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Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing their army, we're killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
And Hankiora, whatever that is, I don't know.
And here he's got one.
We're running at antiwar.com.
I ran it yesterday on antiwar.com.
For lasting peace, President Moon must lead South Korea out of America's orbit.
Welcome to the show, Stu.
How are you doing?
Oh, just great.
Thanks.
Cool, man.
Appreciate you doing this.
And I really wanted to have you on to talk about this, because I learned a lot in reading this article.
And I've been trying my best to keep up, at least with Jason's stuff, at antiwar.com, if not everything else about what's going on in the step-by-step here through the process of trying to hold some peace talks on the Korean Peninsula here.
And it is a long and in-depth and complicated story.
We've got a President Trump, we've got a President Moon.
Moon Jae-in is his name.
And then, of course, his new relationship.
Seems like he's really driving this car and pushing for this peace.
And Trump seems to want to go along for the ride, although he has his problems inside his administration and everything.
It's a big, complicated mess.
So why don't you just start off by telling us the story, if you could, about overall the most important points about what's going on here and how we've gotten to where we are?
Yeah, well, I mean, I think way too much emphasis is being put on Donald Trump and all of this.
I'll get around to why I think that is.
I mean, for me, there's about four or five key factors why this this thing is happening and why it actually could succeed, but not in the way that most people are talking about it.
And you're right.
I mean, it's really hard to keep track of all this stuff because the media talking points, especially Western media, American media, Canadian media, whatever, they really only focus on an American-centric perspective.
And honestly, like South Korea, well, you have pretty much two or three real narratives that seem to go on.
You have the Trump is being played by Kim Jong-un, the wily Kim Jong-un, who can only have nefarious motives.
North Korea is trying to get more attention, yada, yada, yada.
Like, it's the same.
It's the same talking points over and over again.
South Korea is completely left out in all of this for the most part.
There is some discussion about Moon Jae-in being a pro-peace candidate and all of this.
But they're kind of shunted to the sidelines in terms of actually being a factor in how this whole thing is going to play out.
So as far as the four or five key things to keep in mind here as to what's happening, I think, number one, you have to really look at the domestic conditions of South Korea.
So basically, if we're willing to consider the possibility that South Korea is important in all of this, then you have to look at the domestic factors and what's happening.
But first, let's go back to the meeting that happened between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un.
I think it was on May 26th after Donald Trump said the talks, the Singapore talks, weren't going to happen.
When they got together, I believe it was North Korea that made the call, the sudden call to Moon.
And I don't think he was expecting it.
That's my understanding.
Not that I have a direct line with Moon Jae-in or anything.
But based on reports, it sounds like he wasn't really expecting it.
And he accepted immediately.
And when he went up there and they embraced and showed the world that these two parties are, I mean, they're speaking the same language.
It's incredible.
They only have to drive a few, like, tens of kilometers or miles to meet each other.
The fact that this hasn't been done before on the North Korean side in such a fashion, in such a rapid fashion, is incredible in itself.
And the fact that it happened directly after the U.S. said the peace talks weren't going to happen is really, really amazing, actually.
I mean, everything changes by this meeting.
It shows South Koreans that they actually are agents in the process.
It shows the world that they're agents.
And it forced Donald Trump, really, to come back to the table, because it would have looked very, very bad for the Americans to not, at that point, to not even be willing to consider the prospects of peace.
So, I mean, my wife's Korean, and I know quite a few Koreans through her here.
I'm in Canada now, but as you mentioned, I lived in Korea for a really long time.
Things have really changed there.
So we'll go to the domestic factors and talk about what's happening there and why it's important.
So there's been an absolutely really surprising and unbelievable increase in political consciousness over the last couple of years, especially among young people.
And what brought this on was a national tragedy.
There was a ferry called the Sewol Ho, it's just a passenger ship, and it was carrying young, I believe they were high school students mostly, on a couple days school trip to an island in the south of Korea.
And the ship sank, and it sank because of like extreme corruption among the operators of the ship.
They were carrying too much cargo.
It's not really important why, but this was a really, really, like this really shook the nation.
And the president, Park Geun-hye at the time, or Park Geun-hye as it's written in English, she was missing in action while this was going on for seven or eight hours.
She didn't even respond.
And that kind of spun, why was this happening?
And then there was a leak of this tablet of all the details of her corruption.
And it just kind of spun out from there.
And people were so absolutely devastated by the tragedy and outraged by the lack of proper response from Park Geun-hye and her administration.
