North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Jacco Zwetsloot: A look back and a new chapter for the NK News Podcast

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

In this handover episode of the NK News Podcast, new host Alannah Hill sits down with longtime host Jacco Zwetsloot to look back on his time leading the show since its launch in Feb. 2018.  They revisit the podcast’s first episode with Andrei Lankov, the major North Korea stories that defined that period and how […]

Hello and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm Alana Hill and today's episode, which we're recording on May 1st, is a little bit different. As I will be stepping in as the new host of the podcast and taking over from my very esteemed comrade, Mr Jacko's Wetzlute. That's me. We thought this would be a good moment for a bit of a handover to look back at Jacko's time leading the show. Before our long time listeners now start panicking, rioting on mass and banging down the door of the NK News office, Fear not, Jacko is not totally abandoning us. He will still be hosting the podcast in some capacity. But we're going to chat about that a bit later in the show.

So you'll have to stick around for more details on that. In the meantime, I thought we'd start today's episode with a little bit of a walk down memory lane. And I can't think of a better way to do that than by going right back to the beginning. Good morning listeners. And welcome to the NK News podcast, the only English language podcast devoted exclusively to North Korean issues. I'm your host, Jack O'Swetzlute. By day, I work as Director of Business Innovation at HMP Law, a Korean full-service law firm, but by night I read about North Korea, or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as it is officially known. And I will be your host of this

new weekly podcast produced exclusively for NK News. Today, our very first guest is Professor Andre Lankoff, director of the Korea Risk Group and professor at Kungmin University. Welcome, Professor Lankoff. Well, thank you for inviting me here. Thank you for coming here. It's a pleasure to have you. Djago, first of all, I guess I should say welcome to the show, but it kind of feels weird and inappropriate in a way to say that. That's right. I am sitting in the same seat that I sit in every week.

Yeah, I didn't want to take over straight away. You've been the voice of this podcast since February 12th, 2018. That was when that episode was. Take us back to that first episode. What do you remember about recording it? And when you hear that, when you listen back now, but what stands out you the most? Well, they were exciting times there, February 2018.

This was just as the Winter Olympic d'Atont was coming up. So there was hope of all sorts of engagement and rapprochement with North Korea ahead of the first Trump summit with Kim Jong-un. And so it was a great time for NK News and great time for Chatter-Kin to have the idea that let's start a podcast and let's ask Jack going to come in and host it. So I was honored and delighted to come in and start working on it. And then, of course, episode one, old friend and mentor, Andrei Lankoff,

what better guest could we have for episode one to really open the show? And we've had him on several times since then. Not as often as I'd like, but he's a very busy man. And, yeah, he was a great opener. When you first took on the podcast, what felt like the defining North Korea story at that time? Well, at that time, I mean, this was, remember, just a few months after the mutual threats, the year of fire and fury that Donald Trump said he would rain down in North Korea and increasing and escalating nuclear threats. And then suddenly letters began to be exchanged. So really, the

defining story was U.S. North Korea relations and would they get better or would they lead us into a war? And so, and of course, Mung Jin was president of South Korea at that time and he was very committed to improving not just inter-Korean relations, but North Korea-U.S. relations. So that was also part of that defining story was really where we were. Where are we going? Were we about to head into World War III or into something a bit better? It does really feel like, you know, a whole world ago. As you said, at the time, it was the Olympics. We had North Koreans competing in the Olympics. Now I'd say we're at maybe an all-time low in terms of inter-Korean relations. If you were starting the podcast now, in today's North Korean news environment, what do you think would feel the most different?

Gosh, yeah. So many things. There'd be very little to say about inter-Korean relations. and there'd be so much to say about North Korea-Russia relations, there wasn't really a big part of the story in 2018. I mean, of course, and having Professor Lankov on the first episode, I mean, North Korea-Russia, the relationship goes back to August 1945. So it's always been there, but it wasn't really a salient part of the North Korea story in February 2018. Russia was very much taking a backseat to whatever the U.S. and North Korea

were working out together. So, yeah, that's a big change. But in terms of the lives of everyday North Koreans, They're still struggling. They're still going through hardship. There's still malnutrition and shortages. And the government is still using resources on weaponry and military rather than on improving the lives of ordinary people.

So that's a story that hasn't changed at all. Yes, a lot has changed, as you said. But again, there's still those commentards that we're still seeing, you know, across this beat. Jacko, I asked you to think about a few episodes that kind of stand out from your time hosting. So we're going to go through a few of them now. Yes.

