the latest on that? So the Iraq presidential office confirmed that Trump is coming. He might be coming. I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen, but he's coming next week. And there's a lot of speculation that he might meet Kim Jong-in's in Pampunzum. Right. Now, the South Korean government, I imagine, under President E.J.M. Yong would welcome this, right? They've given friendly signs. And I think the Minister of Unification, Zhong Jong-Jong, has even said that he thinks it's likely that they'll meet.

Right, right. But do we have any sign at all from North Korea that Kim Jong-un would pick up the phone or would answer a tweet and actually come to Pan-Mun-Jum? North Korea, I didn't really confirm anything, but... The Unification Ministry told me that they're going to suspend Panmunjom tourists, special Panmunjom tourists ahead of his visit, the Trump's visits. Goodness. Okay. And CNN, it was reported yesterday, have booked the entire top floor of the Imgingak Cafe,

from where, truth be told, you cannot actually see Panmunjom, but you can get a glimpse of the north in the distance over the mountains, over the river. So that's probably as close as any civilians will get to any event. in Panmunjom, so CNN had booked that out, which is a little bit of a gamble, but good for the cafe owner, I suppose. So, the U.S. ambassador, yeah, he's going to step down and... Oh, the current acting, U.S. ambassador, yeah, the current acting. Joe Yun, who came out of retirement to take this job.

Right, and then the media says, Kevin Kim, who... Deputy Assistant Secretary in the State Department in charge of North East Asia. Yeah, and Korea, yeah. He'll be, and he's quite young, he's 41, which is the same age that Mark Lippert was when he was named ambassador by Barack Obama. So, yes, it looks like Kevin Kim will jump up a few levels and become the next ambassador to Korea. Right, and he has previously worked for the Trump administration

back in 2018, 19. On North Korea issues. Yeah, on North Korean issues, yeah. So we might see him in town. I mean, obviously, that process of confirmation through the Senate takes a while in America, but perhaps he'll come to town with President Trump as a foretaste of things to come.

Yeah, he's got some experience. Now, if you are a betting person, I'm not, but if you are, there are betting sites about whether Trump will actually meet Kim Jong-un or not, and so that's some indication of how likely people think it is. Yeah. Okay, now we've got a couple of other stories to get through about North Korean military or defense ties

with some Southeast Asian countries. Let's start with Indonesia, with which North Korea has long had good relations. They've had an embassy in Jakarta for decades. The leaders of North Korea and Indonesia became friends when Kim Il-Song was alive through the non-aligned movement. So what's happening there in defense ties? So Indonesian foreign minister visited the Workers' Party events.

Yeah, and they signed... In Pyongyang. Right, right. And he even visited his embassy. The Indonesian embassy in Pyongyang just reopened. After COVID. Right. And they signed some agreements, and one of them was technical cooperation.

So it says DPRK, Indonesia will work on technical cooperation. And SPS, the South Korean media outlet, misinterpreted this as technology cooperation. So, yeah, I had to reach out the Indonesian embassy in Seoul. Yes. And what they said was technical cooperation doesn't really include science or defense technology. And what they were saying, yeah, it's basically practical cooperation. operation that actually improves the quality of life. So I'm not sure what that means.

That is a bit vague, isn't it? Yeah, it's very vague, but BASAT was it's like enhancing capabilities in areas like agriculture or maybe tourism, so. So nothing to do with the fence. Yeah, right. It's not so, but I'm not sure why they use them technical. It sounds very vague, and it's kind of hard to harm. It does.

Do we have the text of the agreement available? Has that been released? Yeah, it's on the website. Oh, okay. And that's... The foreign ministry's website, yeah, Indonesian. The Indonesian foreign ministry's website. Does the word say technical...

It says technical... Yeah, technical, blah, blah, blah. But does it say anything about defense or military? It doesn't say anything about... They have sociocultural in some other areas, but yeah, they never mentioned defense. Okay, well, that's it. Indonesia is one of those countries that tries to have good relations with both careers. It has an embassy in both Pyongyang and Seoul.

Pyongyang and Seoul have embassies in Jakarta. A lot of South Korean businesses have factories in Indonesia. So it's a tricky tightrope for Indonesia to walk a balance between the two Koreas, trying to maintain friendly relations, right? Now, I imagine that if Indonesia was actually giving some serious or doing some serious defense collaboration or cooperation in North Korea, that could really strain relations with Seoul, right? Right, right. Because Seoul and Jakarta are working on this fighter jets.

Oh, goodness me. It complicates things even more. We're going to give you a fighter jet and you're going to give technical cooperation to our enemy. Exactly. Okay, and one more. So North Korea and Vietnam.

Another country, like Indonesia, Vietnam has good relations with both careers. South Korea is perhaps one of the largest, if not the single largest investor-source country of foreign direct investment into Vietnam, But Vietnam also has this long-standing good relationship with North Korea because they both have communist backgrounds. North Korea sent fighter pilots to help Vietnam during the Vietnam War against America and her allies, including South Korea. So what's happening with North Korea and Vietnam in terms of defense ties?

