North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Lessons for North Korea from Israeli strikes on Iran, and loudspeakers go silent

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

Israel’s dramatic strikes on Iran’s nuclear program and Tehran’s retaliation have dominated headlines in recent days, and North Korea is no doubt paying close attention. NK News CEO Chad O’Caroll joins the podcast to talk about what lessons North Korea might be drawing from the clashes and U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, including the importance of deterrence […]

Explore the unofficial world of DPRK-inspired apparel at NK News Shop. Dive into a captivating collection of North Korea-themed t-shirts, hoodies and more at the NK News Shop. From the popular Daedonggang beer t-shirts to the adventurous air-cordial designs, each a the world. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. This episode is recorded on Tuesday, the 17th of June 2025 via StreamYard while I'm on vacation in the Netherlands and Chad is back at the NK News Office. Hi Chad, how's it going there? I'm good thanks. Yes, nice to see you in your homeland. No crisis on the peninsula yet? Not like Iran, no. Right, well exactly. Now

you've been thinking about Iran and the parallels with North Korea and its nuclear weapons program. So let's talk a bit about that. Well, yeah. So for those who have not been following the news, Israel has struck multiple locations relating to Iran's nuclear program, targeted attacks against some of the key military leadership figures, scientists involved with the nuclear program. And just this morning, President Trump said on Truth Social that everyone should evacuate Tehran. And so I've been wondering about how North Korea has been looking at this.

And I think there are a few things that come to mind. Firstly, Kim Jong-un, I think now is probably very well assured that he's made the right choice with developing a nuclear weapons program because I cannot imagine Israel have taken a risk like this with a country such as North Korea where the nuclear program is so far advanced and there are multiple delivery systems that could create serious nuclear costs for the adversary in a case of an attack like this. But there have also been some things that have happened from this that I think are also worth noting.

Kim Jong-un has talked a lot about DPRK missile capabilities, investing in more launchers, but we've just seen the Israeli Air Force and defense forces wipe out, according to their words, one third of Iran's launching capability in just a few days. And although Tel Aviv has been hit with barrels after barrels of Iranian missiles, it's not from what we've seen so far, it's not been an existential

threat at all for Israel and the missiles have come in relatively limited waves. And I think Kim Jong-un will be looking at that and scratching his head as to just how effective is the DPRK missile capability against a modern adversary, such as South Korea with some similar capabilities to Israel. Like the FAD anti-missile batteries, for example. Yeah. And F-35 fighter jets. Just, and just the lastly, I think the other thing is that a key difference between Iran and

DPRK is, of course, Iran is much more open, which has allowed Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, to completely infect it with agents, with people capable of building drone launching facilities inside Iran. And obviously, extremely good knowledge about where these top generals have been by the exact locations, the exact time such that could be very precise strikes to to assassinate them basically. And I think Kim Jong Un learns from that just the vital importance of doubling down on this strict information

cordon that has been a key characteristic of the North for decades now. Yeah, watching that the information come out about Israel's operation in Iran, it's been fascinating to see just the level of infiltration by Israeli military and other intelligence agencies into Iran. Now, Iran, of course, it's a different language, it's a different cultural group for Israel. So if you're an agent operating inside Iran, you have to speak Farsi or perhaps one of the other local languages there.

And we think about, you know, how many, for how many decades has it been since there's been a real successful intelligence scoop brought out of North Korea by South Korean agents infiltrated in North Korea? And of course, there's also always a possibility that they may be happening and we're just not hearing about that the NIS or the South Korean military isn't telling. But we do know that North Korea prides itself on, and even teaches children in comic books, as I like to talk about, that hunting spies, hunting

down agents of South Korea, of the United States. And so they seem to have been quite successful at making sure that anybody walking around who doesn't look like they belong gets picked up immediately and interrogated. Whereas in Iran, it just looks like the Israelis have been able to act with impunity, doesn't it? Yeah. And the other thing I think that's different with Iran is, of course, there is a pretty sizable opposition. There are a lot of people that despise the religious leadership. And those are the kind of natural bedfellows for Israeli intelligence operatives to combine forces with. Whereas in North Korea, of course, the huge risk of being involved in some kind of foreign intelligence, gathering system or structure

is just, you know, the risk reward calculus is really just not in line with facilitating that kind of cooperation. So there are big differences, but yeah, I do think one of the interesting lessons from all of this is just that maybe without nuclear warheads on those missiles, which would be a big step for North Korea to do in the event of any kind of confrontation, just how effective

would its missiles be in causing with kinetic warheads like huge amounts of damage when Iran has been, you know, it's not, it's not, you know, for you, for years, everyone thought of Iran as this like regional superpower, which had very sophisticated military capabilities, nascent nuclear programming. I mean, it's still early to say, but it wouldn't surprise me if its military is kind of begging for a ceasefire in the days ahead. Going back to where we started from, if we wind the clock back 31 years to 1994, when North Korea did not yet have an existing nuclear weapon, but was on the way to one, perhaps similar to Iran was a week or so ago.