Yes. Now, a caveat to you and to the listeners, at some point we stopped numbering the podcast. I think that wasn't the wisest decision in hindsight. Because I don't even know how many episodes I've done now, but there's been hundreds of episodes and it's hard to name them without a number. I did try to go back and count and then we stopped numbering and then I gave up. I think it's somewhere around 400. Right, yeah. I think it is in and around 400. First, I want to ask, was there an episode that surprised you? either because of what the guest said or maybe how listeners responded or maybe how the conversation went. Gosh, good question. I try to go into it knowing more or less where the interview is going to go and I have some idea of what to expect of a particular guest. So gosh, surprise in terms of content.

I mean, it's a three-parter. It was a long episode. But I knew going into it what to expect, but it was still surprising. And that's the three-part, in one of the most memorable episode, the three-part interview with the Florida man, Miles Christian Hart, who had been to North Korea a couple of times. And then he went a third time without a visa, without an invitation, without permission. He bought rubber dinghy in China, paddled his way across the river, walked into a military base and then onto a road leading to a village, and was at some point, you know, accosted by and arrested by North Green, who trust him up. and took him to a base for interrogation. What a story.

It took, you know, we needed the full three hours to get the full story out of him, the background, the context, what happened. And every detail of it checked out, despite how, you know, extraordinary it sounded. And the fact that this happened, the experiences that Miles had took place maybe a year or two before the very tragic story of Otto Warmbia, who of course didn't survive incarceration in North Korea. But Miles, who's also an American, came out of it unscathed, still with a good impression about North Korea, and wanting to send a message to Kim Jong-un, and having received a flag of the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea,

sort of wished well and handed over to the Chinese at the border. And it's such a remarkable story. He reached out to us, I think having reached out to CNN first, and CNN said, we can't verify this story, so we can't run with it. and we were able to chat and I, mostly chat, but I helped as well, were able to verify enough aspects of the story to say, this is real and this is a very unusual story, so we have to report it.

And so we spent three episodes on that one. It was around Christmas 2017 or 2018, that episode came out. It was like a Christmas bonus of three episodes in one go. It was very, very surprising and also just very memorable. Well, let's take a listen to a clip from that episode. So you met a guy, he offered you a visa, And that happened very quickly, didn't it? It happened just within, I think, maybe 10 days or so.

Right. And that's up in the northeast of North Korea, near the tri-national border where Russia, China, and North Korea to come together. There's the free trade zone. I think it's actually, maybe it's a special economics. I forget the exact market. Yeah, I think it's an SCZ. Rajin-Song or Rāsong, as the North Koreans like to call it, which is actually two cities, Rajin and Sonbong. And you are up in Rajin, is that right?

Right. Yeah, that's right. Okay, and so you were working on a farm there as a volunteer, helping, well, you were, as you say, a veterinarian, but also doing anything and everything that needed to be done. Absolutely. And that was for a period of about five to six months. Yep, that's exactly right. Right. And when you went in, that was very late in December of 2013.

It was just right after that. I arrived, I think, in China around, I think it was maybe even on Christmas Day. and then I think when I actually went into North Korea, which is pretty overwhelming, I still remember driving through the mountains and couldn't believe I was there. Because prior to that, I didn't even know that people could visit or work there. And also another surprising one. I interviewed, and I forget his name now, but it'll be easy to find in the archives. The head of the Nigerian Juchas Study Group Association, I may have remembered the words in the right, it might be the Juchas Study Association of Nigeria. I remember thinking at the time, it was so surprising to me that the North Korean ideas about politics, agriculture, society, should be deemed relevant or valuable to people living in a completely different country with very different circumstances.

Yeah. things. And I'm just fascinated by, you know, listening to someone who was very passionate about Chuché, the idea and studying North Korean materials. And at the end of the interview, I still couldn't get what it was that really took hold in not just Nigeria, because there are other groups and other West African countries too. And it still doesn't really click for me how that became a relevant idea or a valuable idea for that. Well, any of the episodes that you mentioned, I am going to go and try and find out, I'll do my best, and link in the show. So listeners do check those out if you want to listen back.

And the second question I want to ask you is, was there an episode that changed how you think about North Korea? Well, I'm going to have to disappoint you and say probably no. And the reason for that is that I've been looking at North Korea since I first came to South Korea in 1996. It's 30 years now. Now, of course, at that time in 96, I came at North Korea very simplistically with only the images that I'd seen through Western media. So I remembered that the North Koreans wailing openly at the funeral of Kim Il-Song in 1994 and then stories about the North Korean soldiers who were stuck in South Korea after their submarine got beached on some rocks off the coast of Kangwendo.

