North Korea News Podcast by NK News - What Kim Jong Un sees in the US capture of Nicolás Maduro

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

This week’s podcast starts by discussing the U.S. military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro over the weekend and its implications for North Korea and its leader. NK News correspondent Shreyas Reddy then speaks about Pyongyang’s condemnation of the U.S. attack on its longtime ally, accusing Washington of attempting to exercise dominion over the […]

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 new subscription packages. Starting at just $199 annually, you can access daily analysis and our weekly podcast. Or try our premium membership package, which offers additional perks such as executive briefings, monthly reports and forecasts, networking receptions and event opportunities, as well as much, much more. To find the best fit for you, just head to signup.org and become a member today. Hello, listeners, and welcome to the NK News podcast.

I'm your host, Jacko's Wetzit, and today this Tuesday, the 6th of January, 2026. Shraeus Reddy, welcome back on the show. Thank you for having me, Jacko. Obviously, the big news over the last few days has been. been the US's actions in Venezuela. Why would we be talking about that on an NK News podcast that focus on North Korea? Well, a good question. And I think essentially it comes down to the simple what-if question that many North Korea watches have been asking themselves and each other the last few days, which is, what does this mean for North Korea? How could this possibly also

happen with Kim Jong-un? And I think essentially there are quite a few questions to be answered there. But before we dig into those, perhaps one thing to point out is that North Korea has, from its side, already responded to this. Unusually prompt perhaps by North Korean standards, but at the same time, it was a fairly self-evident statement quite easy for North Korea to make. Just a routine condemnation of the U.S.-led effort. And essentially, in keeping with how North Korean propaganda usually works, criticized the U.S. for seeking hegemony. in the region, trying to essentially destabilize another country in the Americas and calling on the international community to recognize the seriousness of the situation and protest against the U.S. actions.

Now, North Korea and Venezuela have long been friends, right? The regimes are friendly with each other. There are embassies. There's a North Korean embassy in Caracas. There's a Venezuelan embassy in Pyongyang. Do we know if North Korea gets oil from Venezuela? I don't know. I don't, I haven't heard of this. To be honest, I believe in any case when it comes to Venezuela, many of their results are also untapped. And I think when it comes to North Korea, certainly since sanctions took effect, it has been easier for them to rely more on illegal ship-to-ship transfers from nearby countries.

So China and Russia have mostly been the ones helping in that regard. But those two countries are often lumped together in what some people call the axis of resistance. You've got Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Russia, etc. So they're of a piece in a way. I don't know whether I've seen Kim Jong-un together with Nicholas Maduro in the past or with Chavez before him. But certainly they've said nice things about each other. Yeah, we haven't really seen them together. I think it wasn't part of Kim Jong-un's

years of diplomacy before the pandemic and Maduro, I didn't believe, did not travel to China for the victory parade where Kim Jong-un rubbed shoulders with plenty of others. Ah, but... So he did or he didn't go to? He didn't. Okay.

So essentially, we haven't really seen that often. But they certainly shared a friendship, at least in terms of their nations, a lot of long history between the two countries, but in particular, we've seen Hugo Chavez and Nicholas Maduro often exchanged greetings with the North Korean leaders, so Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un more recently. And so there is a certain kinship there, that anti-imperialist and the U.S. agenda that the two countries share, and that's something that certainly weighs into a lot of it.

But for whatever it's worth, that personal connection wasn't as strongly conveyed in the North Korean condemnation, which focused more on just the act itself as a violation of international law. And that act, of course, being the seizure of Nicholas Maduro by U.S. military forces in conjunction with the U.S. law enforcement agencies. Yes. And now is in New York awaiting trial. And so, of course, yeah, you can imagine being a North Korean diplomat there in Caracas. as the bombs are falling at what, 2, 3 a.m. and watching all this go down and then seeing the news the next day, I'm sure they were writing some interesting cables back home to Pyongyang. Yes, certainly. And I mean, it's not just Caracas, obviously. Many other countries in the region were certainly affected by this. I think Cuba has also reacted. There's a concern about who comes next. Is it going to be Cuba? Is it going to be Colombia? Yes. Now, does Kim Jong-un have reason to be concerned right now? Has Donald Trump or anybody around him, Marco Rubio, Pete Heggsett, said anything, given any warnings, put North Korea on notice, as they like to say, in American parlance?

