North Korea's girl dad dictator

0:00Noel King:Some of the most enduring images of North Korea are these satellite pictures taken at night. You've probably seen them. The neighboring countries are ablaze with the lights of cities and towns. But once you hit North Korea's borders, it's just black. Everything's dark. North Korea is very poor and has very poor infrastructure that includes electricity because of years of sanctions from the U.S. and other countries aimed at punishing it for its nuclear program. Until now, that's how we've understood North Korea. But the Wall Street Journal recently reported a staggering statistic. Last year in the capital Pyongyang, more than 10 ,000 homes were built.

0:36Noel King:That's more than were thrown up in either Los Angeles or Chicago. Something is happening in North Korea. The image that's been painted for us by recent visitors to the North Korean capital is an economy that's on the uptick, an economy that's thriving. And that was hugely surprising to us. Coming up on Today Explained from Vox, boom times in the hermit kingdom.

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2:11Noel King:Tim Martin is the Korea Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal, and he recently co-wrote this great piece about a completely unexpected development in North Korea. It's a North Korea that really, compared to just a few years ago, is modernizing. You can see smartphones on the streets. There's more cars. There's traffic jams. There are new street laws telling North Koreans not to jaywalk. There are so many vehicles. North Korea is brighter from outer space at night. So this is a completely different picture than certainly what maybe the world thinks about North Korea. And it's even a different picture than people who've been to North Korea many times and hadn't gone in many years.

2:56Just five years ago, Kim Jong-un at an important congressional party meeting had said, I'm sorry, the economy is not working. Our policy has failed on the economy.

3:15He shed tears in public.

3:23He admitted in a rare way for a North Korean leader, we have food shortages. We are struggling. And then right on the heels of this was COVID. And North Korea has no, because it's so poor, it doesn't have great public infrastructure. So anytime there's a pandemic or a broad health scare, they have to shut everything down. So they closed its borders and that cut off their trade, particularly with China. And that really asphyxiated the economy. So even by North Korea's own sort of unique standards of economic vibrancy, they were at a weak point. And this is where Kim Jong-un was five years ago, in a shocking way, issuing a mea culpa to his people saying, we're not doing well.

4:11And what we've seen over those five years, it's a bit of luck. It's a bit of focus. It's a bit of Kim Jong-un wanting to reassert control over his economy. But they've had multiple ways to produce this economic rebound.

4:33North Korea got a break, if you will, with Russia's invasion to Ukraine. What did North Korea do? They first began offering munitions, supplying munitions en masse to Russia's war machine. We see how much military support Russia gets from North Korea. North Korea is providing significant munitions. to Russia and other weapons. And the two countries signed a mutual defense pact, and that laid the legal groundwork for what took the North Korea-Russia relationship to a whole new level. Now to a development in the war in Ukraine. The U.S. State Department says there are signs that North Korean troops are in Russia.

5:16According to Ukrainian intelligence, Pyongyang is sending up to 30 ,000 more troops to bolster Russian forces along the front lines. North Korea initially sent some 11 ,000 troops to Russian territory last year. And that was the deployment of thousands of North Korean troops to the Russian front lines to fight the Ukrainians. And this provided Putin and Russia something it really needed, bodies and soldiers. And North Koreans fought and died for this war with Ukraine on Russia's behalf. So this injected billions of dollars into the regime. And to give you some perspective, North Korea's GDP is estimated to be about$27 billion annually.

6:11And they've accrued, according to some estimates, more than$10 billion just in the past two and a half years or so. Whoa. It's a significant amount of money or assets flowing into North Korea. So the Russia part is very important. There are two other pieces to this. China is North Korea's main benefactor and trading partner. It warehouses many of Kim Jong-un's cyber warriors who, again, to the point of North Korea's relatively small GDP, which is not even 1 % of what the US's GDP is. these hackers and cyber operatives bring in at least$1 billion a year to the regime. And North Korea has also shown itself to be the world's best thief of cryptocurrency.

6:59They've pulled off multiple massive heists of exchanges, even over a billion dollars in a single action.