And then everything, the cover got blown off of all the stuff that she was doing.
And people really woke up to this.
And I mean, there were- I got to say, just as an aside, isn't it interesting when you see actual accountability in a foreign government somewhere?
Like Ehud Olmert in Israel, which you would think that if anybody's above the law, it's the Israelis, but no, Ehud Olmert went to prison.
In fact, a previous Israeli president went to prison for rape.
Olmert went to prison for corruption.
In America, they never go to prison.
A governor going to prison?
Can you imagine?
I guess there was that Blagojevich guy, but that's such an outlier, you know?
There's nothing like this where a government could really fall over this kind of scandal, not in America.
That's why I love just the commentary on South Korea in general.
You hear so much about how corrupt it is there.
And it's true because a lot of past presidents have been, the last four have been linked to corruption issues.
But the previous two from the Democratic Party that Moon is a part of, they were linked to it.
I mean, some of their family members were involved in some, but it was also, there was a political witch hunt that you wouldn't have seen if they were right-wing presidents.
But I mean, it's just funny, like you said, it is funny to see accountability because everybody talks about how corrupt South Korea's political system is, but actually they have way more accountability than the U.S. does.
Yeah, we're the world's oldest constitutional republic where the rule of law here is more and more of just a ridiculous farce every day.
You'd have to be a damn fool to believe that there's such a thing in this land at all.
People say Afghanistan's the most corrupt country in the world.
Come on.
Well, it's only corrupt because the U.S. keeps funneling money into it.
You can't be corrupt without money involved.
That's right.
I'm sorry.
Go back to teach me more great stuff about this here.
Yeah.
So the people woke up and there were candlelight protests.
I mean, they're all peaceful, totally peaceful protests.
Every Saturday they were organized in Seoul first and then elsewhere in the country.
Now, Seoul, of course, is a city of 10 million people and the metropolitan area is like 23 million or more.
I'm not exactly sure.
But I mean, there's a massive concentration of people there.
And so you can get a lot of people out if you organize and people are willing.
I mean, some of these some of these protests, I mean, they were every weekend, every weekend up until she was impeached.
And some of them featured a million or more people.
And they were incredibly peaceful considering that.
And I mean, people were glued to their TV sets.
They learned they learned how corrupt they are.
I mean, people kind of knew this anyway.
But there was revelations that the former President Park Geun-hye was actually she had a blacklist.
And there were journalists that were she forced them to, I mean, by in communication with the various networks, forced them out of their jobs for criticizing her and all this stuff.
And then kind of people just stopped trusting the only they started really only trusting one media outlet.
And that was the outlet that initially exposed the all the corruption in the first place.
So a lot of people have been kind of glued to this news network ever since.
And it's gained a lot of credibility.
But but people who didn't really care about politics at all before this, I mean, at all, like, it's really incredible to see how like politics has really become a part of the lives of a lot of young people.
And some of the young people that I knew when I was studying there and stuff like that, I mean, a lot of them did care.
But there was a sense that really nothing was happening.
And there was a sense that the elderly population, that especially the population focused in the southeastern part of the country where the real bulwark of the conservatives existed, that there was the sense that really nothing was going to happen until they kind of aged and moved on.
Well, that process sped up immediately with the the tragedy, the Sewolho tragedy, and then the exposure of the corruption and then the ultimate impeachment of Park Geun-hye.
And I have to say, on a personal note, I had completely lost interest in Korean politics by the time I had left the country after she was after Park Geun-hye was elected in 2012.
That was like the death knell of any possibility of North Korean rapprochement.
And actually, President Moon was the he was the candidate.
He was the the guy that really had a chance to win that election over her.
And he lost.
And it was really, really disappointing.
And at the same time, kind of just really killed killed any potential for peace.
And that was that was the case up until 2016.
So things have really changed now.
And suddenly we have a we have this momentum, we have this unexpected change in the total political scene.
And so now the population, the Korean population is a force to be reckoned with.
Yeah, I mean, so this is a really, this is really important context, right?
So what you're saying is, you know, it isn't just well, you know, you have a new president, but you have a new president, a new party, a new generation, an entire, really a realignment, a massive shift away from the old and right wing.
And it sounds like, as you're saying, a shift from complacency, because nothing ever changes, and it's always the same.
And these guys always win to, hey, not only can we win, we can, you know, kick the lady out in the middle of her term, right and prosecute her.
And then not only get a new guy, but get a new guy who really is a qualitative change and can bring the unthinkable into reach peace with the North.
