Lisa Perry This is Lisa Perry, and you’re listening to AT THE BRINK, a podcast about the dangers we face from nuclear weapons, and the stories of those who are fighting to protect us. He’s not rational, we’re not dealing with…even with someone like Joseph Stalin, who had a certain rationality to his barbarity. John McCain: This crazy fat kid that’s running North Korea. Despite this pressure, the North Koreans pushed ahead to develop a sizable nuclear arsenal, and missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads to much of the United States.įire and Fury in the Hermit Kingdom: North Korea’s Nuclear Program But this too fell apart when the incoming Bush administration surprisingly jettisoned the deal, choosing an aggressive strategy of sanctions and regime change. Once again, a promising deal was agreed upon. President Clinton again called on William Perry, who was out of government by then, to lead a negotiating team in partnership with South Korea and Japan, in what came to be called the Perry Process. In the middle of a tense White House meeting preparing for potential war, they received a phone call from former President Carter that he had negotiated a deal to stop the reprocessing.īut in 1999, a new crisis flared up when North Korea started testing long-range missiles. President Bill Clinton responded by declaring this a red line and asked his new Secretary of Defense, William Perry, to draw up plans for a missile strike on their reactor. In 1994, North Korea announced they were beginning to remove plutonium from their reactor to make weapons-grade material. The story veers back and forth between crisis and resolution and a new crisis. But is this accurate? In this episode, we look back at the history of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and talk with people who have actually met and worked with North Koreans, to try and understand their motivations and what the future holds for this dangerous relationship. Donald Trump’s taunt of Kim Jong Un as “little rocket man” was just an extreme example of the long-standing narrative of North Korea as a hopelessly backward country led by cartoonish villains, rogue maniacs looking for an excuse to launch a war against the West.
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