7:08Noel King:All right. So tell me about what this looks like on the ground. Let's say I'm in the capital Pyongyang and I'm looking around. What might I see there that I wouldn't have seen five years ago? It would be noisy. There's so much construction happening in Pyongyang. And it would be noisy not only from the construction and the bulldozers, but also there'd be a lot more cars on the streets. And not just unrecognizable North Korean brands. You're seeing Chinese EVs. And we talked with Westerners who had traveled dozens of times to North Korea before the pandemic. And these same visitors went back and Pyongyang, at least, looks like any other major city in that lots of people have smartphones, their necks are craned looking at their screens.

7:56This just shows North Korea has more resources, more of a technological digital ecosystem, and they're trying to put themselves more on par with the rest of the world.

8:10Noel King:Okay, so there is a thing that sometimes happens in countries that put themselves on par with the rest of the world, which is you get richer, life gets more convenient, and you start thinking a little bit outside of, you know, the box that you've been living in, right? So you're talking about smartphones, ride-hailing apps, digital payments. This is a country that is modernizing very rapidly. Does that mean North Koreans are starting to make any demands? I mean, this is a very, very repressive country. It's sometimes harder to oppress people when they've got iPhones. In fact, I think the opposite is occurring.

8:45Wow. North Korea has learned from countries, say, like China. And you'd think, well, if you have smartphones, you can access the internet and you can learn about the world. And this is the complete opposite in North Korea. They are using technology to tighten its digital news over its population. A North Korean smartphone user doesn't have free run at the internet and information. Everything is tightly controlled by the regime. You're only allowed to access an internet that North Korea chooses. These are the North Korean curated sites for you to go to. These are the apps that we can have you have access to.

9:28Certain things you try to text into your phone, like South Korea, for instance, auto-corrects to the way North Korea refers to South Korea, which is Southern Chosun. The smartphones at any given moment will take a random snapshot of what's on your screen. If a police officer stops you on the street and says, show me your phone, which is a fairly frequent occurrence, then you're subjected to this audit of what you look at on your phone. I think Kim Jong-un is very happy for more North Koreans to have smartphones because, again, it allows this surveillance capability to be supercharged.

10:06Noel King:Is the economic boom benefiting ordinary North Koreans, all North Koreans, or just kind of like a handful of elite up at the top? It is concentrated in the North Korean capital. And it's not like, hey, I would love a view of the beautiful river in downtown Pyongyang, so I'm going to move there. No, only people connected to the party, people with money, people with political connections can even live in the capital. So if you leave Pyongyang, the country still is very poor, malnourished, half the population doesn't have enough food. So yes, it's disproportionately going to Pyongyang and the elites, but it's not the only area where North Korea is seeing growth.

10:50Noel King:If the economic growth is based on a war that will someday hopefully end and some scams, however successful, is that really a recipe for a strong economic future for this country? Many of these drivers could be fleeting for sure. Russia's war machine could rev down if there's an end to the war in Ukraine. But I think there would be a long tail there in terms of Russia wanting a cheap way to replenish many of its munitions. So how sustainable is this? I think Kim Jong-un has a degree of comfort politically, militarily, and now economically. And that allows him to sort of call the shots. Does he want to re-engage with the U.S.?

11:36Does he even need a sanctions deal at this point?

11:41One of the benefits of where Kim Jong-un has his economy at the moment is he can do what he wants. There aren't tough questions being asked. He's controlling the inflow and outflow of massive parts of the economy. If you imagine a world where sanctions are lifted and tons of outside capital from South Korea or the U.S. or Japan is flowing in, these are foreigners. Bringing the investment, snooping around, seeing if their money is being properly deployed. That's a risk to Kim Jong-un. Ultimately, there's probably a way he tries to achieve an economy that has outsiders coming in and investing in the country that can lift more of the country out of poverty.

12:22But I think for right now, he's very comfortable.

12:35Noel King:That's Tim Martin, the Korea Bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. Coming up, Kim Jong-un's heir apparent. She's stylish. She can fire a rifle. She can drive a tank. And she's a teenager.

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16:26This is Today Explained. I'm Anna Fifield. I am a journalist and I wrote a book called The Great Successor, The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong-un.

16:40Noel King:Anna, there is a girl who we've seen in photos alongside Kim Jong-un. We've seen her at missile launches, military parades, other big state events. This girl is his daughter. What do we know about her and why is her presence at his side getting so much attention? Well, there's a lot we don't know about her, but what we think we know is that her name is Kim Joo-ae and that she is about 13 years old. And we have a very unusual source for this information, which is Dennis Rodman. Oh, who became the first American to meet with the new leader of North Korea? The wild child of basketball, Dennis Rodman.

