North Korea News Podcast by NK News - The view of North Korea from Trump’s Washington

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Donald Trump’s return to the White House has dramatically reshaped Washington in just two short months, including the world of North Korea policy. But while many in the U.S. expect that Trump will return to the unfinished business of diplomacy with Kim Jong Un, few in the Beltway are willing to speak openly about the […]

You're listening to an exclusive episode of the NK News podcast available only to subscribers. You can listen to this and other episodes from your preferred podcast player by accessing the Private Podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide on the NK News website at nknews.org slash private-feed. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jaco Zwetslu, and this episode was recorded via StreamYard on Tuesday, the 25th of March, 2025. Today I welcome on the show three of my colleagues from NK News and NK Pro. We have Chaddard Carroll, Jongmin Kim, and Shreyas Reddy, who have just returned or are

in the process of returning from a trip to the United States, mainly to New York City and Washington DC. Welcome on the show, you three. Thanks for having us. Thank you very much. Hello. All right, so let's start off with the overall vibe. What stood out most to you during your meetings in Washington and New York? Was there a noticeable shift in mood or priority when it comes to North Korea? Yeah, I guess I'll be happy to start on that. I guess, yeah, compared to previous trips, basically the government interlocutors we met

were much more in listen mode than on any other prior trip I've done in the last like eight or nine years. I was just thinking today when I was preparing for this, like under the first Trump administration, some of the background briefings and meetings I had with very senior state department officials went into so much detail and revealed so much, they were really meaningful meetings. Uh, and then that's like one spectrum and end of the spectrum.

And then what we experienced in DC, at least in the government meetings was really just lots of questions directed at us and often remarks like we're not authorized to talk about this or awkward silences. Yeah, a lot of silence basically when it came to talking about what the US position may or may not be. Now, some of that might be due to the fact that the policy review on North

Korea, on the Korean peninsula has not been completed yet. So there is no official policy yet to talk about. On the other hand, and we can go into this later, DC is a land of immense fear and anxiety, I think right right now when it comes to people working under this administration, anxious about their jobs, funding cuts, all of that kind of stuff. So that might also be factoring in. Okay, Shreyas, Jongwin, anything to add on the overall vibe?

Well, no, I would agree with Chad, honestly. It definitely felt like there was a lot of uncertainty in some quarters about what to expect, what's coming next, even from the government departments themselves and what will, frankly, be their own status over the next few months. And at the same time, as Chad mentioned, just a little bit of fear, a little bit of caginess. People weren't entirely willing to open up. I think perhaps where we did find a bit more willingness to engage was in the departments or units that were perhaps a little less aligned with the policymaking side of things. It was where perhaps they were either on a more political

spectrum where they could be a little more open in terms of taking a clear political stance regarding the current government or where their roles were perhaps entirely analytical and thus they could afford to focus more on the nitty-gritty of the little details rather than trying to look at the broad strokes of the policy. Okay, Jongmin? For me, mainly two things. One is everybody was so on edge

whether or not you are in the government or in the NGO field or if you're a journalist or whatnot. I have, it wasn't only just government or, you know, stakeholder meetings in DC and New York, but also I had a few reunion dinners with people who are still in DC. Some of them are in the government, some not. And when we were catching up, I've been in DC every two years and it was usually like, you know, their career progression

and their new you know policy field that they're working on and lot not but this time around all the conversations were oh they looking at linkedin is so depressing right now you know if you're working for development either your you know colleagues are fired your boss is fired like suspended raided um so all of this sort of leading to the de-prioritization of anything foreign policy or security, honestly, there are some people who mainly work on that, but even for them, it looked like they didn't want to get into trouble. So a lot of, you know, some things going on, something bad happening in America that looks irreversible. And that is sort of sort of spilling over into whether or not people can actually really focus on policy, be it North Korea or South Korea. And the second thing is being in Seoul and

monitoring the martial law and the fallout since December 3, I was very much knee deep in all the nitty gritty details in Seoul, looking at, you know, South Korean developments, feeling like it's something that's just very, very messed up. And then I go to the US and I brief people on what has been going on in South Korea. And then I actually get a lot of compliments for what South Korea was able to do. Like, rather than, oh, your country's messed up, they more, a lot of people were more like, oh, at least your, you know, democratic institutions work in a certain way. So, you know, that was kind of a new revelation for me this time around. Right.

