North Korea News Podcast by NK News - How North Korea impacted the APEC summit from afar

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

This week, three members of the NK News team unpack their time at the APEC summit in Gyeongju and discuss how North Korea featured in the week’s diplomatic drama.  Despite high expectations, U.S. President Donald Trump did not meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his trip to Korea, though Pyongyang still loomed large […]

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Hello, listeners, and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jack O'Swetsud, and today it is Tuesday, the 4th of November 2025, and it is Melbourne Cup Day, the race that stops a nation. If you're Australian, you know all about Melbourne Cup, and if you're not, it makes absolutely no sense to you whatsoever. Huh? We welcome back in the studio. We've got Chongmin, we've got Junha, and we've got Shreyes.

Welcome. Thanks for having us. You are fresh back from APEC, and let's break it gently to our listeners. those who may not be up to speed. Donald Trump did not meet Kim Jong-in while he was in Korea, did he? People will stop listening to this. Well, we don't want to bury the lead. But I do want to hear from you, from the three of you,

what was it like being there on the ground in that hub, that mecca of world culture and politics, Kyeongju? Which was our expectation. But actually, it was not to bury the lead. It was very underwhelming for reporters to be there, honestly, because we wanted to see live action. We wanted to see the leaders coming in, leaders going out, leaders' meetings,

sideline meetings, you know, all the stuff that you expect from a summit meeting and reporter being there, talking to experts, whatnot. Right. But the media center was blocked off from everything. So we actually could not go to any of the actual summit meeting unless you are a very limited White House pool.

So if you're a White House pool, well, I envy you. Wow. But for other reporters, we were stuck in this room where basically all the reporters were looking at the screen, audioless screen, looking at the footage from the airports where the leaders were arriving. But one thing that we got did get to see on the first day was Donald Trump arriving. So because we were so blocked off from everything, we wanted to go on a recontour. And so I started walking around the perimeter and I started just walking aimlessly trying to get into buildings later on with June. And then I saw a bunch of reporters just waiting in front of what looked like U.S. Secret Service. And then, like, more people came over, more police came over.

It was, it turned out Donald Trump's chopper was about to arrive, and then we saw the beast. What's the name for that? Who knows? Marine one. Thank you. So we saw multiple marine ones coming by and then arriving. And the beast as well, we saw a bunch of dummies first. Well, that's the big car.

Yeah, the big car, the Donald Trump big car. A bunch of dummies first. and then the one that Trump was in and then followed by other vehicles that looked quite interesting. What were they? Yeah, so they were just Secret Service vehicles that were going on the back. There were SWAT police vehicles as well

that were just ahead of the police motorcade that followed. So it's quite an interesting array of cars for the US president. Did you throw a question at the back of the car as it went by? We should have tried that, but it was very apparent that they were speeding up quite much. Boy, boy. Okay, wow. Shres, how was it being in Kyeongju for you? I mean, Kyeongju itself is a lovely city, and the weather was great.

Unfortunately, as Jungman mentioned, we were essentially stuck inside an international media center with a whole bunch of other reporters who, like us, had come in expecting that they would not actually be spending time at the media center and would be getting to talk to officials, getting some interviews, getting a taste of the action. Which we did get a little bit. We'd got a little bit, but yeah, I think a lot of it. Not as much as we want. as much as we wanted. And I think it was only after getting there that we realized that they had many different layers of access for different events and perhaps not as many side events as

we were like. Certainly none that we were aware of. So we essentially spent three, four days engaging in a group therapy session with other journalists. I'm getting a very strong vibe, an echo of the seventh Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea held back in April 2016, where Chad and a bunch of other foreign media were allowed to go to Pyongyang and were then held in a building very, very far away and were at some stage taken on a walkabout to an intersection and sort of said,

that's the building where it's all happening way over there in the background. Now, to be fair, we were not that far away, but that made worse. We could see people going around our building to get to the main venue. And I did get to talk to National Security Advisor, Weisongnag.