Not so far. And it's certainly, if we have to be perfectly honest, North Korea does not appear to be high enough on the U.S. agenda at the moment. I could think of three countries that would be much more concerned. You mentioned Colombia and Cuba. throw Denmark into the mix as well because of the whole Greenlands. I laugh but because it just seems so absurd. But anyway, it is quite serious. Yeah. And I mean, and I think the three places you mentioned, it also fits into what we've been hearing from the Trump administration where they've been emphasizing not so much their global adversaries as at this point, they're focusing more on talking about their hemisphere. As far as they're concerned, the entire Western hemisphere, particularly the Americas are theirs. And so that means that's where they live. So they're going

to focus more on adversities in their backyard. And North Korea at this point is a little too far away. And the other point, of course, is what does the US have to gain from targeting North Korea, from enacting regime change in North Korea at this point? And what could go wrong? North Korea has, after some nuclear weapons. Exactly. That's the other fact. And so this, yeah, bring that into the equation here. It's all about the costs versus the benefits. And for many of those reasons, it does not seem that North Korea has reason to be varied at this point. When it comes down to it, as you said, they can launch a nuke that they feel anything's wrong. If they, if they know they're going

down, what's to stop them from firing a new? And they have made statements before that basically a world without North Korea is not a world worth existing. So it does kind of give the impression that they will take things down in a big way if North Korea is going to go down. So it must reinforce for North Korea and North Korea's supporters the message that if you want to be safe in this world, you've got to have your own nuclear weapons. Definitely. And I think that's something that from the way North Korea frames most things in terms of the U.S. and in terms of U.S. military actions in the Indo-Pacific region and across the world is, see, this is why we need news. We want, we need to be able to protect ourselves from this. And with situations

like this, with situations like the U.S. targeting Iranian nuclear sites last year, it's quite easy to see where they're going to stick with this logic. The last thing... Oh yes, and put Iran on that list of countries that would be more concerned right now. I mean, Donald Trump has said to Iran, last week. If you go on killing protesters, we will attack you again. So Iran would be much more concerned in North Korea right now, I would imagine. Yeah, definitely. But yeah, I think when it comes to Kim Jong-un, as far as he's concerned, regime survival is the topmost priority. If that's out of the window, there's nothing to stop them from really using those nukes. Right now, the biggest deterrent is the fact that they don't, they're not going to use those nukes until they

feel they have like they have to. For now, it's more about keeping other people away. So who knows what it'll be like if Kim Jong-un finds himself backed into a corner with no option, no way to get out, maybe he'll just try to go out swinging. Who knows? But one other aspect, of course, is just going back to it is that question of what does the US have to gain from this with Venezuela? Yes. The Trump administration has been extremely open, unusually open, in fact, about. about the fact that they're looking to get oil from Venezuela. And when with Greenland, there's always that talk about rare earth minerals, for example. North Korea has some too, we're taught.

Yes. But with North Korea, of course, there always been debates about just how much North Korea has and whether it's worth that effort. Does North Korea have enough there that it would be worth that initiative of going all the way in and taking North Korea's leadership out, also is it... In that sense, Greenland would be either a soft target or low-hanging fruit, if you will. Yes, and history also shows if the U.S. enters North Korea, that's when China comes in. Yes, bad things tend to happen.

Yes. So there's that. But let's say if there's also that hypothetical. What if the Trump administration, what if the U.S. believes it has enough to gain, from going into North Korea, how effective would it be? And I think there are also questions about the parallels to this Venezuelan operation. The nuclear deterrent is fundamentally going to be the key part because when it comes down to it, Venezuela had some pretty modern air defenses, relatively speaking, which it got from Russia, had some from China, and the US was able to mount some pretty sophisticated operations

to essentially take them out of commission, keep them from being detected. Donald Trump mentioned something about the lights being switched off due to some technology that the US has at its disposal. So I imagine there's a few things there that North Koreans are looking at and trying to learn from, right? Yes, and apparently Cyber Command was quite involved as well. Of course, one thing that separates North Korea from Venezuela

is it's not as connected to the internet. So if you're talking about shutting down coms and keeping them from being able to communicate, that's something that perhaps North Korea is not going to be as immediately concerned about. But at the same time, the argument can be made that what North Korea mostly relies on is a little more old school and perhaps there are more physically convenient ways of shutting them down, radio jamming, for example. So if the US were to come in, we saw a few months ago that was a New York Times article,

unconfirmed by official government sources of course but that in Trump's first term they did attempt to send a team into North Korea to infiltrate to essentially take over communication lines try and at least this was doing the whole period of

cemetery but so allegedly potentially look at how they could target Kim Jong-un in that situation in case things weren't going to plan on the diplomacy front so that was with boats as I recall If they were to try to come in in an aerial operation, as they did in Venezuela,

if they were to do that from South Korea, from bases like, say, Orsan Air Base or Kunsan Air Base, that would have to happen with the knowledge and perhaps even the cooperation of the South Korean authorities. And so that's a wrinkle, a complicating factor. If they were to come from Japan or perhaps even Guam, that's a lot more distance to cover. There's more likelihood that North Koreans might see them coming in. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot depends on how they want to handle this. I think with South Korea, for all the talk about who controls the U.S. bases here, who has the final say,

I think it's going to be hard to really carry out any operations targeting North Korea without the South Korean government getting involved. And, of course, let's not forget the UN command as well. It is a U.S.-led operation, but it is a multinational initiative that is designed to prevent these sorts of incidents. Whereas when it comes to, I think Japan, they already do have sizable base there. As you said, it is a little further away. But depending on how the US wants to handle it, maybe not an insurmountable distance. But I think all this, of course, when it comes down to it, is speculation. Sure, absolutely, very speculative.