Chad, could you sketch a little bit the sort of landscape of who your main interlocutors were, were they from the think tank world, the intelligence community, defense department, state department, or sort of a bit of everything all mixed together? Yeah. Um, we, I don't want to like identify anyone because a lot of the meetings were off the record or on backgrounds. So, but it was a mixture of staff from career desks within departments that various departments, there were NGO personnel, there were some embassy people, there was a very senior person focused on career who was in town. There was

there were journalists and some academics. We hosted a big happy hour last week on Thursday, which was a really diverse like group of people, maybe some 70 or 75 came from all walks of the sort of career space. And yeah, I think pretty much everyone I spoke to, yeah, was like pretty worried and uncertain about the future and where things are going to go. And just to give you some maybe texture on all of this, like one very senior diplomatic source I met who's not American said, along the lines of my American

counterparts in government are reluctant to say anything too loudly or to articulate policies that could be seen to contradict Trump's inner circle and subsequently get them noticed by the Trump administration fired or publicly embarrassed. And I think that kind of really hits the nail on the head, because we are seeing a very different approach in Trump version two to Trump version one. And some people talked about having genuine worries about coming into the office one day. And there's an email from the so-called Doge Department of Government Efficiency in their inbox, basically telling them that their role has been terminated or that the funding for their project is being totally withdrawn. So it is a lot of turbulence. And I think it's going to have a pretty profound impact on this field much more than I think I thought pre trip. It's basically, you know, you've got organizations that are well known for doing career work like the Wilson Center, United States Institute of Peace, which are massively federally funded and which in the last couple weeks has been announcements asking them to go to the legally

minimum levels of staffing, which is all of this is, I believe it's being legally challenged in some areas. But if people are basically put on furlough or they're not paid for a certain amount of time, people start looking for other options, right? And yeah, it can have quite a big shakeup on the North Korea studies field, as we're already seeing with NGOs. Yes. Okay. So apart from the anxiety about just the sustainability of organizations and people's job security,

did you, this actually, let's start, Shreyas, this question is for you first off. Did you pick up any anxiety or fatigue about North Korea as a policy issue, or was there a sense that the DPRK is climbing the policy ladder again? Well, I would say for the moment, partly because of the uncertainty and the fact that they're still trying to figure out where they stand in terms of their policy priorities, at the moment it felt like North Korea isn't necessarily at the top, or isn't in the top rung of priorities. But certainly there are a few officials who told us that they see it very much becoming a priority matter once perhaps more immediate

tasks like the Russia-Ukraine war and the conflict in the Middle East get resolved. So it seems that there isn't at the moment, there isn't much of a policy focus, there isn't as much importance given to it. But for some people, it is something that is still in the back of their minds. At the same time, perhaps with the situation in South Korea also currently very uncertain. I think in general, the Korean Peninsula, they're just holding off at the moment to try and figure things out, take their time with it. Okay, Jongmin, this one's for you. How are people in DC gaming out the Trump 2.0 administration in terms of US-North Korea diplomacy? We haven't yet

seen any activity, but we know that President Trump has mentioned on a couple of occasions that he'd like to try to pick up where he left off in 2019 with Kim Jong-un. Right, the general sense that I got was that North Korea is not as deprioritized or as during the Biden administration, but still it's not priority because there are a lot of other fronts that Trump is working on. But I did get a lot of questions related to the US-North Korea symmetry and just dialogue in general

from multiple stakeholders, but in line with what is going on in South Korea. So a lot of questions that I got throughout was whether or not you know, be impeached first of all, and if that's the case, if he is impeached, who will be the next leader and what will be the next South Korean president's North Korea policy vis-a-vis Trump and Kim relationship. So it does seem like there are a policy vis-a-vis Trump and Kim relationship. So it does seem like there are interests related to that, but also a lot of question marks on what kind of leverage will be able to bring Kim Jong-un actually back to the table was also one of the main questions that were asked. Chad, did you get a sense that people are expecting a return to the pangentry of the

summits of 2018 and 2019 19 or do they think that a potential Trump 2.0 talks with North Korea might take a different line, maybe more working level talks for instance. Curious to hear the rest? Become an NK News subscriber today for access to the full episode. Head to nknews.org slash join for more information. If you're already a subscriber to NK News, you can listen to full episodes from your preferred podcast player by accessing the Private Podcast Feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide on the NK News website at nknews.org slash private dash feed.