And we all got to ask questions. Whom you've known for many years, right? Yes, like even since he was ambassador. Right. But he was about to faint, I thought. He looked so tired after all the tariff discussion. I got to talk to the policy chief, Kim Jong-bom, and the big takeaway was like President I Jemang mentioned in North Korea.

When he was talking about nuclear submarines, like North Korean submarines, we have to deter, blah, blah, blah. And then he got the... Let's not jump the nuclear gun here. Oh, sorry. I've got to get to that. So, generally speaking, how big a topic of conversation was North Korea? Did it only pop up in these sideline meetings between Trump and Lee and Lee and Xi?

And Lee and Takeshi? APEC was focused mainly on economic issues, so it's not something that North Korea won't come up as a hot topic in that economic leaders week. But of course, as you mentioned, the sideline meetings with Trump, Xi Jinping, Takaiichi, even like a short mention. of North Korea would come out. I think, as Johnlin just mentioned, the Trump-Lee summit, sorry, was seeing quite a lot of North Korea mentions and working together with the United States to deter North Korea, especially North Korean submarines that were underwater threats with a South Korea's own nuclear-powered submarine. Right. Okay, so Trump, you know, there was a lot of speculation going in there that Trump might reach out, and he did seem to show some interest,

not incredibly active, but he did say to Li Jem Yong that he would work very hard to achieve nuclear peace together with Kim Jong-un. Tell us a bit more about that. So it sounded like Trump actually, like our expectation, he really, really wanted to meet Kim personally. So it was Trump's desire to actually go, and it sounded like there were some sort of contacts made. The foreign minister of South Korea mentioned that it wasn't South Korea, but the U.S. side that reached out. It's really unclear if North Korea responded up. all or responded with a no. So that part is really unclear, but still, it sounded like they were preparing something.

That's why we had Chad standing by and sold to be able to drive up to Padji if anything happens. And that's why we had CNN booking out the rooftop cafe at Imgingaq, et cetera, et cetera, and Fox was sent out there and newsman. But it was very different from 2019 in which Trump sort of literally, he tweeted to the world, let's meet, and North Korea, how did they respond again? Did they send a letter to? They posted on KCNA just saying, oh, we are open to a meeting. Their version of Twitter.

Yeah, their version of Twitter. And saying, like, yeah, they even acknowledged that they had seen the tweet. And so they managed to arrange a last minute meeting. And I wonder why Trump didn't do that again. Well, so one of the things that he did say this time, and which is very much the case, was, sure, he would have liked to meet Kim Jong-un. But apart from the possible lack of interest and lack of response from North Korea, North Korea was also not the main. priority of this visit for Kim Jong, for Trump, yeah, China. So he met Xi Jinping in Busan, so sadly another main event, far away from Jiangzhou.

But essentially, I think he just popped into Jiangzhou for about a day, headed to Busan the very next morning to meet Xi Jinping, and then flew back out. So he wasn't actually here for the main epic economic leaders meeting. Junho, this nuclear-powered submarine thing, would we expecting that? Was that on the agenda? Well, it wasn't really something that we were expecting to come out of Yijamang's mouth, especially from the opening remarks that he delivered, especially in front of all of the media right after he gave Trump the gold crown. So, you know, it's not something that we would expect coming out from a South Korean leader. But of course, there were talks about nuclear-powered submarines and also nuclear latency coming out from

the South Korean political sort of spectrum before any rock US summit, even before August. when they met for the first time. So I think that nuclear-powered submarines, you know, it was pretty gutsy for Li Jemyang to give that sort of opening remark. Of course, he alluded to the fact that there was some misunderstanding between the two leaders at an undisclosed time. It was probably during their August summit. But yes, that was something that came as a bit of a shock to us.

