Today, Explained - The Invisible Man

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

Vox's Alex Ward explains what's going on with North Korea's Kim Jong Un. (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's the last day of April 2020. We did it. Although April's not going too quietly in the District of Columbia. Lots of showers today. I'm Sean Ramos-Verm and this is your coronavirus update from Today Explained. South Korea has reported no new coronavirus cases for the first time in 10 weeks. No word on how North Korea is doing or even where its leader is. Much more on that in today's show. Russia's prime minister says he has COVID-19. Mikhail V. Mishustin announced the news on a video conference call with the Russian president. Putin downplayed COVID-19 risks early on,

but has taken it seriously now that it's quickly spreading through the country. Another 3.8 million American workers filed for unemployment last week, which brings the six-week total to over 30 million. That's just under 10% of the country that's unemployed. It's a historic number. It's also probably an undercount. The Brad Pitt of the Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Anthony Fauci, says it's doable to have millions of doses of a COVID-19 vaccine available by January. He didn't offer a lot of details, but there's been a fair amount of reporting on how to accelerate the vaccine approval process. We even did some on this show a few weeks back.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti says that all L.A. County residents can now get tested for coronavirus whether or not they have symptoms. Plus, the weather's nice. They got beaches. But now, not all of them will be open anymore after pictures this past weekend of packed beaches during a heat wave caused an outcry. California Governor Gavin Newsom decided today to shut them down in Orange County, just south of Los Angeles, starting Friday. Federal guidelines on social distancing are set to expire tonight. President Trump has shown no interest in extending them, even though his own public health experts are urging extreme caution to states relaxing their stay-at-home orders. This daily coronavirus update we've been doing on Today Explained is also expiring tonight at midnight. We're going to retire it, but hope it's been useful to you. We'll of course still be making plenty of episodes about this pandemic on the show,

and you can get the latest on the coronavirus at Vox.com at your convenience, and you can keep in touch via email. We're TodayExplained at Vox.com, and we're on Twitter at Today Und explained. I'm at Rob's room. Thanks. final buzzer. You're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about

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Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Alex Ward, Defense Vox co-host of our World League podcast. Let's not waste anyone's time. Is Kim Jong-un dead? We don't know, but my best guess is that he's not. Why does TMZ think he's dead?

They think everyone's dead. Too soon. Too soon. I will say that TMZ does have a pretty immaculate track record of knowing when celebrities have passed, but I just don't think they have the deep inside scoop on North Korea. Why does anyone think he's dead? We haven't seen him for a really long time. Like how long? Since April 11th. That's a really long time. That's not even a month. Maybe he's worried about the coronavirus. Like I haven't been

seen in a long time. I've been in a closet for a month and a half. But at least we hear your voice. Like, imagine if Trump wasn't on TV for two weeks. The country would be in a better place. Fine, but you'd probably think there was something wrong. Maybe. So same goes for North Korea. This is a guy who's usually on the front cover of propaganda outlets, who's always out there trying to show himself as the leader of the country. But the fact that he's gone and we don't know anything about him or his whereabouts or his well-being, rumors start to run rampant. Breaking news tonight.

It is out of North Korea, and it's a serious question about the health of Kim Jong-un following recent surgery. Several U.S. officials tell NBC News American intelligence reporting indicates Kim recently had cardiovascular surgery, with some officials saying the intelligence suggests he's incapacitated. Is he gone-gone? Is he not on TV, not on, you know, state-controlled radio, not on social media, nothing? We've got no photos of him, no TikToks of him, no tweets. We've got no pictures on state media.

We've got no, you know, selfies. We've got nothing. All we have is satellite imagery that makes us think we know where he is, but we haven't seen him even after a missile test, which happened on April 14th. What usually happens is a missile test happens. And then the next day where there are pictures of him sort of smiling at the test and, you know, he was there with generals. None of that. Only adding fuel to the fire of maybe there's something physically wrong with Kim Jong-un at the moment. But a couple of caveats here. The first caveat is it is near impossible to know how Kim is doing. North Korea is an extremely hard intelligence target. You know, Kim's health, it would be one of the state's most guarded secrets.

Kim, when he travels, takes a toilet with him. So when he defecates, his team can remove it because they don't want a foreign intelligence service to take the DNA and sort of see how he's doing. Really? Yeah. The other caveat here is we've seen Kim disappear before. In fact, he was gone for about five weeks in 2014. Five weeks, that's significantly more than he's been gone so far.

Absolutely. And look, when he came back, he didn't look too good. You know, he did look a bit sickly. But the North Koreans did soon after launch a massive cyber attack on Sony after that 2014 movie, The Interview, came out. The U.S.'s transgression is a Seth Rogen comedy. North Korea isn't just the setting. Rogen and his co-star James Franco, playing journalists, want to assassinate the country's leader. Want to go kill Kim Jong-un? Totally.