I remember that was when President Bill Clinton of the United States was very, very close to considering preemptive strikes to take out that nuclear program, but ultimately did not. Looking at the situation now with Israel and Iran, just remind our listeners why it was that they decided in the end not to go ahead with those preemptive strikes in 94. Well, because there was a huge, there still is a huge North Korean artillery force close to the border, close to Seoul. There are so many different estimates out there of the damage that Korean artillery force close to the border, close to Seoul, that there are so many different estimates out there of the damage that that artillery force could do to certainly a large part of northern Seoul in the event of some kind of confrontation

very quickly. And there would have been a pretty significant loss of life. I think that's why it didn't happen. South Korea, obviously, at the time was, you know, in a very economically advantageous position coming out of dictatorship early 90s. And also, frankly speaking, South Korea is quite risk averse from my observation of how it conducts foreign policy and national security, except maybe under President Yun, former President Yun. So I think it was just that people just preferred to kick the can down the road. And we were talking about this other day, I just wonder if in hindsight, people thought that

was a wise idea, because the result now is an extremely capable North Korea, the policy options to respond to it in the event of military crisis are very limited right now. Well, and also given that, I mean, does it to come back to your first assertion that Kim Jong-un must be thinking, well, it's right to have a nuclear program because look, you know, Israel was able to attack Iran precisely because it had no nuclear program. But if you compare it to 30 years ago, North Korea didn't yet have a nuclear weapon and it wasn't attacked. So maybe the artillery would have been enough to have kept North Korea safe all these years

and they could have used that money that was spent on the nuclear and missiles programs on other things like feeding and housing the people and setting up a functioning industry and electrical infrastructure. Yeah. I mean, I've heard the argument before. Clearly the North Koreans didn't believe the artillery was enough. And I mean, since 1994, obviously, we've had the US invasion of Iraq, the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Libya, I think there was a lot of lessons learned by the North Koreans from

all of these consecutive overthrows of authoritarian leaders. And I always like to say they've kind of built this sort of ultimate authoritarian system, if you will, that seems to have taken a lot of lessons from where others failed and built upon them and built mitigation strategies over and over again. Yeah, yeah, it does seem that way. Okay, we've got about five minutes left. Let's talk about inter Korean propaganda. So I understand that under a new president, E.J. Myong, South

Korea shut off its speakers and then a day later, North Korea did the same. That's correct. Yeah. And it kind of says something of North Korea's interest in having those speakers on, where, you know, some people that came to Korea thought it was just North Korea trying to provoke or antagonize itself. But it, know, we if we look at the timeline, it did all come after the South Koreans decided to allow leafletting again, which Resulted in the North Korean balloons which resulted in South Korea turning the loudspeakers on it was like a very tit-for-tat mechanism So yeah, that all seems to have stopped now, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah, which is

mechanism. So yeah, that all seems to have stopped now, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, which is probably good for all of the residents in those two, the north and southern part of the border there, because it was very loud. And the South Korean government is once more cracking down on civic groups that are sending their own leaflets into North Korea, threatening punishment. It's a bit like a redo of the Moon administration, isn't it? Yeah, it's a bit of whiplash, to be honest, going back and forth and back again within a short time, less than three years. So, yeah, it's I wonder how, you know, if you're in communications for the South Korean Foreign Ministry or Ministry of Unification explaining this stuff and you're like flipping the script in May 2022. And then you're flipping script again back to pre May 2022. And then UN was elected. It's like, it's just hard to, I think, sensibly communicate such vastly different positions in a coherent way. But that is a provocative question for you know, do you think that given that North Korea switched

off its speakers so quickly after South Korea turned itself? Do you think that given that North Korea switched off its speakers so quickly after South Korea turned itself? Do you think that there was any back channel communication perhaps going on between North and South Korea, particularly now that we have as the head of the NIS in South Korea, this former unification minister who's, you know, previously been an engaging with North Korea? What do you think? I think for now, no, I think it was just them reciprocating in an unofficial way. There was no need for them to have those speakers on. But I have a doubt that there is any comms line active

as of yet. Okay. Now, E.J. Myung did say he's run up to the election that he would try to re-institute the comprehensive military agreement between the two Koreas, didn't he? Yes, he did. I mean, theoretically, that could be possible. It would require, I guess, the North, it would require contact to restart, which is where I see the bottleneck about North Korea, as we know, maybe potential interest from the White House in talking. There's the Russia stuff, dealing with a kind of difficult relationship with China,, there's the Russia stuff, dealing with a kind of difficult relationship with China, whether there's the bandwidth for South Korea stuff as well. Given they've dismantled all of those apparatus and institutions that were intended for decades

to deal with South Korea, I'm not sure. I saw an Inco News yesterday that there are some South Korean, what sailors or fishermen who ended up accidentally, sorry, North Korean sailors or fishermen who ended up in South Korean waters, who have requested to go back and South Korea is intent on helping them go back. Could this be something to open up that bottleneck? Yes, it could be, but I think probably the way the North Koreans would respond to any communications on that would be very bounded by just the issue at hand for the present time. Maybe I'm just jaded, but I feel like we're not going to see any serious inter-Korean detente for a while. In the last minute, anything you'd like to flag or predict

coming up in the next week or so? Well, something that's kind of interesting is that there's been some movement on potential tourism reopening to North Korea. One of the agency's young pioneer tours yesterday said that there's some new hopes for Rasson tours to restart. That was a bit of a surprise to myself after they sort of shied away from that earlier this year. So that's interesting. And then all eyes on October for the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea. I'm sure there's going to be some interesting developments lined up for that. Definitely. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Chad or Carol, for coming on the NK News podcast

today via StreamYard. And we'll see you again when I'm back in Korea. Take care, Jacko. Thank you. Looking to stay informed about South Korea's fast-evolving political, business and cultural landscape? Join us on Korea Pro, the go-to resource for in-depth analysis, expertly curated by top-tier professionals. And now you can pick the membership level that best suits your needs, thanks to our

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