The mistake part was interesting. Like, we had no idea what he was talking about. It was apparent. Yeah, it was apparent that they discussed this, like, at certain points. point that we just don't know about, and then at least that, oh, it's not that we want a nuclear-armed submarine. We want a nuclear-powered

submarine to be... So the engine is powered by a nuclear. Exactly. Which is a mistake that a lot of lay people, I mean, years ago, I remember thinking, oh, you know, it's a nuclear submarine. Same. S-SBN and it's very difficult to figure out what that actually means, but nuclear-powered submarine basically means that the submarine stays longer,

it's more sustainable underwater. And quieter. And quieter. So for deep-sea operation, it's better, which means it's a, you know, main target is China, honestly. Yeah, that's what Australia is getting from the U.S. too under the Orchus deal. And so now Korea, I mean, it's, did they go into, did they sign a deal? Does Korea now have like a second, a Korean version of an Orchus deal? Or is this just, you know, the presidential statement.

Yeah, okay. So it's a truth social post. No, no, seriously. Like Trump announced that he gave approval that South Koreans can build it in the Philly shipyard. Yeah, there's nothing binding at the moment. But it's not clear. even like if they're getting the technology it's very unclear but

the way that by the way when Lee mentioned like we want to deter North Korea China submarines it was something you as want to hear right Lee said North Korea and Chinese submarines and then in the evening the National Security Advisor came over to reporters and said oh actually he meant

North Korean and Chinese waters what is it what deterring waters submarines in those waters but Experts tell us that it means the same thing, but we were saying, like, he was trying to dial it down a little bit. Shreyes, have we got any response from North Korea or China to these announcements about South Korea, possibly getting nuclear-powered submarines? Certainly, not yet. It does feel, though, like, it could happen in some state. I know that some people would say, well, North Korea has also been developing its own nuclear submarines, so wouldn't it be a little hypocritical? And to that, I'd have to say, that has never really stopped North Korea from, you know, any rhetoric.

against South Korea and the U.S. Well, and I can certainly see China being quite strongly anti-South Korea nuclear nuclear power. Absolutely, particularly if, I mean, as Jungman said, the wording implied it would target China and North Korea. That's something that they're not going to be all that pleased about. And particularly, this came just a couple of days before E.J. Meng's first summit with Xi Jinping. So it probably would have, which may have been a part of why Wiesongak was so. quick to backtrack in those comments. Don't really want to go into those talks

with a nuclear submarine hanging over the heads. Was it mentioned in the context of deterrence? Yes. Okay, so this is, you know, we're just getting these as a defensive measure so you guys don't try anything. And also, Lee was like, it's to make sure that we are capable to protect ourselves.

It's sort of like in line with what U.S. say the ally should defend themselves sort of rhetoric. Sort of an extension of the self. self-reliant defense that we've seen from... Self-reliance. Yeah, so, like, self-reliant defense, like, Chazio-Kukban. We used to hear that more from the other North Korea. Other North Korea.

The other Koreans, yeah, yes. But one other thing, of course, was they didn't say it would help support U.S. efforts in the region, partly through their self-reliance, but also, to be honest, when it comes to Trump, nothing really gets through to him quicker than suggesting that they're behind the U.S. mission and interest in the region, and that's where the China our aspect comes back in all over again. Right. Now, President I. J.M. Yong also had a sideline meeting with the new Japanese Prime Minister and also the top diplomats of Japan, the U.S. and South Korea all got together.

They had their own meeting. So tell us a little bit about that, Shrae, since you did the coverage. Yeah, so first was the meeting between the foreign ministers of the U.S. South Korea and Japan, and essentially they agreed to maintain close cooperation on denuclearization of North Korea, while continuing efforts to maintain peace and stability through dialogue and diplomacy with North Korea. But they didn't really go much beyond that. So in the past, we've seen these ministerial meetings also focus on other issues, whether it's North Korea sanctions evasion, human rights issues, military cooperation with Russia, and more recently, cryptocurrency theft.