So Vietnam also signed agreements during around the Workers' Party celebrations. The 80th anniversary of the Workers' Party? Because we know that an important leader of Vietnam, I do forget his name. forgive me, but there wasn't important leader from Vietnam present on the rostrum during that big parade that we saw recently. Right, right. Yeah, I don't remember his name, but yeah, their cooperation agreements include a lot of different areas, including defense, health care, culture, and media. But other than media, they didn't really provide any specific details, yeah, what they're going to do exactly. Well, I am curious. Tell me about the details about the

media cooperation. Media, so KCNA and VNA. which is a Vietnamese state media. They're going to share some English content and they're going to give free access to each other. So, yeah, journalists from both sides will be able to read without subscribing, I believe. Well, that's interesting. Okay.

But so it mentions it hints at defense, what, cooperation, but there's no details given. Right, right, I can't really, uh-huh. But the thing is that South Korea exported K-9, cell-propelled guns recently. Right, which are made by Hanwar, I think. A lot of rock experts are worried about that, too, leaking the information. And I'm going to put you on the spot here.

You may not know the answer, but has the South Korean military ever taken part in an exercise or anything, an exchange with the Vietnamese military? With Vietnam, not that I... Okay, all right, but still, I mean, it's an awkward one there, given the sale of canines to Vietnam and the good relations and the investors, by South Green to Vietnam to hear that Vietnam is not only attending the 80th anniversary

of the Korean Workers Party, but actually going to engage in some sort of defense cooperation. That must be a difficult one for the South Korean government here. Have we had any comment from the South Korean government about this? I talked to one of your defense officials and he said he's not really worried about it. Yeah, yeah. So did you say why he's not worried about it? Not really, but pretty much, they didn't give any specific information about both

K9 and KF21. So he sounded very confident but, I mean, we can't really trust those people, right? You mean because they're speaking for the government? True. Because their government spokespeople? Yeah, okay. Wow, that's fascinating, though, because I remember it was

a few years ago that that Uganda was encouraged to cut off defense cooperation relations with North Korea because of its relationship with South Korea and North Korea. But now to see Indonesia and Vietnam, both of which are significant, you know, I mean, they're very friendly with South Korea. I'm sure that there are a lot more Vietnamese and Indonesian people living in South Korea than there are in North Korea and a lot more investment going that way too. But yeah, to see them possibly engage in defense collaboration with North Korea, that's an interesting one.

Yeah. Well, we have about a minute or two left. What are you working on at the moment? What's got your interest these days, Juhon? I'm working on a feature story about North Korean defectors doing drugs, actually. So... In South Korea? In South Korea. So according to this lawmaker, South Korean lawmaker, quite a lot of North Korean defectors in prison. In the South Korean prison are drug offenders. Wow. I'm trying to figure that out, but it seems like in North Korea, it was pretty common to use a lot of different drugs, including opium. And the country was even encouraging people to sell, produce, and they were trying to sell them to other countries. Right, for export, yeah, right, right, particularly, as I recall, opium and crystal methamphetamines or ice, known as Hiropong in Korea and Japan.

What are the drugs of choice used by defectors here in South Korea? I think it's the one you just mentioned, ice. And they call it autumn in Korean. Which is literally, and Bing. And Bingdu in Chinese. So literal translations of ice. Right, right, right. Okay.

Ah. That's the most popular drug. Is it easy for them to get a hold of that in South Korea? So I talked to one of the factors, but he told me a Chinese broker. Yeah, he tries to. smuggle in in in chon area yeah quite a few of them are based in inch on for some reason could be chinese well because that's where the port is right so if they're coming in via ship or boat illegally that would be one way to get him in gosh okay well i got to do more investigation since

yeah i mean yeah definitely more need more research i don't know i don't know make a generalization no yeah uh-huh it's a very sensitive do you have any idea of how many north korean defectors are currently in prison for drug related sentences um i'm gonna have It's in my article, but, yeah. But is it more than 10? Of course, yeah. Oh, okay, so we're talking possibly dozens of North Korean. Possibly.

Gee, okay. Any idea when that story will come out? Not exactly sure. We have a lot more stories to work on. Okay. This is pretty much Evergreen. All right, well, you've got it here. First, folks, it's an exclusive sneak peek at the article to come out by Kim Joon very soon.

June, thank you very much for joining me today on the NK News podcast. Thanks for having me. Welcome to a new realm of insights into the Korean Peninsula. At Korea Risk Group, we delve deep into the complexities of North and South Korea, offering bespoke analyses that empower decision-makers. Whether you're in government, business, or academia, our tailored solutions provide clarity in an opaque region. Let our team guide your strategy with data-driven insights and on-the-ground intelligence.

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