The biggest thing is, I think the points we already raised, it's not necessarily worth the effort for the U.S., especially at the moment when North Korea ranks way low on its priorities. I don't report Donald Trump mentioning either North Korea or Kim in the last month or more. Yeah. And frankly, even when it comes to the, when he does mention it, I think he still seems to harbor some hope of eventually reconnecting with Kim Jong-un. I don't think he's in that phase where he wants to really jeopardize that with a rash operation. It was only two months ago that he was here for APEC in Kyeongju, and it was still talking about, you know, I'd like to seek him if possible.

Yeah. But briefly, North Korea did launch, what, a missile, some missiles in the last 24 hours? Yes. So North Korea pretty much did cover that. And so on Sunday morning, they launched a missile, well, a few missiles. Okay. And they were hypersonic missiles. Ah, these are the hypersonic glide things if they go up and then they come in and, yeah.

And this is something that they've been doing on and off for a while, and they essentially justified it as a necessary step to continue developing nuclear capable weapons as in an effort to deter enemies to stay ahead of enemy threats. And I think, obviously, the fact that this happened right after the Venezuela situation led to some people saying, oh, could this be a message about that? But to be honest, it was probably something that was going to happen anyway. Kim Jong-un certainly happened to be carrying out a lot of different operations, more economy-focused,

but eventually they were probably going to test out a few more missiles in the run-up to the Party Congress, and the hypersonic missiles have been a big part of that agenda. So it's more part of their consistent focus on developing these strategic weapons as a deterrent. It didn't feel like Kim Jong-un was crying out for attention. saying, you know, here's me. Look at me. It just seemed like a regular part of the weapons development program. Lastly, super briefly, there was in North Korea recently a bring your daughter to the Morseleum Day. Absolutely. So, yes, the family that visits dead ancestors together, stays together. So Kim Jong-un took his daughter and his wife to the Kamsusan Palace of the Sun,

where the remains of former leaders Kim Il remain in state. And they, so it was the daughter's first visit to the Kamsa San. Was it? At least in terms of what has been publicly reported. She's made a lot of visits. She's accompanied her father to military events, diplomatic events, economic visits. But this was the first time she went there. And obviously that led to a lot of debate, just like all her appearances do.

Does this mean she's the successor? Does this mean, yeah. Were there other children there? They were not. But of course, the other thing is the way that it was presented, and bear in mind, this was with her mother as well, the way they've kind of presented her appearance alongside both her parents in recent weeks, has been more about showing a happy family. And bear in mind this is someone whose name has never been given by state media so far. So we mostly, most of the world refers to her as Kim Joer because of, well, former American basketball. player Dennis Rodman and more recently

it's South Korean intelligence, but it's never really been confirmed. So as far as state media's concerned, she's always just been an extension of her father. And in some cases, we see her perhaps playing a more official role or at least being a step

behind him, accompanying him everywhere. But on occasions like this and a few recent factory visits, it's been more about that family vibe. She's between her mother and father, there's smiling, laughing, just having fun, just place of affection. And that sense is a very distinct vibe compared to the typical leader-success relationship

that former transitions have shown. Now, this does not mean she isn't the successor, but she is, as far as, to the best of our knowledge, maybe about 13, 12, something like that year's old. And so it could be a while before she really comes into Hohen as a leadership candidate. She isn't even eligible to join the ruling party for the next five years. Okay. Or at least until she turns 18. Right.

If that does happen before that, for example, the upcoming party congress, that will be a really exceptional case. And then we'll be like, okay. And that is coming up soon. We will be talking about that on a future episode of the NK News podcast. Trace Reddy, thank you very much for joining me today. Thank you. Navigating the dynamics of the Korean Peninsula requires more than just information. It demands insight.

Career Risk Group offers strategic consulting that cuts through the noise. Our experts provide in-depth analysis, risk assessments and bespoke reports, all tailored to your specific needs. Whether you're exploring new opportunities or managing existing challenges, our insights can be your compass. To learn more about how we can help you make informed strategic decisions, visit careerrisk.com slash solutions today. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today. Our thanks go to Brian Betts and Alana Hill for facilitating this episode and to our post-recording producer genius Gabby Magnuson who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions and fixes the

audio levels. Thank you and listen again next time.