Oh, absolutely.
So how exciting, you know, I guess I'd be out in the streets too, man.
Yeah, and that's what needs to be really considered, I think.
Also, I just want to say, people power is a real thing there.
But the right wing, the party of Park Geun-hye was called the Sejnuridang, New World Party.
And this party is, I mean, they've changed the name various times over the years, but it was basically the military dictatorship.
And there were two presidencies, left wing or, I mean, it doesn't matter that they were left wing, they just were anti-establishment parties that were more pro-peace oriented, that did exist.
But they were always outflanked by the right wing.
And the Congress often happened to be dominated by the right wing party still, despite the presidencies of the pro-peace guys for two administrations in a row.
But even so, like the right wing has pretty much dominated politics for the entire history of Korea as a democratic country and as a dictatorship.
So what has happened now is this New World Party of Park Geun-hye, it's split off into two different sections.
And one was still staunchly supportive of her up until the very end.
And as a result, they've completely, completely made themselves irrelevant.
They're still the most popular right wing party, but their support base is literally just like people over 50.
And most of them from a specific region in the country that benefited from the economic initiatives of the former dictatorships of the past.
And the right wing is, they're totally clueless.
The leader of the party, they renamed themselves the Liberty Party now.
His name is Hong Joon-pyo, and he's still using red baiting tactics, calling people communists if they're pro-peace.
And he's doing this toward Moon Jae-in.
Protesters, he's been caught on tape calling protesters commie bastards before, stuff like that.
So he's become kind of a joke.
And some people really say that he actually, they just kind of laughingly say, they don't believe this, but they laughingly say he must be working for the Democratic Party of Moon Jae-in because he's just making them way more and more irrelevant.
And the other aspect of this is that the Korean CIA has also really exposed themselves over the last couple of years.
Now, first, they were exposed for directly supporting conservative rallies, conservative politicians, making campaign strategies for them and funneling funds to them.
So that was their first exposure in 2016.
And then in 2017, it was exposed.
And this was kind of suspected for a while, but they were funding and they gave jobs to people specifically to go on the main, what is called Naver.
It's kind of like the main search engine, but also the main social network of Korea.
And that's where a lot of people get their news.
And what they did was they would have people go on there and actually make fake news.
Now, fake news is kind of a BS term in our sphere, but fake news is really just a label to denigrate non-mainstream media here.
But there, there was actually fake news that was created specifically by the Korean CIA.
It's called the NIS.
And they would have people create it and it would be pro Park Geun-hye, the former president, and even when she was going to be impeached.
So this was leading up to the 2012 election, and it's suspected that they may have influenced enough people to vote for her that made the difference in the election.
And then, and then even afterwards, even after she had been exposed, they were still doing this, exposed for corruption, they were still doing this.
So, so people aren't going to take their, their BS, like they are, they're on watch right now.
So that's another factor.
So we talked a lot about this, but it's really important.
There is an incredibly strong domestic back backing for Moon Jae-in.
And Moon Jae-in is, was the peace candidate leading up to the election.
And he, of course, is the peace president now.
All right, so tell me more about Moon, because you're saying here, I like the way you say this isn't some lark.
This isn't just a political trick or something.
This guy Moon has wanted a real peace with the North.
It's really why he's a politician?
Is that it?
Well, I mean, I don't know if that's exactly why he's, he's a politician, but he's absolutely, I mean, he was the secretary for the former president Roh Moo-hyun, who was the second Sunshine policy president.
And so he was in charge of implementing that Sunshine policy then?
Uh, yes.
He, well, he would have been directly connected with, with everything.
He probably was, and you know, he probably had many, many private conversations with, with the president, who was his friend at the time.
They'd been long, lifelong friends, as far as I understand, about all the different stuff that he had to go through to try to make this thing happen.
Probably the dealings with the Americans, just the constant dealings with the domestic, the right-wingers.
Yeah.
So he was intimately involved back then.
His parents are North Koreans who had to flee due to the war.
So his extended, you know, his extended family, probably most of them are deceased, but he has a history of familial ties in North Korea.
No doubt he grew up hearing his parents wish or long for, you know, eventual reunification with North Korea and so on.
So yeah, I mean, I think he does have a personal stake in this.
And he did campaign on peace.
So he's also, he also stated during his campaign, the campaign leading up to this, that the US needs to be able to stand up, or South Korea needs to be able to stand up to the US and know when to say no to them.
So, I mean, he's not some shrinking violet going into it.