But this time, they just kept it as basic as possible, just a couple of lines about essentially wanting to strengthen them. cooperation. And part of it may just be down to South Korea turning down its own focus. The U.S. has also been deprioritizing North Korea issues. And in the case of Japan, they just have a new government that's taken charge. So for all of them, it was perhaps more about signaling cooperation in a broad range of areas, rather than necessarily really doubling down on their North Korea policy at this point. Okay. And then the meeting between E.J. Myeong and Prime Minister Takaichi? Yeah. So that was perhaps one where more than even the North Korea issue, a lot of

eyes were on how the two of them would deal with each other. Because in the past, E.J. Myeong has has had somewhat strong anti-Japan rhetoric, being critical of Japan's approach to historical issues, such as the use of wartime force labor and comfort women for sexual slavery. And Takachi at the same time is particularly hawkish, particularly conservative and has never really gone along with the idea that Japan has anything to apologize for on these issues. Certainly on paper they should be very much at odds with each other but when they met both seem to be taking a much more and I know we overuse this word for IJMyang but they're certainly emphasizing it a more pragmatic approach. They were both trying to say we want to look ahead to a

future-oriented and stable relationship, rather than necessarily just dwelling on our differences. Sure, there will be problems, but we want to cooperate. And one area of cooperation, of course, is North Korea. And quite interestingly, South Korea didn't really touch upon that in its redoubts of the meeting. They didn't really focus on denuclearization or anything else. But Japan did. So the Japanese prime minister's office said that they'll continue working with each other to ensure the complete denuclearization of North Korea, as well as seeking the resolution of the abduction issue, which relates to North Korea's kidnapping of Japanese nationals. Now, E.J. Miong, when he met Xi Jinping, also talked about denuclearization of North Korea,

and that didn't come out in the Chinese readout of the meeting, did it, Juna? No, so it's been a recurring theme throughout sort of, I think it was, I think it's 2019 after Hanoi where the Chinese government, along with the South Korean administration, when their readouts come out of their bilateral meetings, South Korea mentions the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, North Korea's denuclearization. However, Beijing's readouts, they very explicitly leave that out. I'll skip over that, yeah. Well, it's interesting to see the D-word mentioned so many times there at the D-word. Denuclearization. Sorry. It's just that it's, I felt for the last,

six months or a year that it's kind of gone out of fashion, the D-word, and now it's kind of back in there, although, as we pointed out, that sometimes it gets left out of the readout. In the case of the Lee-Takechi meeting, it got missed out of the South Korean readout, and in the case of the Li-she meeting, it got missed out of the Chinese read-out. So do you feel, Chongwin, how do you feel, is denuclearization front and center again? Is it a thing that people believe in and are going to keep pursuing, despite the fact that North Korea says time and time again, listen to you guys, it's a fantasy, denuclearization, It's like a unicorn.

It's never going to happen. We're never going to give up this sacred sword. I think it's treated like the word unification. Because it comes with a lot of connotations. People mean different things when they say unification, right? Depending on a progressive here or a conservative here. And when you say denuclearization now from South Korean government, it means the E&D initiative from Lee, the three-phase denuclearization roadmap.

Engage? Engage, I think it was normalized. Normalize. And denuclearize? The Dnuclearize? The D-word. The D-word. And from a lot of U.S. experts' point of view, when you hear denuclearization,

it just sounds like something that already failed in 2019. From North Korean point of view, it's something that you should not even mention if you want us. Yeah, it's a non-starter. Also, just to point out, so the E&D stands for Exchange. Oh, I beg a pardon. Yeah. But, okay, there's not a lot of... daylight between engage and exchange.

Yeah, no, it's pretty much part of the same strategy. Essentially, boost cooperation in exchanges to engage in North Korea. Okay, so we leave this APEC meeting in Kyeongju with really, I mean, there's nothing new out of it, right? It's just bringing up the D-word again and no meetings with Kim Jong-un, and he clearly showed no interest. So is there anything that we haven't touched on any last thoughts you'd like to leave us with? Let's start with you, Jong Wynne first. I think, like, if I have to choose the biggest development from, like, the relevant to where I beat was the nuclear and the reprocessing fuel reprocessing in South Korea. It's about.

