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CNN Live Saturday

North Korea Uses Nuclear Weapons As Bargaining Chip

Aired October 18, 2003 - 18:33   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Peter Maass says the leader of North Korea is a very serious guy, who uses nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip. Maass wrote the cover story for tomorrow's "New York Times" magazine. And he joins us right now from New York.
Peter, in your article, very interesting by the way, in your article, you actually compared Kim Jong Il to Jimmy Carter. You have to explain this one.

PETER MAASS, NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: Yes, I do need to explain that. I described Kim Jong Il as being like Jimmy Carter on an authoritarian tear. And what I meant in that sense is of course Jimmy Carter was well known for micro managing affairs at the White House in a very similar manner, although presiding over a dictatorial regime. Kim Jong Il is a micro manager in Pyongyang. He works 20 days a day virtually, sleeps only four hours a night, reports across his desks at all times on all affairs really.

Everybody who's met with him, people who have worked with him described him as being incredibly well informed about what's going on, not just in North Korea, but also outside North Korea.

LIN: I mean, in fact, he's a TV junkie. He breaks one of his own rules, doesn't he?

MAASS: Well, the rules don't apply to him. And yes, he is. I mean, he watches not just South Korean television news, but also Chinese news, Russian news, and as well as CNN. They could be watching now, I suppose.

LIN: Which if an ordinary North Korean citizen were to do the same, would that be breaking the law?

MAASS: That would be pretty much if you're an ordinary North Korean citizen, you're caught watching foreign news broadcasts, that would be pretty much a direct one-way trip to prison camp.

LIN: Yes. And one of the premises for him actually watching television is because that his eyesight is beginning to fail him?

MAASS: Right. When he met with South Korean media executives a couple of years ago, he said to them that he doesn't read newspapers very much anymore because his eyesight is failing. And as a result, he tends to watch a lot more television.

LIN: You write that like poison, dictators come in different strains, and that some are more toxic than others. How does this apply to Kim Jong Il?

MAASS: Well, he's toxic to his own people. I mean, I just think we all know, and North Korea is really one large gulag, one of the things that really kind of marks on that is being perhaps that they're different from some other well known vicious dictators we've seen around the globe, is that actually in person with foreign visitors, he's extremely charming. He can be very friendly. He cracks jokes. He's very solicitous when Madeline Albright visited. He made sure she wasn't forced to drink too many toasts during banquets, because he didn't want this to be forced upon a female visitor.

He can be quite charming, yet the contrast is that he presides over one of the most vicious regimes on the planet today.

LIN: So you think his charm is actually a weapon of sorts?

MAASS: Well, it certainly is vis a vis the South Koreans. When you talk as I did with a lot of the South Koreans who have visited North Korea and met with him, they come away charmed. And they think, hey, this guy's not really so bad. We should give him a chance. We can work with him.

The American visitors are not persuaded that easily. But to be sure, it's a very useful weapon for any dictator to have because it disarms your opponents or at least confuses them. And he has done so.

LIN: So how do you think that applies in a situation where President Bush is going to the APEC Summit. He is going to be - he is going to be asked to once again intervene with North Korea and its development of the nuclear program, but the Bush administration's stance is that this is something that China and Russia need to deal with directly head on with North Korea.

MAASS: Yes, when particularly China, because actually, you know, we can talk about what the Bush administration should or shouldn't do, but really, in some ways, in many ways, the future of North Korea is in the hands of the Chinese. They share a very large border with North Korea. They provide North Korea with oil and food that really keeps the North Korean regime alive.

If the Chinese decided to, they could cut off those supplies. They could also open their border a bit, let out North Koreans who want to flee North Korea. And this would pretty much destabilize Kim Jong Il's regime quite quickly.

So far, the Chinese have been uninterested in doing that because they fear chaos and a unified pro-American Korea more than they fear Kim Jong Il, who they really don't like.

LIN: So here you have, in your article, a charismatic, if not nutty character and a dangerous man on the brink of developing a nuclear program. How does the United States deal with him then?

MAASS: It's not easy. And he's not on the brink of developing a nuclear program. He has a nuclear program. And the CIA believes, it's publicly stated, that he probably already has an atom bomb or two, and now might be able to make as many as 20 more.

How does the U.S. deal with that? That's the really difficult position, because I won't have to make those decisions, because on the one hand, if you try to buy him off, you're strengthening his regime, and you probably won't succeed in totally buying him off because it'll take quite a bit to get him to totally disarm. I mean, he'd have to totally trust the United States government. And right now as a member of the axis of evil, he's unlikely to do that.

LIN: Yes.

MAASS: Neither, however, is it easy for the American government to choke his regime so that it falls. Only the Chinese perhaps could do that. There's a limited amount, perhaps, that the U.S. government can do in this case.

LIN: All right, we'll see how the discussion goes when the APEC Summit starts on Monday. And thank you very much.

MAASS: Thank you.