I'd love to assassinate Kim Jong-un. It's a date. So, it could be that Kim is just hunkering down, preparing a big move. He could also, again, be trying to escape the coronavirus. He could be sick. We just don't know. And another thing to note, Kim Jong-il, his father,

when he died, we learned 48 hours afterward. And really the only way we'll know if Kim is fine is if the North Koreans tell us he's dead or there's a new photo of him in state-run media. You know, aside those two things, I take everything with a grain of salt. Tell me more about the satellite imagery. What do you got? What do we know?

So basically, all we really know is that his train, and he has a very personalized, slow-moving, armored train for him to travel. Sounds cool. It is quite cool. But that train,

and there may be more of them of the same kind, but there is a train outside of his facility at Wonsan. That facility is like Kim's Mar-a-Lago. It's next to the water. It's where he goes to hang out. He's got basketball courts and boats and all kinds of cool things out there.

And that's just kind of his chill pad. There is a train there, again, one that looks like his personal train. And we're seeing that from satellite imagery. And so we might think he's there. There's a belief that he could be just hanging out. Why, we're not too clear, and it doesn't tell us anything about his health, but it gives us some clue, perhaps, as to his whereabouts. Kim Jong-un's like, what, 36? I mean, is he a healthy dude? No, man. This is a very unhealthy guy. He's about 5'6", 5'7", 300 pounds, heavy chain smoker, believed to have gout, perhaps because of an excessive love of cheese.

Oh, wow. Look, if you saw videos of him walking around with Trump, he was breathing heavily. His walking was pretty labored. We've seen him with a cane before. Cardiovascular issues run in his family. And so the best guess that we have is that he's a relatively unhealthy guy. But even with the gout, even with being overweight and smoking a lot, I mean, 36 would still be exceptionally early to be having, who knows,

a heart attack or something like that. Is there a chance that he might have the coronavirus? Is the coronavirus making its way through North Korea? North Korea denies that the coronavirus has made it there, but it defies logic. I mean, you know, they share some border with China, for example, which was the origination point for the coronavirus. And I've read reports and I've talked to people who say that, of course, the coronavirus has made it to North Korea. It doesn't seem to be massively widespread, but that may also be because it's hitting more of the countryside where there is not, and you know, there's not real media there, so it could be hidden away from folks. And so one theory is that maybe Kim is just hiding out,

not trying to get the coronavirus. That being said, I mean, of all the countries on planet Earth, isn't North Korea potentially one that could avoid an outbreak because there isn't a lot of international travel in and out of the country? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that, you know, it can close borders. It is hard to get in and out without special permissions. But also, there is tons of smuggling at the Chinese-North Korean border, which is pretty long, and some with the North Korean-Russian border. And so it's completely possible that some people who were sick and working gave it to someone in North Korea, or some North Korean went into China, got sick, came back. It defies logic again that North Korea would somehow be immune. It is probably not as badly hit as a bunch of

other countries, but there's no way the coronavirus is not raging through that country as well. Why do you think North Korea hasn't just come out and spoken about this situation? Probably two reasons. The first would be, you know, Kim is actually in bad shape and they don't necessarily want to say that he is. It is also extremely helpful for the North Koreans to see how the world reacts to this.

They want to know how, you know, Americans on Twitter talk about it. They want to know how the press covers it. How do countries react? They gain a lot of intelligence from learning about how a two-ish week plus absence of Kim Jong-un looks. I mean, they are watching C-SPAN. They are reading Vox articles. We know this because they have cited Vox before. So seeing how I write, listening to how this podcast does an episode on it, listening to questions to Trump, all of that informs North Korea as to, well, how do other

countries think about our country and talk about our country, that helps them at the end of the day. What does it mean if something is wrong with them? What does it mean for the world? Well, for North Korea, the unquestioned leader, the guy who is the grandson of the person who founded the country, the son of the last leader, the guy who made an entire government revolve around him, if he is gone, then there's just a leadership crisis and we don't know what happens next.

And for the world, you know, if you're China, you're Japan, you're South Korea, you're the United States, the last thing you want is a country with a growing and dangerous nuclear program without a leader

and without any sense of safety over how it might be used or whether they are actually in safe hands. It would be a disaster for North Korea itself and a real crisis for the world. More with Alex in a minute. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Thank you. pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions

and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M-P.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions apply. Alex Ward, what is the rest of the world saying about Kim Jong-un's absence? Let's start with South Korea. South Korea says everything's fine. Everyone should calm down. In fact, really? Yeah. When I was talking to officials in South Korea, they were like, look, everything's good. Like, we haven't seen anything change. Then you had the Blue House, their White House, say everything looks fine. And then you had an advisor to President Moon Jae-in say, look, we've got intel that he's up and well.