Please explain that issue. It's about nuclear power plant. It's about industries and it's about, like, civilian use, basically. But we have to keep a very close eye on South Korean public sentiment. Last time we saw you talk about nuclear. things, public sentiment about nuclear army, it went up a lot. And I'm already seeing, I have to wait to see the polls. They love nukes. South Korean people? It went up. Okay. And this time around, I'm wondering, because it's a progressive talking about nuclear power, I'm waiting to see whether

progressive citizens here start to agree to nuclear argument argument going further. I'm already seeing signs of it because not many people tell the difference. between 20% enrichment and 90% like, you know, weapons. It's kind of technical. Yeah. And ever since the Fukushima disaster in Japan, nuclear energy has been very unfavorably seen in Korea, especially by the progressive side of politics, the Egypt. That's what I thought.

So now it's like, oh, actually, we need a lot of electricity for, we've got to become an AI powerhouse, we need all these data centers, we might need nuclear power again. So suddenly it's back on the agenda. and America's sort of saying, you know, it's okay for you guys to enrich a little bit more than you have been. Yeah, just to add just a little bit. Go ahead. I get the nuclear power part and how like South Korea needs

like the enrichment and the reprocessing because it's like difficult to stock right now as well. Right. But if you see a lot of YouTube like replies and like online like online communities, a lot of progressives who like say that they're Ejam Yong fans, they are saying, oh, you know, South Korea when they get one, they know how to make five out of it, wink, wink, wink. Oh, so they're saying,

We're talking about nuclear energy, but, you know, at some stage down the line, we'll have nuclear weapons. That's the sentiment that I see right now, which is very interesting to see from the progressives. Wow. Okay, Junha, your final thought? I think mainly it was a very South Korea-focused event, so it was very sort of focused on economic issues, so nothing really much other than we've discussed related to Pyongyang or issues related to North Korea or the Korean Peninsula. But of course, you know, the whole sort of concept of South Korea becoming the same thing. sort of AI hub, if it does get the 26, I think it was 260,000 GPUs promised by NVIDIA. Yeah, then it does position itself as sort of like an AI big three, if it does come into fruition

as NVIDIA and the South Korean government hope. Well, and also I just want to throw in there, I don't know whether this came up in APEC, but I can't help but thinking that it's kind of putting a target on the back of South Korea for North Korea, that, you know, if South Korea becomes its AI hub, it's like, oh, well, North Korean hackers and fishers and coders suddenly have a lot more... Lenny of fish to hack in the sea. Wow, that cyber security is a different issue. Right, that is a very different, a very salient issue in Korea.

Final thoughts from Schraeus. Yeah, I think one thing to bear in mind when it came to these sideline summits that we saw at APEC, was that essentially for now it's still a lot of talk, whether it was E.J. Meng talking about playing peacemaker, sorry, pacemaker to Donald Trump's pacemaker in securing peace in the Korean peninsula and promoting exchanges, whether it was him seeking Chinese support with restoring diplomacy, or Trump talking about essentially approving nuclear subs and expressing his interest in coming back to meet Kim Jong-un. All of these things are just statements for now. So it'll be interesting to wait and watch

and see how over the next few months, maybe over the course of a year, all these start playing out how do they flesh out the details of the nuclear sub-deal? And as for Trump wanting to meet Kim Jong-un, we know he wants a Nobel Peace Prize. At what point does he start moving away from the other conflicts in the world that are not really ending and say, you know what, I want a Korean War peace treaty, and I want to meet Kim Jong-un.

Yeah, so a lot of talk and the devil, as I always say, is in the details. Thank you very much, Zhongmin, Junha, and Shraos, and we'll see you again soon. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Looking to stay informed about South Korea's fast-evolving political business and cultural landscape,

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