And they were running around Kangwendo for a month before they were, well, most of them killed each other or themselves. And then one of them was caught. Anyway, so at that time I had a very simplistic view of it, sort of North Korea as a sort of a cartoonish, villainous nation. And, you know, over the years, you know, after I read more and even visited North Korea, you start to get an idea of, well, hold on, this is a, it's a country full of people like any other. Some of them work for the government. Many of them do not. And there's a lot of aspects that there's culture, there's, there's film, there's music, there's art, there's defective stories. Yeah. So I think by the time I came to the podcast, I think I was probably ready for it

in early 2018. And I was, I've been studying it for long enough that I'd worked. okay, this is a lot more than I am aware of. And so my goal through the podcast was, let's try to tell as many aspects or facets of the North Korea story as possible. And so every new interview, any new bit of information that I got, became a new layer in that cake rather than something that would overturn, you know, what I'd heard before. So I probably haven't, I could be wrong here,

but I probably haven't really had my ideas about North Korea shaken up too much. but it's all adding new knowledge and new facets saying, okay, well, this is true, but that which somehow seemingly could be opposite is also true just in different times and different places for different people. So, yeah, that's how I sort of try to synthesize all of that information at once. And was there an episode, Jacko, that you think deserved more attention than it got? Maybe many episodes. Well, certainly the three part are with Miles, I think.

Partly because we released it around Christmas Day, so we did number that one. And so it's hard for people to find anyway. So that one deserves a lot more attention. I found, of course, episodes with all the North Korean refugees that we've had over the years, everyone from Teong Ho down to Ernie Park, you know, that they're telling real stories about their experiences. From very, I mean, Teong Ho, obviously one of the elite, and Ernie Park very much not. So that's quite a spectrum there, quite a range of stories. And they need the full attention of people.

But, you know, also interviews with, I did a long interview with Steve Began, who had been, I think, was the assistant secretary of state for North East Asia, something like that. And he was the point man for North Korean affairs under Donald Trump the first time that he was president. And I'd never had a chance to speak to him before. He was very generous with his time. But really what came out of that was how committed he was and how committed the Trump regime was at that time to really improving relations with North Korea. I mean, they, it felt like they pulled out all the stops. So I think me personally, eight meetings, secretary, three meetings, president, three meetings, two, two summits in the meeting at Pummanjohn Village. So in a numerical sense, we had a fairly significant set of meetings, but the challenge was sustaining communication between the meetings because the meetings were then followed by long gaps of non-communication.

Did you feel that you built up a rapport with your North Korean interlocutors? Was there mutual respect and trust? To some extent, yes. In Jocko, you understand North Korea. The ability of interlocutors to be completely open and engaged is constrained. But in the individual meetings, in each meeting, perhaps with the exception of the final meeting in October of 2019. But in each meeting, I did feel like

there was at least some establishment of a rapport, but there was another challenge to how he confronted during this two and a half years, which is each meeting was led by a different person. We didn't really have any sustained engagement with a single set of interlocutors.

So that was a good oral history because I don't think he's written much about his time in other fora. So it was a good chance to sort of get very close to that the events, very close to the center of the event, get that story out there. Yeah, great guess. And I totally agree with you about having, you know, real North Koreans and defectors on. It's so important to hear those voices and hear those stories. And I find those ones personally the most meaningful.

I think sometimes in this industry we can get a little bit wrapped up in, you know, obviously the nuclear issues, weapons, things like that. But again, those stories to me are certainly the most impactful. I want to talk a little bit now about how this show actually gets made? I've had a little bit of a hand in that myself. Because listeners, you know, they just hear the finished conversation. They don't know about the planning, the scheduling, the editing, the occasional kind of sometimes chaos behind it. Jaka, what was the hardest interview you've ever done? Actually, I think it's from a, from a logistical perspective, we did a couple of interviews in the early years through an interpreter where the guest, either North Queen or South Queen, wasn't confident enough in English.

And in one of those episodes, we had a bit of a disagreement after the interview was recorded with the side of the guests and their happiness with the quality of the interpreting. And they requested that the whole thing be done again or scrapped. And so I had to call in an outside consultant, basically another interpreter, to listen to it and give their impression on whether they thought it was a valid interpretation or not and, you know, whether it was okay to go out. And eventually we were able to come to an agreement with the guest and their entourage. But boy, that was, there was a bit of a headache that one because, you know, we had the whole thing in the bag and it was all recorded. And then suddenly we thought we might have to do it all again or lose it all completely. So that was a tough one. Then there was another interview where it wasn't an interpreting issue, but the guest wasn't happy post-interview with what they said.

