North Korea is a relatively small country in quite a difficult neighborhood.

It's surrounded by all the great powers, and so they've played a relatively weak hand very well.

They are a nuclear armed state, and no matter what the US government sort of bobs and weaves around this point, I don't think it's really seriously in question anymore.

Hello, and welcome to GZERO World.

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today I bring you a tale of two dictatorships.

One executes people for insulting clerics.

The other locks people up for listening to the wrong music or applauding to their dear leader half-heartedly.

Both have made Washington their defining enemies for decades.

Both have been saddled by Western sanctions.

Both have supreme leaders that demand unquestioned loyalty.

Yet one of them is dead with their country at war, and the other alive and well, sleeping soundly in Pyongyang.

The takeaway?

In Trump's world, a very big nuclear weapon might be the only thing that keeps dictators safe.

And Kim Jong-un, unlike the late Ayatollah, is packing heat.

Earlier this month, North Korea engaged in a new weapon testing spree, showing off cluster bomb warhead and graphite blackout bombs, all drawing lessons from the Iran War.

Meanwhile, his troops are getting battlefield experience in Russia, at least the ones who make it home.

So this week we take a deep dive into that hermit state and what Kim's global outlook means for the most dangerous nuclear standoff the world isn't talking about.

My guest, Johnathan Cheng, Wall Street Journal Beijing bureau chief and author of the new book on the Kim dynasty, Korean Messiah.

Don't worry, I've also got your puppet regime.

Vladimir Putin here.

With Xi Jinping.

On this episode of our wellness podcast, This Authoritarian Life, we have very special guests.

But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains.

With a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at Prologis.com.

And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is investing in the future, working to create an impact in advanced recycling and in emerging technology companies that will help shape tomorrow.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And... Iran war has upended just about everything.

There's the devastating human toll, over a million displaced cities scarred by weeks of strikes, and the ripple effects, gas prices up, global stock markets on a roller coaster, everyone feeling it.

Everyone that is, except the 25 million people of North Korea who have no idea that Khomeini is dead.

Kim Jong-un made sure of it.

North Korea's state media went dark on his death entirely.

And that silence tells you a lot about how this regime works.

The Kim family has ruled North Korea for three generations on one premise.

The man at the top is untouchable.

That premise is also why North Korea chased a nuclear bomb for decades.

Kim's grandfather, Kim Il-sung wanted it.

His father, Kim Jong-il, wanted it too and tested the first one in 2006.

For years, the world has tried sanctions, summit, sweet talk to get Pyongyang to give it all up.

This past February, Kim formally declared his country's nuclear status as irreversible and permanent.

Then the Iran war happened and suddenly Kim's bet looks like the smartest foreign policy decision of the century.

Kim Jong-un has one more thing going for him.

He and Trump have some history.

In 2017, after threatening to annihilate each other, something improbable happened.

They became pen pals.

- He wrote me beautiful letters, and they're great letters.

We fell in love.

- And the flattery paid off.

Trump now calls North Korea a big nuclear nation.

Recently, in the middle of an Iran war press conference, he couldn't help himself.

We have 45,000 soldiers in South Korea to protect us from Kim Jong-un, who I get along with very well, as you know.

Do you notice he said very nice things about me?

Meanwhile China, Pyongyang's economic lifeline, has quietly dropped denuclearization from its own policy documents.

Nobody's even pretending anymore.

But big questions remain.

How do you contain a hostile nuclear dictatorship, even if you're nominally pals?

Can this hermetic regime survive a fourth generation leader?

And will that leader be Kim's daughter, reportedly now on her way to break the authoritarian glass ceiling?

My guest, Johnathan Cheng, spent a decade reporting on the Kim dynasty and has written a new book about it.

But he also works and lives in Beijing as the Wall Street Journal's bureau chief at a moment when China is quietly repositioning in the global order.

And here's our conversation.

Johnathan Cheng, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure.

You've been to North Korea twice.

You've been covering it for about 10 years now.

- Yeah.

- Tell us what we get wrong about that country.

Yeah, so my working thesis, and it has been at the back of my mind for many years now, is that North Korea is a nation state.