17:21I said, your grandfather and your father did some bad things. I said, but you are trying to change something. When Kim Jong-un was just in the beginning of his reign, there was an effort by some Americans to kind of reach out to him and see if they could get in contact, find out a little more about this guy. And everybody knew that Kim Jong-un loved the Chicago Bulls. Chicago Bulls! So first of all, a request was made to Michael Jordan. He was not interested in going to North Korea for some reason, but Dennis Rodman was up for going to North Korea. I'm sorry that my country and your country are not on good terms.

18:03But for me, sir, thank you. You're my friend for life. And that started this weird period of kind of basketball diplomacy when a United States main envoy to North Korea was a washed-up basketball star. And when the basketballer went to North Korea about 12 years ago and met Kim Jong-un, he was also introduced and he held this baby. In an interview with The Guardian, Rodman filled the newspaper in on the young dictator's parenting skills. He's a good dad and has a beautiful family. I held their baby, Jue, and spoke with Ms. Rhee as well. For him to open his heart and his mind to give me his daughter for the first time in history, I hold his kid.

18:46And so he was told at the time that the baby was about one year old and her name was Kim Joo A. So that is how we base our knowledge of her name. Not the most reliable source, but the North Koreans have never named her in state media or anywhere. So that's the name we're going with until they tell us otherwise. But the reason she's gathered so much attention over the past couple of years is that she has emerged at her father's side repeatedly and in the most unusual circumstances. She has been going to intercontinental missile launches. At the launch of North Korea's newest long-range missile, a strangely tender moment from Kim Jong-un, hand in hand with his young daughter, the first time any of his children have been officially seen in public.

19:34So it's very significant to see how senior Northcun officials will shake her hand, bow to her, be very respectful towards her despite her being a child. She's been out with her father on a bunch of occasions, often wearing similar outfits like a leather bomber jacket like he was wearing when they drove a tank together. So very unusual daddy-daughter outings for a 13-year-old. And this, of course, has stoked a lot of speculation that she is his heir apparent and he wants her to take over the family business, which is running a totalitarian regime.

20:11Noel King:Yes, it is indeed a family business. He took over, Kim Jong-un took over from his father. And you and others have written about how he was kind of kept hidden before he was announced as the next leader of North Korea. Why do you think Kim Jong-un is being so public with his own kid, given that the way he came up was different? Yeah, well, Kim Jong-un is the third generation leader of North Korea. So they've only had a transition twice before. So there's really no set way of doing this. But with Kim Jong-un's father, he spent 20, 30 years being promoted through the ranks and appearing in public as a full grown man to get the sense of legitimacy.

20:53the idea that he was the next leader of North Korea. But with Kim Jong-un, it was extremely rushed. His father had a stroke in 2008. Now South Korean officials are saying that Kim had brain surgery after suffering a stroke about August 15th. And died at the end of 2011. Kim Jong-il died aged 69 of a heart attack on December the 17th, according to state media. In Pyongyang, tears for their supreme leader. North Koreans lined up to mourn the death of Kim Jong-il. Father General, where are you, she wailed. Grown men, many in uniform, blubbered like babies. So really, Kim Jong-un was unveiled to the public in 2009 and then had this extremely fast rolling out, kind of debut period where he was very, very quickly promoted through the ranks, made a general given political office in the Workers' Party of Korea, the ruling party.

21:56There is only one. He is truly not a ready-for-prime-time player. The Chinese themselves are a little worried about whether he's really up to the task. So it seemed to be quite hairy for a while there. Like it wasn't clear that he was going to be able to win the support of these octogenarian apparatchiks who'd been there for decades running this system. So I can only deduce from this now that Kim Jong-un wants to make sure that his air doesn't go through the same very rushed, difficult process. So it's not like, I mean, Kim Jong-un is still in his mid-40s, although he doesn't look particularly healthy, but it's not likely that he's about to hand over leadership anytime soon.

22:42But I think he's probably laying the groundwork for in 30 or 40 years for his daughter to take over because it would be an extremely difficult thing for this dynastic communist monarchy to go move to a fourth generation, but even more so for a woman to take over in a society that is extremely patriarchal.