And people were aware of this when they voted for him.
Well, now, so there's a real problem with the American state here.
I mean, I don't think anybody wants a war on the Korean Peninsula.
As James Mattis said, if we had a war there, it would be the most bitter fighting of our lifetimes, which, I mean, would include Vietnam, right?
And maybe Korea, the last Korean War.
So, you know, that was a pretty serious, let's not do this kind of a thing there.
But they don't really want peace either.
And they're afraid of losing their influence over Japan and over South Korea if they don't have the North Korean threat.
And they're, you know, afraid of, you know, just an overall change in the power dynamics of the region and everything like that.
So, you know, I was kind of only half joking around on Twitter the other day that, you know, I sure hope that the CIA doesn't kill the president of South Korea here or do something, you know, maybe along those lines to ruin this.
We saw John Bolton, which, you know what, maybe on this issue, John Bolton really does represent the establishment, rather than being more of a right wing outlier on this.
It seems like it's, you know, the establishment media, certainly, and the Democrats and everything are coming out against this as hard as they can.
I mean, obviously, there's partisan reasons there, but that's not everything.
But so, I think that's a little bit of the, I don't mean to put too many words in your mouth or anything.
That's sort of the thrust of your article here, too, is that if they really want to make peace, the South Koreans are going to really have to insist that the Americans butt out.
They're going to have to make peace on their own terms that don't rely on the goodwill of the Americans who cannot be counted on.
Yeah, I think that needs to be I think that needs to be highlighted.
So in the article, I kind of backed it up.
The backdrop was really, I mean, beyond the domestic situation, but just the history of the U.S. diplomatically, just internationally in terms of, you know, their penchant for war regime change.
I mean, even just in the Korean peninsula, like North Korea has a long, there's a long history in North Korea, a lot of experience of the U.S. making deals and either not, either going against them or just not following, like with the agreed framework in the Clinton years, they, you know, they made these deals, but very similar to what Barack Obama did with Iran.
Like, it's a great deal, but no sanctions were actually removed.
Same thing happened in the Clinton era, Bill Clinton era.
They made a good, they made a deal that had potential, but they didn't really do anything to really push it forward by the time Bill Clinton left office.
And then it was just low hanging fruit for, you know, a warmonger like George Bush.
And so at that point, North Korea really didn't actually have nuclear weapons.
So, but when, when Bush really, when he, when he, you know, called North Korea axis of evil of these, part of the axis of evil of these things, sanctions and, you know, the war rhetoric was on, on high.
I mean, that really pushed North Korea to first see nukes.
And so they have, they have a long history of, of America not actually ultimately carrying out what they agreed to do.
But then, you know, the, the history after that, Iraq aside, I mean, Libya, what happened in Libya?
I mean, and just Donald Trump recently going against the, you know, nixing the deal that Barack Obama made with Iran.
I mean, there's no reason for, for North Korea to actually believe that the US will follow up on any deal that they do make.
So, so if that's the case, why are they doing this?
Well, they, I think they actually believe that there's something happening internationally and in Korea, in South Korea that gives them a chance that they never had before.
And that, so internationally we have a situation where China is, has more influence than they've ever had economically.
Russia really has more influence than they ever had in terms of global security.
I think they've proven that in Syria and their willingness to really stop the American empire from doing what it wants to do in terms of regime changing Syria.
So they might see in, in this situation, and of course with South Korea, they see a president who proved when he was willing to meet immediately after Trump canceled the Singapore summit, who proved that he's willing to go against what the Americans want.
So yeah, in terms of, in North, in North, from North Korea's perspective, I think that's what they see.
So as far as South Korea goes, if the US doesn't play along, then I, I mean, it comes down to president Moon, in my opinion.
He, if, if he really, really wants peace, he has the domestic backing to go as far as he possibly can to try to string the US along as far as the, as he possibly can, a lot with the help of, of Kim Jong-un, of course, as long as North Korea remains cooperative.
And I think they will be, but I mean, who knows, but it seems that way.
And so if they continue to string this along and continue to push diplomacy, push diplomacy, they may force the US to go along for a while.
But like you said, if Bolton actually does represent the Washington consensus, and I mean, if you look at American history, especially recent history, there's no reason to think that he doesn't.
Also, you have the Democratic Party that is openly stating that they're going to try to prevent Donald Trump from, you know, doing this.
And you have like, so many mainstream liberals who just hate to see Donald Trump succeed at anything.
So this is all just a bad thing from the outset.