LIN: We'll be looking forward to your article in tomorrow's "New York Times" magazine. Peter Maass.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired October 18, 2003 - 18:33   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Peter Maass says the leader of North Korea is a very serious guy, who uses nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip. Maass wrote the cover story for tomorrow's "New York Times" magazine. And he joins us right now from New York.
Peter, in your article, very interesting by the way, in your article, you actually compared Kim Jong Il to Jimmy Carter. You have to explain this one.

PETER MAASS, NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: Yes, I do need to explain that. I described Kim Jong Il as being like Jimmy Carter on an authoritarian tear. And what I meant in that sense is of course Jimmy Carter was well known for micro managing affairs at the White House in a very similar manner, although presiding over a dictatorial regime. Kim Jong Il is a micro manager in Pyongyang. He works 20 days a day virtually, sleeps only four hours a night, reports across his desks at all times on all affairs really.

Everybody who's met with him, people who have worked with him described him as being incredibly well informed about what's going on, not just in North Korea, but also outside North Korea.

LIN: I mean, in fact, he's a TV junkie. He breaks one of his own rules, doesn't he?

MAASS: Well, the rules don't apply to him. And yes, he is. I mean, he watches not just South Korean television news, but also Chinese news, Russian news, and as well as CNN. They could be watching now, I suppose.

LIN: Which if an ordinary North Korean citizen were to do the same, would that be breaking the law?

MAASS: That would be pretty much if you're an ordinary North Korean citizen, you're caught watching foreign news broadcasts, that would be pretty much a direct one-way trip to prison camp.

LIN: Yes. And one of the premises for him actually watching television is because that his eyesight is beginning to fail him?

MAASS: Right. When he met with South Korean media executives a couple of years ago, he said to them that he doesn't read newspapers very much anymore because his eyesight is failing. And as a result, he tends to watch a lot more television.

LIN: You write that like poison, dictators come in different strains, and that some are more toxic than others. How does this apply to Kim Jong Il?

MAASS: Well, he's toxic to his own people. I mean, I just think we all know, and North Korea is really one large gulag, one of the things that really kind of marks on that is being perhaps that they're different from some other well known vicious dictators we've seen around the globe, is that actually in person with foreign visitors, he's extremely charming. He can be very friendly. He cracks jokes. He's very solicitous when Madeline Albright visited. He made sure she wasn't forced to drink too many toasts during banquets, because he didn't want this to be forced upon a female visitor.

He can be quite charming, yet the contrast is that he presides over one of the most vicious regimes on the planet today.

LIN: So you think his charm is actually a weapon of sorts?

MAASS: Well, it certainly is vis a vis the South Koreans. When you talk as I did with a lot of the South Koreans who have visited North Korea and met with him, they come away charmed. And they think, hey, this guy's not really so bad. We should give him a chance. We can work with him.

The American visitors are not persuaded that easily. But to be sure, it's a very useful weapon for any dictator to have because it disarms your opponents or at least confuses them. And he has done so.

LIN: So how do you think that applies in a situation where President Bush is going to the APEC Summit. He is going to be - he is going to be asked to once again intervene with North Korea and its development of the nuclear program, but the Bush administration's stance is that this is something that China and Russia need to deal with directly head on with North Korea.

MAASS: Yes, when particularly China, because actually, you know, we can talk about what the Bush administration should or shouldn't do, but really, in some ways, in many ways, the future of North Korea is in the hands of the Chinese. They share a very large border with North Korea. They provide North Korea with oil and food that really keeps the North Korean regime alive.

If the Chinese decided to, they could cut off those supplies. They could also open their border a bit, let out North Koreans who want to flee North Korea. And this would pretty much destabilize Kim Jong Il's regime quite quickly.

So far, the Chinese have been uninterested in doing that because they fear chaos and a unified pro-American Korea more than they fear Kim Jong Il, who they really don't like.

LIN: So here you have, in your article, a charismatic, if not nutty character and a dangerous man on the brink of developing a nuclear program. How does the United States deal with him then?

MAASS: It's not easy. And he's not on the brink of developing a nuclear program. He has a nuclear program. And the CIA believes, it's publicly stated, that he probably already has an atom bomb or two, and now might be able to make as many as 20 more.

How does the U.S. deal with that? That's the really difficult position, because I won't have to make those decisions, because on the one hand, if you try to buy him off, you're strengthening his regime, and you probably won't succeed in totally buying him off because it'll take quite a bit to get him to totally disarm. I mean, he'd have to totally trust the United States government. And right now as a member of the axis of evil, he's unlikely to do that.

LIN: Yes.

MAASS: Neither, however, is it easy for the American government to choke his regime so that it falls. Only the Chinese perhaps could do that. There's a limited amount, perhaps, that the U.S. government can do in this case.

LIN: All right, we'll see how the discussion goes when the APEC Summit starts on Monday. And thank you very much.

MAASS: Thank you.

LIN: We'll be looking forward to your article in tomorrow's "New York Times" magazine. Peter Maass.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com