And got back to us and said that it was, it was audio quality or it was, they weren't in the right frame of, mind and could they do it all again or scrap it? And, you know, this is at the end of the day, NK News is a journalistic outfit and when you agreed to an interview. Once that's done and it's recorded, then you can't walk back too much and say, well, you know, I regret that whole interview. So we had to get legal advice on that one. And the episode ended up going out. But, you know, much to the chagrin of the interviewee who wasn't happy with that and we never heard a nice thing from them again. Yeah. Yeah. So you're not just, you know, doing an interview or you're kind of a therapist as well, a negotiator. There's all these other elements that go into it.

But of course, the hardest interviews that were the ones that didn't go ahead at all, right? I'd love to. There are so many on the wish list that I never got to interview. Obviously, Kim Jong-un Donald Trump, you know, not for lack of trying, I've reached out. North Korean diplomats at the UN mission in New York, the son of the late Kim Jong-Nam, who was somewhere living in possibly CIA protection. I'd love to talk to him and get his story about that. that, you know, oh, and then those people who I wanted to interview and reached out to, but they died before the, it was even possible.

So there was the famous Japanese pro wrestler and politician Antonio Inoki who visited North Korea many times and had his wrestling mentor and coach was a North Korean. And so he had a really unique relationship as a Japanese person with North Korea. I'd love to have talked to him. But yeah, he wasn't well by the time I reached out. Then, of course, he passed away. And there was this, the North Korean spy, Mohamed. But Gansu, who was jailed in South Korea and then eventually released under an amnesty,

became an expert in the Silk Road, the historical Silk Road, writing an encyclopedia about that. And then by the time I reached out to me, he said, no, I don't talk about my history as a spy anymore. And he's since passed on. Yeah, Traus actually wrote a fantastic obituary about him. That was a great obituary. What's something that listeners might not realize about doing a podcast on North Korea? Yeah, okay. because they only hear the finished product.

Yeah, so I think part of what they don't realize is the difficulty of getting guests to agree to come into the studio or online and sit down for a one-hour interview. Some people are willing to speak, and some people are like, I don't have the time or I don't want to be on the record. And so what they don't know is that long list of interviews that never went ahead, right? It's how many approaches are made and how many yes has come back. And so they don't see that process behind how there's someone. message is made. And of course, all the research that goes into putting the questions together, I always overprepared, so I always have too many questions. And I have a tendency to, you know, my interviewing style is to let the guest tell their full story. You know, I'm not here to,

it's not a cross-examination. I'm not here to do a gotcha journalism. So I want them to get their story out there. So I tend not to interrupt too much. And that means we don't always get through the questions that I have too, right? So that's, yeah, that's also. with part of the way that I do the interview. Right, which is tough also because we have a time limit when it comes to editing it. You know, we'd love to have a three-hour podcast. Yeah, like a Joe Rogan.

Yes, yeah. But have to, you know, try and keep it to a certain level. Now, let's do a quick speaking of keeping it short. Let's do a bit of a lightning round. Try and keep the answer short. I know it's kind of hard on a North Korea podcast. Jacko, what is the most misunderstood issue on North Korea? Oh, yeah.

Well, I think the one which, let me turn it around a little bit. The one with which there are the most question marks is, how is it that North Korea as a system continues to survive without major changes through three leadership transitions well past the expiry date of communism and socialism in the late 80s? That's the one that I keep coming back to is, you know, what is it that keeps this system going?

And in terms of, obviously there are many factors, but one of them that is really underplayed, And I'm echoing Brian Myers here is the importance of ideology and the importance of just the educational systems. I mean, back in the old days, people would have called it brainwashing. We don't use that term anymore. It's not scientific. But the importance of ideology and how you educate the next generation to hate the same old enemies, you know, South Korea, America and Japan, and how to keep those systems going by remaining loyal.

You know, there's so many people who have many times over the last 30 years predicted. a collapse, a regime transition, a revolution, and it hasn't happened. So that's the one that still remains a big questioner. And I know I've gone on too long with an answer. I know. I want to engage as well. Who is a guest or expert that people should be paying more attention to? More attention to.