Yeah, so there's, there's, there's no reason for North Korea to trust anything that the US does or says.
So there needs to be something more, there needs to be something more.
And so what they're going to do, try to do, I think, is just to try to work with the US as long as they can.
And if the US goes along, that's fine.
But they need to have something else there in case the US backs out.
And I mean, it's, it's hard to predict what's going to happen.
And, but I mean, with, with Russia and China, China there, and they're trying to get involved now.
Kim Jong-un, I don't know if he went to Russia recent, if he actually has gone to Russia yet, but he had agreed to meet Putin directly.
And of course, he has very close ties with China.
There's something there where maybe Russia and China can provide additional security guarantees to North Korea, additional economic incentives to North Korea.
And, and South Korea can be a broker in this.
And they, if they're willing to, can challenge how far the US is willing to push them by making their own guarantees that maybe a war is not going to be permitted from South Korean soil.
No preemptive invasion would be permitted from South Korean soil.
They'd stop the provocative sanctions, or sorry, the provocative military drills that they staged with, with the US annually.
And, you know, not just annually, but very regularly near the North Korean border.
Simulated invasions which are very provocative and have led to many crises in the past.
So there's kind of a cocktail of things that could happen.
South Korean guarantees, but also South Korean agreements with North Korea and Russia, with, with, with North Korea, Russia, and China.
They could convince North Korea that even if the US does back away, or when they back away is probably more likely, they will have enough there that they're finally willing to give up nuclear weapons and feel secure that the Americans aren't going to be able to actually invade this country and commit a regime change.
And I think there's already enough there, but that probably wouldn't happen anyway.
But they need, they need more than what they have now.
And especially economically, they absolutely need an incentive.
And we, and we know that that's part of the reason why they have nuclear weapons certainly is to give them more of a, I hate to say, trump card that would, that would, you know, they could use to either get the US to remove sanctions or to convince everybody else that, that they need to do, they need to give the North Koreans something in order for them to give these nuclear weapons up, if that's what everybody wants.
And there's also, there's also, I mean, the biggest, for me, the biggest question is sanctions because the US isn't, I don't think they're going to assassinate Moon.
I mean, that's kind of a joke, right?
But they, South Korea is still pretty closely economically tied with, with the US, very, very closely tied.
China's way more important to them economically, but they're still very closely tied to the US economically and militarily.
Militarily, that's kind of an identity thing that they can work around.
But, but economically, if the US really tried to, to, you know, turn up the heat on South Korea, that would probably be the biggest issue that Moon would face.
But he has the domestic backing so that if, if the US, if the US kind of went out of its way to try to punish them for continuing to pursue peace around, around them, then I mean, it's gonna, it could be extremely dangerous, extremely dangerous because South Koreans want peace and they absolutely support Moon Jae-in on this.
So.
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Well, now, I wonder what the hell's going on inside the Communist Party and the military in the North, too.
It's nice to just imagine that, in this case, since the dictator's being friendly, that he gets to call all these shots himself.
I don't know how much you know about that.
I guess I've got another question, too, before I forget.
I'll make it your responsibility to not forget to answer both of these.
Isn't it a matter of, too, racing to have a big enough deal soon enough that it doesn't get sabotaged?
Where they give enough concessions, where Trump has to give big enough concessions to them to get them to make big enough concessions fast enough.
I read a thing.
I don't think this was in your piece, but I read something about how the Asians, the way they typically do these things, these kind of baby steps and start slowly in this kind of deal, and the Americans are coming into this, to paraphrase John Bolton, demanding absolute and complete humiliation and capitulation.
And the truth has got to lie somewhere in between, but it's got to be a lot closer to the Americans' point of view on the timeline scale or on the size of the deal scale in order to succeed, right, in order for it to not get sabotaged by other forces.
Well, I think, and again, I think that's where the problem with that is that, I mean, I'm kind of arguing that the US, like, it doesn't really matter what they say or do, even if it's positive.
I mean, this thing, I really think that it's become more than just about the Americans.
Now, like, I used to always believe that South Korea itself was not really a factor in these negotiations for years.
That was the case.
They were just simply a vassal state of the US, and they still are.
I mean, their military doesn't even have control of operations in wartime.
They're still under control of the US.
But they're not just an actor that doesn't have much agency anymore.
I think they're at the point now where regardless of what the US wants, they have their own plan.
And if the US, if John Bolton, whoever, tries to say, no, we're going to do it on these terms at this time, if that's not enough for North Korea and South Korea, then I think they're just going to carry this thing forward without them.