It absolutely is a nation state, like it or not.

It has borders.

It has a flag.

It has an anthem.

It has a military.

It has nuclear weapons.

It has a seat at the United Nations.

But I think we misunderstand it fundamentally if we don't see it for what I kind of think it is, which is a religious society.

I think a lot of people are aware of the personality cult around the Kims.

It's a pretty extraordinary one.

It's one that hasn't really abated for now more than 80 years.

Which when you think about Stalin and the USSR, you think about Mao and communist China, nothing even remotely close to that in terms of the intensity, in terms of the durability of this cult of personality, now in its third generation.

And the nukes are important.

The nukes insulate North Korea from external threats, but the other threat is internal.

And there, I don't know that the Kims have all too much to worry about because they've effectively built what I honestly believe is the most extraordinary cult of personality in human history.

So when you say it's a religious society, you mean embodied in the person of Kim himself.

There is worship, actual worship of that man.

That when they're all standing and they're applauding for minutes and sometimes hours on end, would you say that's authentic?

I do think for the most part it is authentic.

When you've been told one thing and only one thing for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years, I think you might start to believe it.

I think I might start to believe it.

I think many are true believers.

When you see the footage of them weeping, when you see the footage of them overwhelmed with emotion in the presence of Kim Jong-un or his father or his grandfather, we see that with pop stars, we see that with rock stars, we see that with celebrities.

Some people, they're in your presence and they're going to get sweaty palms, they're going to have, you know, the heart's going to beat a little bit faster.

That's something that's very real, even in our very secular society here.

When you live and every room has the portrait of Kim Il-sung on the wall, every badge, pin, lapel over your heart is Kim Il-sung, every time you pass the statue, you're bowing before the statue, you open the newspaper, that's him on the front, you turn on the TV, that's him there, you're singing, literally singing his praises, you're memorizing his scripture.

This is a different thing.

- Now, the censorship regime is incredibly strict.

They've also completely censored the Iran war, the assassination of the Supreme Leader.

I could see how that would be a message of strength, that no one can touch us because we've got nukes, look what happens if you don't.

They don't want to go there.

Any sense of why they would just do literally zero?

Well, I think exactly what you said is probably the answer right there.

They don't want the North Koreans to know about a decapitation strike on their dear leader.

That's the last thing that they want to be talking about, right?

I think they're doing this with Russia, Ukraine as well.

They're doing this with a lot of hotspots around the world.

I think they want to see where things go.

They're the ultimate controllers of the message, certainly within North Korea.

So I think they want to see where things settle.

And certainly, if things continue to go in a bad direction for the US, perhaps we will start to see more from the North Koreans about this.

If Iran looks like they are going to emerge here, perhaps that will be a message that they'll want to share in their own way, in their own time.

Once they had that meeting, those meetings with Donald Trump, and obviously feted all the time, "my good friend, pen pal, they sent me letters."

I mean, he was excited.

Historic meeting for Trump.

Was that covered in North Korea as a truly historic, like, we are now on the global stage?

- I think it's a great question, and yes, they did portray Kim Jong-un with Donald Trump shaking hands, front page of their newspaper, because, look, there's a lot of talk about China and the US being a G2 right now, but you have Kim Jong-un here getting a handshake, three handshakes, with the President of the United States.

That's something that his father and his grandfather could never have attained.

And that's, I think, a testament to what he's managed to, he's been a custodian of what was built for him.

He didn't create the nuclear program, but he took the nuclear program, arguably to where it is now, the missile program as well.

And so you have this state where actually all three of the Kims who have been in power, they're really good at the family business.

They're very good.

And a lot of these dynasties, the wheels start to fall off, whether it's a corporate dynasty or a political dynasty, by the third generation.

We don't see that with Kim Jong-un.

He took power at less than 30 years of age, but he's proven himself to be no less masterful at this than his father and his grandfather.

He has a stronger relationship with Russia now, sent over some 15,000 troops to fight in Ukraine.

A lot of them died.

Was providing stipends and apartments, I remember, to the families.

So obviously this is something that they knew about, they talked about, and it didn't go all that well.