Well, I don't know, because that assumes that I know how many of my guests people are not paying attention to. But I think that should be paying attention to all of my guests, of course. Good answer. All seven, 400 of them over the last eight plus years. Now, you've mentioned, obviously, Kim Jong-un, Donald Trump, who is, if you had to pick one dream guest that you didn't get a chance to have on the show, who would it be? Really, Donald Trump, in the interim period between his two presidencies,

you know, I thought that he would be more willing for a, to do a long-form interview in which he just got the whole story out there, how he started out, not liking Kim Jong-un, really not having respect for him, calling him some nasty names, and then getting to the point where they were sending these love letters to each other. I really wanted to get that story out before he ran through. the presidency again in 2024. And I did reach out to his people in Florida a few times, and I just never got a positive answer back. So that one was one that, yeah, it should have been

a no-brainer, but it didn't happen. Well, still potentially could happen. Never know. What's a narrative about North Korea that you think gets overused? Well, I mean, obviously the simplistic one that we see in some of the Western mainstream media, that it's a nation of robots, that it's a salinist state, that it's a hermit state that doesn't want to have. These are three narratives, but they're all. all intertwined and they're overused because we've seen in the last year, look, they're out there and now fighting a war with Russia. And also the narrative of the crazy leader who's, I don't know, either stupid or crazy. Clearly Kim Jong-in is neither stupid nor crazy. He's clearly very savvy,

very canny in holding on to his own power, but also finding new sources of outside support financial and otherwise for his state. So that's a, that's a nice. narrative we really should drop. What is a topic that you wish the podcast had covered more? Gosh, that's a very self-serving question, isn't it? I mean, this would probably lead back to topics that I find personally interesting, like propaganda leaflets or North Korean comic books or, of course, ah, and there's two topics that people will say, no, Janker, you've overdone it, but I love them. And one of them is the 1989 World Festival of Youth and Students. I did a wholesome miniseries on that one in the 30th anniversary back in 2019.

And I still find that fascinating because to me it was like, it was that moment just after Tiananmen Square, just before the fall or the opening of the Berlin War, where North Korea, it seemed, was also cracking the door open a little bit and letting in, I don't know, 8,000 or so young people from around the world to come and wander the streets of Pyongyang.

It seemed like anything could have happened, but actually it ended up leading to a closure of North Korea. So that's a fascinating thing that I'll never grow tired of. And the other one that I'll never grow tired of is the 10 great principles for establishing a monolithic leadership system. That's the title of a very, very small pocket-sized book that every North Korean adult has in their position and has to memorize and has to judge themselves against every week when they do the self-criticism sessions. And that is a book that North Korea does not allow to be exported to the outside world. So you can go there and request this book and I'll say, sorry, it's not available to you. So the only copies of the text that we have have been smuggled out by defectors or smugglers.

It ties back to my earlier theme about ideology and education. This is the Ten Commandments of North Korea. It's actually some people say it's been modeled after the Ten Commandments, written by Kimmel Song's uncle who had been a Methodist minister. And it's one that we still know little about. I think that's a very interesting thing. I think that was an incredibly niche and classically jacko answer. One episode that you'd recommend to someone listening to the NK News podcast for the very first time.

Well, yeah, I think the actually episode one with Andre Lankov, or any episode with we want to really get started with because he has so much comprehensive detail over decades of research packed into his answers. And also the episodes, I think I did two of them, interviews with Teong Ho, the former diplomat. That's really a good insight into how the North Korean elite works. Oh, and that was also logistically, the first Teong-Haw interview. wherever he goes, he has some people from the National Intelligence Service who protect his personal security. So for that interview, the NK News Office had to be cleared out.

Everybody was out, except for me, even Chad. No one was allowed to stay in the room. And Teong Ho and I were sitting in two chairs facing each other, surrounded by sort of soundproof, movable walls with the microphones. And then in the room, outside the soundproof walls was one NIS guard. And then outside the door of the NICNU studio was a soundproof wall. second NIS guy. Now, I don't know for sure, but I think they might have had pistols on them. So, you know, it was a very, very high security interview. And it was fun to do, but it was high security. Oh, my gosh. I have actually been in an elevator with those guys because we were at an

event together. Oh, yeah. Maybe should have been a bit more wary. I never thought about that. Don't do any sudden movement. So there was one, there was one, not a podcast, but there was an NK News event, a live event hosted by Chad. And I was the moderator. Yes. And Teung Ho was supposed to give a 20-minute talk, but he went on for 45 minutes. And so I had to move forward to sort of suggest him, could you wrap it up, please? And as I made the move forward, the NIS agent near me sort of tensed a little bit, like sort of what's going on? Is he going, is Jacko going to attack, you know, Teuong-Haw? So luckily, of course, nothing happened.