And if that's the case, if that happens, and the US tries to push back, how do they try to push back?
How hard do they try to push back?
If they try to push back too hard, that could be a serious problem with them in South Korea.
As I said, South Koreans want peace, and right now they're very, very politically aware of what's going on.
And I think the longer this goes, the longer this goes, the better, because the hopes are going to be really high if this keeps going forward.
So maybe, like you said, it could be in a way a kind of, I think for the American establishment that doesn't want peace, the longer this goes, the angrier they get, because it's going to be really hard to back away if this keeps going forward.
Hopes are going to be really high here.
And if people are disappointed, and they think that it's the Americans' fault that it didn't go through, I mean, all bets are off.
And I'm telling you, if this gets to 2020, and South Korea has their congressional, I mean, that's a long way down the road, certainly.
But if they're able to still have a peace process going forward at that point, I don't see why they wouldn't be, because this is what Moon Jae-in wants.
This is what Kim Jong-un presumably wants.
And I don't see how it's going to just stop before then.
But if it gets to 2020, which is when they have their own congressional elections, they have a slim minority advantage in Congress right now.
But as things stand, they're going to have a massive majority after that election.
And then Moon Jae-in will have pretty much complete power to do whatever he wants at that point.
So if the U.S. really pushes, he can just say, screw you, and keep doing it anyway.
And then what's going to happen?
Well, so now what about Kim?
He's still got a Communist Party and a military to deal with.
Do you know anything about the incentives going on there?
I have absolutely zero idea what's going on in North Korea, and neither does anybody else.
Damn.
Anybody that claims that they know what's going on in North Korea, seriously, how could they possibly know?
I guess Kim didn't seem like he was afraid to cross the DMZ that they wouldn't allow him to come back or anything like that.
Well, if you think of it, let's just use logic here.
Even if he didn't have—and for sure, when Kim Jong-il died, I thought this was the end of it.
By Kim Jong-il dying and Park Geun-hye getting elected, to myself, I believed that this was it.
There was never going to be any chance for peace.
Because who knows Kim Jong-un?
He's so young.
Is he going to have any agency whatsoever?
All of these questions about this guy.
But he's still in power.
That was years ago.
He's doing it.
It doesn't even matter to me if he is the guy that has the independent power, if he's really the supreme leader, the near godlike power that so many people claim that he has.
He probably doesn't.
I'm sure that every dictatorship has domestic political considerations, and no doubt he has hardliners that he's fending off.
But the fact that he's actually done this and gotten this far suggests that whether he's the main guy or not, whoever is, or the collection of people that are, want this to be happening.
How much do they want it to happen?
That's the question that we'll find out.
But the idea that Kim Jong-un is just doing this to get the spotlight, which is what so many media outlets are claiming, so many ridiculous commentators are saying.
It's nonsense.
He's not a child.
He is a person.
And there's also the idea that somehow in the Kim family, there's this evil gene that they all have, that they're all just completely menacing people.
Well, they're politicians.
Yeah, they're really bad.
They are.
I know that.
I know.
I mean, in fact, I can't remember who was on the show that said that, look, two-thirds of the population of the North are in the military.
It's the most totalitarian garrison state that's ever existed.
There's no question about that.
Oh, there's no question about that.
And that's not what I'm saying.
But what I am suggesting is it's possible that he's still a young man.
It's possible that he's an evil bastard.
There's no question about that.
We can't emphasize that enough.
But maybe he wants to do something with his life, and maybe he actually does want to improve the country.
He was born into this situation.
I know that he's done a lot of really bad things.
Well, he was educated in Switzerland, too.
He has not spent a life in the hermit kingdom.
He's been exposed to all of this stuff.
So he has a somewhat limited view, but a much broader view of the outside world, certainly, than his father.
I forget if it was Tim Shorrock or Doug Bandow or one of my favorite experts I'm quoting there.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And I mean, I'm sure he actually speaks pretty good English, because I would presume he was studying in English at the time.
So it'll be interesting to see if he's actually talking to Donald Trump there in English when they actually meet.
Probably not, but I'm sure he'll understand everything Trump is saying.
Now, again, Kim is a really, no doubt, he's a really bad guy.
He was born into that situation, and that kind of cultivated him into being that.
And hey, he did assassinate his brother, or his older brother, or somebody did.
I believe it was in Malaysia at an airport.
Anyway, so he's a bad guy.