And so the South Koreans, more than anybody really, are the ones saying that all this talk of Kim being incapacitated or dead or whatever, that all of that is just hyperbolic, that in fact he's probably just fine. Interesting. What's up with that? Well, that might be the intel they have. I mean, if any country's going to have good intelligence on what's going on in North Korea, the South Koreans are a pretty good bet. And how about the United States? The president obviously has a relationship with Kim Jong-un as well. So the first rumblings we heard from the U.S. were in a story in CNN where

an unnamed intelligence official told CNN that Kim was in grave danger after a cardiovascular procedure. And then, you know, that's when this kicked into high gear as, oh man, maybe something's wrong with Kim. Trump got asked about Kim's health, and he initially was like,

Well, these are reports that came out, and we don't know. And then he was asked about this again a second time, and initially was like, well, these are reports that came out and we don't know. And then he was asked about this again a second time. He's like, I hope he's fine. I do know how he's doing, but I don't want to get into it. Did he elaborate? No. I mean, all he said was like, you have a very good idea, but I can't talk about it now. You know, I can only say this. I wish him well. That could imply that maybe Trump knows something is amiss with Kim. Hmm. Does he have an heir? He has children, but they are young.

And so this is one of the great sort of questions and why we are all also wanting to know how Kim Jong-un is doing, because we do not know who would be next. There would be a huge succession crisis in North Korea. It is extremely hard to have a hereditary communist regime. We've seen it passed down from son to son already. Kim Jong-un is the third leader of North Korea, but we don't know who might be next if he were to pass now. And right now there's a bit of a Game of Thrones perhaps happening in North Korea. I was born to rule the seven kingdoms, and I will. Is that the HBO show you want to reference

you don't want to reference Succession? I do what I want. And what I've decided I'd like to do is to formally ask you to come in and be the next chief executive of this company. I don't think I'm the right person. No, because more people die in Game of Thrones violently. Bleak.

Yeah. You know, who's in charge? We don't know. We can venture some guesses, though. What's your best guess? Kim Yo-Jung. That's his sister who made a big splash at the Olympics in South Korea a bit ago. Kim Yo-Jung made her public debut representing Pyongyang at the 2018 Olympics,

impressing her hosts with her easy grace and charm. She met personally with the leader of South Korea. She's also put out statements in her own name. She seems like Kim Jong-un's right-hand woman, the person he trusts the most in the world. And one of the mythologies you need to know of North Korea is that the Kim family comes from the Mount Paektu bloodline. And so this is the mythical birthplace of all Koreans.

And if you are not part of that bloodline, you would struggle to have legitimacy to lead the country. So she could be Kim 4.0. The reason to think she might not lead is she is a woman. And North Korea is extremely distrustful of women. The Confucian system there also prioritizes men as leaders. And so there are many who believe that if she were to be given the reins, that there would be extreme opposition to her leadership. She could overcome that by virtue, again, of her bloodline, or she could follow in her, you know, brother and father and grandfather's playbook

and be extremely ruthless and start to order the killings of people who oppose her rule. Or she could act very belligerently in the world to solidify her place, including perhaps, as some worry, have a missile launched even closer to the United States than before to show that she is very serious and very aggressive in that role. What's the best case scenario for the planet right now? Is it that Kim Jong-un is actually healthy and resumes his sort of public appearances and everything goes back to normal? Or is it that maybe he's sick and someone else take over and who knows, it leads to a more humane situation for the people of North Korea? It's completely subjective. I would argue that none of the options

look particularly good. If Kim Jong-un were to still be alive, then, you know, the Kim Jong-un we know, the guy who's willing to meet with world leaders, including the American president, continues. But we know that he's also building nuclear weapons still. We know that he's an extremely ruthless guy who is still not really feeding his people, who has relatives killed in order to maintain his power.

I mean, this is a bad dude, but there would be more continuity than change. If he were to be, let's say, incapacitated, well, then you have a succession crisis. Then you have people jockeying for control, and it could be – you could imagine somewhat of a civil war as well. And that could be extremely destabilizing, and you don't want a civil war in a country with nukes. There's just no reformer in North Korea. In fact, the only real person who considered a sort of Western opening was Kim Jong-nam, who was the firstborn of Kim Jong-il, the last leader, and Kim Jong-un had him killed.

The most likely future for North Korea, regardless of whether Kim Jong-un is alive or someone else takes over, is that it will continue to be an open-air prison, that people will struggle

to eat food, make money, and that all of the state will revolve around whoever the leader is. Alex Ward has a podcast. It's called Worldly. Today's episode is about something otherworldly, those UFOs that were in the news this week.

Check it out. This is Today Explained. Thank you.