But for those who were watching, I didn't notice. I was just moving forward. I only had eyes for Teuong-Haw. But someone who was watching said, you should have seen the, you know, the tenseness on the part of the NIS agent. The first or take you talking. Yes. Well, finally, Jack, go for this lightning round. One piece of advice for anyone trying to understand North Korea better,

a hard one to wrap it up on, I think. Read widely. Read widely. I get a lot of perspectives because, you know, I mean, I'm a person who believes that there's a lot of ideas in the world and even the bad ones are defended by some people. And so it's important to know why and how people defend ideas. is that I consider to be harmful to humanity

or not helpful to human flourishing. So, yeah, read widely, look into North Korea's own texts about itself and then read texts by North Koreans who have come out. So North Korean defectors of North Korean refugees. Read academic texts. Read the North Korean comic books as a way of understanding how it views the world and how it teaches the next generation. So, yeah, read widely, watch widely.

Don't just watch the stuff that gets the likes on social media, you know. I think that's fantastic advice. I'm relatively, you know, new to this industry and new to the North Korea world. And there's so much fantastic literature, you know, on this topic. And that's the, I found the best way to kind of get in and try and understand the country and the people itself. Oh, and learn Korean. That's also helpful, right? The more people can read things about Korea written by Koreans in Korean, the closer you get to a real understanding of how North Korea sees itself and how South Korea.

Korea sees North Korea as well. So yeah, learn Korean. Now, selfishly, I want to ask some questions for myself. As I take over, what advice would you give to me? And I'm sure you're doing this already, because you know, you're a consummate media professional as well. It is do your homework and do your preparation. Yes, yeah. Try to sort of find out what's the background of the speaker and the issue that you're going to be asking them about what's been in the news recently. So in can use, of course, the ultimate resource for that. Yes. So it shouldn't be too hard to put together.

But just bear in mind that every interview you prepare, what's Mike Tyson say? Everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face, that you've got a list of questions, but things may go off on a tangent or you might find that one question brings more fruit than another one. Yes, yeah. Anything I should definitely not do?

Should not do. Yeah. Don't get confrontational with your guests. Like even, look, some of my guests over the years, I've not agreed with them. I found that some of them even speak things that I would call nonsense. But, you know, I'm not Pierce Morgan. I'm not here to have a fight with them.

And so I like to, you know, if somebody's saying something silly, then let them hang themselves by the, hoist themselves by their own patat, I think that Shakespeare once wrote. So let them show their silliness through what they say rather than me get in there and fighting with them. In shores, don't get punched in the face. Don't punch anyone in the face. That's right. Make you a bumper sticker.

Jacko, before we finish, I'd like to hand the floor to you for any final thoughts. And also, of course, to reassure our listeners about what's next for you on the NK News podcast, you're not disappearing entirely, are you? I am not disappearing entirely. No, that's right. I'm continuing as a guest host. So all things going well, knock on wood, once a month. Now listeners should hear me interviewing somebody who's got something.

It doesn't, you know, because you'll be doing more connected to the news cycle. And so my interviews, we'd be less newsy, but, you know, a bit more sort of high profile, interesting guests who are not necessarily in the news cycle this week, but who have a big story to tell about North Korea. So that's what I'm looking forward to be doing. And maybe I will get that Donald Trump interview or the Kim Jong-un interview or a North Korean diplomat or Kim Jong-nan son, Kim Han-sol. If you're out there listening, hi, please reach out to me. So that's something that I hope to be doing in the coming years. Yeah, I'm certainly eight years in, but I'm not totally finished with it with this project, yeah. Well, Jaco, before we let you go, I want to say a very, very, very sincere.

Thank you for me, from everyone at the NK News team. It's been such a real pleasure working with you. Your voice, your curiosity and your warmth have truly shaped this podcast in such an important way. I know I have very, very big boots to fill, and I'm genuinely so grateful to be taking over something that you've built with so much care. So thank you for everything you brought to the show. And we're very glad listeners won't have to say goodbye to you completely. Thank you, Alana. It's been a pleasure and a privilege being part of the NK News team all these years,

and I look forward to many more, but on a less frequent basis. And you will, I'm sure, fill my boots very, very well. Thank you, Jacko. Thank you.