But at the same time, maybe he doesn't want his political legacy to be, you know, if he's successful and successfully able to stay alive until he's 70 and dies a fat man, just fat, corrupt man who's just drank a lot of wine and, you know, had just whatever, everything that his people couldn't have.
Maybe he actually does want something more.
Maybe he wants a legacy of doing something with his country.
Because that's a long time for him to be in power, just without having done anything for 50 years or something like that.
Maybe he does have aspirations of economically improving his country.
And you know what, I mean, it's a complete lie to say that North Korea has not tried to open their country up in the past.
They have.
They haven't been allowed to.
That's what these sanctions are doing.
Yeah.
Well, my hopes are up, man.
You know, John Bolton had his chance, and I guess Pence too, to try to ruin this thing.
And it didn't work out so far.
You know, it's funny, I saw, and I get it, you know, if you just read the headlines here, and like, oh, the meeting is back on again.
Wow, Trump must be some genius or whatever.
But really what happened was President Moon did this great pre-entry move where after Trump cancelled the deal, Moon went ahead and held a surprise, like impromptu, apparently, you know, very immediately scheduled second meeting with Kim, and just said, we're moving forward anyway, Trump, you better get on the train.
It was Kim that called Moon, actually.
Oh, was it, really?
I believe so, yeah.
Kim called Moon, and Moon was like, yeah, I'd love to meet you, let's do this.
I assume Moon probably thought that North Korea was going to just react like they usually do, which was, you know, an outside inference.
Yeah, that's certainly not the result that people want to say, oh, you know, Bolton's just playing third dimensional chess there or something.
I don't think so.
They're trying to ruin that deal.
He's trying to ruin the deal.
That's what Bolton does.
He wants to destroy North Korea.
That's, he loves the Libya model.
That's, that's what he's there for.
That's his goal in life.
He's a psychopath.
There's no question about that.
And look, I mean, yeah, Kim called Moon, and then Moon said yes.
And then they got the ball rolling again.
They are the drivers in this.
Trump is a passenger.
The US is a passenger.
And they don't like being passengers.
That's why there's so much establishment media anger about this.
Like, I really believe that you're going to continue to hear the outcry.
And there will be some serious, serious, I think, I think you're going to continue to see roadblocks put up.
You're going to see provocations, attempted provocations of some kind or another from the US establishment.
Chuck Schumer, the head of the Democratic Congress said the other day that he's going to try to do what he can to prevent Trump from giving too many concessions to North Korea.
Like, they're very actively against this.
I really don't think that this deal is going to be driven by the US.
I don't think it impinges on, or I don't think, sorry, I don't think it hinges on how the US, what the US does, what they agree to do.
I really think there's a way to work around the US.
And I think they're going to have to if they want it to succeed.
And again, the real, the conclusion that I came to at the end of the piece was, as I kind of mentioned a few times here, what could actually happen at the end of the day if the US really, really pushes back against this?
Now, it's possible that there are some people in the Trump administration that are sort of on board, but how much are they really going to give up?
Trump doesn't seem like a guy who's too conciliatory as well.
So he probably thinks he can make a deal, but maybe it's always going to be on his terms, right?
North Korea is not going to be for that.
So if in the end the US backs out, and I think they probably will, I hope they don't, but I don't think that that's really optimistic.
And I really, again, I don't think the North Korea is going to give up nukes just because of something that the US offers as well.
We established that they can't be trusted.
So the North and South are going to have to work around them.
But if the US really pushes back, that's when South Korea's alliance with the US is seriously going to be tested.
And I mean, there's a lot to test there, because they're very, very, they're very ingrained.
The military is still under the control of the US in wartime.
They train with each other all the time.
I mean, it's, there's a lot that Moon would be up against there, but he has unprecedented domestic backing to push it if he's willing.
Calling all public choice theory economists, right?
What an interesting game of incentives here for you algorithm, mathematical calculus geniuses to wade through.
I don't know.
It seems like, right, like, in a way, an interesting experiment in these different competing incentives on the different sides to see what can come out of it, you know, and with so much at stake.
Well, this is Moon's legacy.
Now, when I, and he's not in the South Korean constitution doesn't allow for two terms, they have a five term presidency, and that's it.
So he doesn't have the incentive to try to get reelected.
But I think he seems to be to be a principled man.
And he has a legacy to consider here.
If he backs away from these talks, because the US doesn't want to be, doesn't want to push the process forward, that's going to look really bad to him.
It's going to look terrible for him.
