The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Let's Talk North Korea and Travis King || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Before we dive into today's video, let me start by saying that if you want to defect somewhere...maybe don't choose the same place as Travis King. Now let's look at where things are with North Korea. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/lets-talk-north-korea-and-travis-king

Hey everybody, Peter Zinek here coming to you from the lower saddle of Square Top Peak in the Pyeg National Forest in Colorado. Today we're talking about North Korea. There has been an interesting incident in that an army guy by the name of Travis King has defected North Korea. As a rule, people who defect to North Korea get tortured horribly, so why he did it, no one really knows. I don't have any theories on that. What I can do is kind of give you an overall update on where things are with North Korea. Anyone who tells you that they're 100% sure what's going on in the country is lying to you, because everybody's spies have been killed, including the Chinese.

And probably the single biggest misconception in the United States is that this is a client state of China, and it is not. It's probably safe to say that the North Koreans actually hate the Chinese more than anyone else. They see them as overbearing and dictatorial, and Chairman Xi is particularly loathed by the upper leadership. within North Korea. Now, of course, that is the Kim dynasty. Now, starting from the beginning, the understanding of the intelligence community, and this isn't just the United States, this is Russia, China, France, Britain, Japan, everybody, South Korea as well,

is that the original leader of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, the guy who fought the Japanese in World War II, is that he was killed by his own people back in 1993, because a few days after he was killed, he was supposed to show up in Seoul to talk about the practical details of reunification. Remember that in 1993, Tiananmen Square was in the past, and the Americans and the Chinese had decided to move on together. The Soviet system had just collapsed, and Kim Il-sung knew that a statist, communist, dictatorial system was not long for this world. So he was looking for something new. and his army folks who you know would have lost all their position had him killed uh kim jong ill is the second leader that was the son of kim elsung he was the crazy guy with

the glasses um he was raised in north korea he was raised drinking the kool-aid dude was bat-shick crazy and when he took over the first generation army leaders that had killed his father like Whoa, this is not what we meant. And his whole generation was like that. They were all raised on the ideology and not educated in any meaningful way. And so Kim Il-sung, when he took over the agricultural system, he killed two million people with a famine in a country that only had like 20, 25 million people. Kind of a big deal.

So the first generation takes the third generation, Kim Jong-un, that's the chubby guy who rules the place now, and sends them abroad to learn how the world really works. And Kim Jong-un specifically was sent to Switzerland. Now, the plan was that the first generation would rule until they died, and then the third generation would come back and take the country into a new age. That way, the first generation would get the gravitas and history, and yet they would maintain their wealth into position for a lot longer.

The problem is that Kim Jong-il, generation, number two, died early, and so Kim Jong-in in his mid-20s, was brought back to take over. And for a good decade, Kim Jong-han probably had the worst job in the world, because the first generation wanted him to remake the country, but not touch their positions, and they killed his grandfather, so they'd certainly have no problem off in his fat ass. Then you had the second generation, Kimmel Jung's brothers and sisters and cousins, who were nuts and idiotic, but violent, and we're totally willing to kill you today. So he was threading the needle between these two powerful groups who were not afraid of violence at all. And so what he did

was a playstate the first generation with really, really bellicose rhetoric that was just sounded crazy, but didn't back it up with actually any changes in policy. And for the second generation, every time he had the opportunity, he assassinated one of them. So one of them got killed chemical weapons when he was traveling abroad. One was accidentally hit with an anti-aircraft gun during a parade, that sort of thing. Well, 10 years later, most of the first generation is

retiring and dying off, so problem taking care of, and most of the second generation is now dead. But during this process, we had a change in administration in the United States with Donald Trump coming in. And that first step of Kim Jong-un's strategy, the bellicose rhetoric,

Trump, of course, thought it was all about him. So when So when Kim Jong-un was like, oh, I've got a button in a nuclear weapon. And Trump is like, sees this on Twitter and he goes back. He's like, oh, I've got a bigger button. And Kim Jong-un, a little panicky because he was like, whoa, this was totally not about the United States. This is a domestic issue. Calms down, sends some very soothing messages, and Trump thinks that he just talked down a crazy dictator.

And that set the stage for the summit. Now, the Chinese were furious because while the United States, or let me rephrase that, a lot of Americans think of North Korea as just a puppet of China. China absolutely thinks of North Korea as its puppet. The North Koreans strongly disagree. So Kim Jong-un was summoned to speak with Xi, and when it became apparent that Kim Jong-un couldn't be talked out of the summit, Xi got in his big imperial chair. Remember, Xi is like two foot tall.

So he looks taller, and he could look taller, and he could look. lecture down at the wayward province they put kim jungan in one of those little tiny baby chairs that you have it like kindergartens uh and they played that for state propaganda and the chinese ate it up and kim jungan was furious so when he got back on his train was going home was like we're never talking to these bastards again call trump tell him the summits on and then it happened and there was a breakthrough in relations and this was you know relatively early in the trump administration and i got really excited because you know maybe there is something to this trumpism uh maybe can break out of some of the ossification in American foreign policy.

And it was very, very promising. I even have the coin from the summit. And that was it, because it was still Trump, and he never thought about North Korea ever again. And so an opportunity had passed. In the years since, Kim Jong-un is now finding his way for the first time. He has no meaningful advisors except for people of his own generation,

which have just as little experience as he does. The North Koreans don't get along with the Chinese. or the Russians or the Japanese, and so they're always looking for little bits of leverage here and there, but they are very, very, very open to a broad deal with the United States and South Korea. And that's where we are right now, and Travis King just kind of rolled right into that. So it may be interesting. The North Koreans may find Travis King's presence,

an interesting little bit of leverage to open negotiations. I wouldn't count on it, but I wouldn't rule it out. This is still the hermit kingdom We have a new generation The oldest members of the third generation Are in the early 30s now And they're only now starting to figure out What it means to run a country

So a lot of the rules and stipulations That hold for normal countries Just don't apply here Because there's no institutional knowledge The second generation was skipped completely And the first generation Realized that they were living in the past And so I've handed the reins over to the third generation

We just don't know what that. that means yet. All right, that's it for me. Take care.