There was the situation where they had the military drills earlier in May that North Korea reacted very strongly against as the diplomatic process was going on.
They had the, I believe they were planning on having B-52 bombers that are capable of carrying nukes involved.
Since North Korea was completely destroyed by the US in the Korean war, you can see why that might be a sensitive issue.
But anyway, I asked myself, like, why is Moon allowing this to go on?
It's possible that he didn't know it was, the drill was even planned or maybe didn't have the power to stop it.
But I think he'll be looking out for more of these things as time goes on as well.
But if you see these continued drills, then you're going to have to wonder how much power, even despite his domestic political backing, Moon has to prevent his own military and the Americans who are connected to it from staging the provocations.
But yes, he absolutely has his political legacy on the line here.
And as far as Trump goes, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure because he's already pretty much, I mean, the people who do back him now, they're pretty much going to back him no matter what.
And most people just hate him.
So I don't know what his, what at the end of the day, what his incentive is.
I suppose he would love to have that Nobel Peace Prize, you know, hanging up on his wall or whatever.
But it's hard for me to imagine that he's going to be the guy that pushes against all the establishment pressure to keep going, to do what would need to be done to carry it forward.
So we'll see how it goes.
It's like, maybe or maybe, you know, CNN's opposition is exactly what he needs to see this through.
You know what I mean?
Stick it to those Democrats.
How you like me now, Schumer, right?
And then, because it's all personal to him, right?
So how do we, you know, it's just like with Obama and escalating the war in Afghanistan.
One, you could be a tough guy by escalating the war.
Or two, you could be a tough guy by beating Petraeus down and saying, no, you're wrong, you're fired.
And that would be tough, too.
And if that's the way you want to play it, you know, how do you get him to choose B, not A?
That's that kind of thing.
Well, I mean, maybe.
I mean, that's his personality.
And I mean, all the Democrats are saying, oh, this is so irresponsible.
And Trump is way too stupid to be trusted with a negotiation like this.
And Kim is just going to bend him right over a barrel and all of this stuff.
And it seems like, you know what?
I think that's exactly what I want Trump to hear TV say, just to piss him off and commit him to like, hey, Pompeo, you and me are doing this right kind of a thing, right?
Yeah.
And I saw an article from some guy, some talking head in the Brookings Institute there, funded by the UAE, isn't it?
But anyway, he was saying that diplomacy is making war more likely because Trump's going in with it without a plan.
And I'm just thinking, like, what kind of a world are we living in where diplomacy actually makes war more likely?
Yeah, and it's not true.
And it can't, you know what?
If it was Bolton just running this whole thing, then yes, the talks would simply be a pretext to say, see, talks don't work.
Or, you know, we saw he didn't even want to go that far.
He would rather scotch the talks altogether if he can.
But, you know, having talks fail can be a great pretext for war.
But that's not what Trump and Pompeo are doing here, clearly.
No, and even if even if they tried to play that card at the end of the day, and they very well could, I don't think Moon Jae-in is going to let it happen.
He's already said that up until a war actually happens, they decide if a war can be started from the Korean Peninsula.
So there's absolutely no reason to think that they're going to be able to do it with South Korea's acceptance.
And this is where they run into trouble.
They actually have somebody in South Korea who's willing to say no to them.
And we're going to see just how willing he is to say no.
But that's the that's the factor here that changes everything that people need to realize that South Korea is an agent in the process.
And whatever the US wants isn't necessarily the story anymore.
It's not the conclusion.
They can't decide when this ends.
Yeah.
All right, man.
Well, listen, I really appreciate you coming on the show to talk about this stuff.
And I hope you keep writing articles for us at noware.com too.
Well, I have the incentive to do so.
So thanks a lot.
Great.
All right, you guys.
That's Stu Smallwood.
He is an expert, lived in South Korea, has a master's degree in Asian studies from some university in Seoul that I don't know how to pronounce.
And he's currently a translator based out of Montreal, Canada.
He's written this great article.
Oh, and he's written for Global Research and other sites in the past.
And this one is at antiwar.com.
It's called For Lasting Peace, President Moon Must Lead South Korea Out of America's Orbit.
And that's at original.antiwar.com.
Thanks, you guys.
All right, you guys know the deal. foolserun.us for the book, scotthorton.org and youtube.com slash scotthorton show for all the interviews, 4500 of them now going back to 2003 for you there.
Read what I want you to read at antiwar.com and at libertarianinstitute.org.
And follow me on Twitter at scotthorton show.
Thanks.