And yet the Russians are sending them thousands and thousands of containers on trains.

Who knows what's in them?

How do you read all of that around the Kim relationship with Putin?

North Korea is a relatively small country in quite a difficult neighborhood.

It's surrounded by all the great powers.

And so it's really been adept at navigating between China and Russia.

And I think what we're seeing here is a pivot towards Russia.

And you see that because the Chinese just sent the foreign minister, Wang Yi, to Pyongyang to meet with Kim Jong-un.

I interpret this as China's attempt to sort of say, hey, hey, hey, hold on.

Let's not have you drift too far in the Moscow camp.

Because historically, even though Russia and China have been friends most of the time, they've also been rivals.

And North Korea has played that masterfully.

They've played a relatively weak hand very well.

So, you know, I started my studies with the Soviet Union and communism and came in different flavors.

But, you know, even under Stalin, there was a strong dissident culture.

And the consequences of being a dissident in that environment were very, very heavy.

And of course, I am naturally skeptical when I hear that despite all the success of the Kim dynasty, that the people are buying at hook, line and sinker.

- There's 25 million people in North Korea, even if you give a 20% haircut, let's call it, who deep down, they look at Kim and sure they bow and sure they do all the things they need to do, but deep down, they loathe the guy, they loathe the family.

Even if you give a 20% haircut there, you're still talking about 20 million people.

And if this is a religion, which I believe it is, that's more than the number of practicing Jews around the world.

It's a serious world religion.

Even if you give a 20% discount to the number of people in North Korea who are dissenters.

You have to look at this state, look at these people, recognize that there are 25 million of them.

They had about as much say being born in North Korea as you or I had a say in where we were born, when we were born, to whom we were born.

It's a tragedy.

It's a tragedy on a mass scale.

But you come back to the fundamental question, what is there to be done?

They are a nuclear-armed state.

And no matter what the U.S.

government sort of bobs and weaves around this point, I don't think it's really seriously in question anymore.

So I guess I'm asking you, do you prefer, like, you know, more engagement?

Do you think that this is something where you should have more diplomacy, more trips?

I mean, what does that make you think from a policy perspective?

I genuinely don't know.

I think the hawks and I think the doves on Capitol Hill in Washington, in all the capitals of the world, each has had their turn.

I don't know that either side has the Trump card, as it were.

And speaking of the Trump card, I mean, I think Donald Trump probably did come perhaps the closest to dislodging a status quo that I don't think could otherwise have been dislodged at all.

In the end, what we saw, of course, in the first Trump administration is we, I think we did genuinely get to the cusp of a breakthrough.

And I think that was a testament to the president's style.

I think for the North Koreans, there used to be the crazy man at the poker table.

And I think when they looked across the table, they saw someone in the Oval Office that they couldn't read.

They didn't know whether he was bluffing or not.

And I think that that was powerful.

But ultimately, that opportunity never came to pass.

You could say he squandered it, or you could say that the circumstances were just never going to work, regardless of how the cards were played, if we want to continue this analogy.

But be that as it may, I think the final result is the same, which is that North Korea continues to have its nukes.

I think in part because of this extraordinary personality cult that it has built up over these decades, I don't know that I see too much of an alternative here.

So Kim does seem to be preparing, seeding the ground for the North Korean people to accept that his daughter is going to be the next Supreme Leader.

How does one do that in this society?

How has it looked?

- A couple of things.

One is the fact that it's not a son, that it's a daughter.

I think that's something that would be another big deviation that Kim Jong-un has had from his predecessors in just being so public with his wife, with his sister and now with his daughter.

That's something in a patriarchal society, which North Korea is, is a little bit revolutionary.

This is more of a stylistic change, perhaps, but no, it's more than style.

There is some substance to it.

But I always find myself more impressed or more surprised by the age.

She is, by all accounts, something like 12 or 13 years old.

He is something like in his early 40s, perhaps 42, 43 years old.

He has, presumably, decades ahead of him.

I don't know whether or not she is the anointed one, as it were, but certainly she could be the anointed one.

That's what the intelligence from South Korea seems to suggest.

But I don't know that we need to have an answer right away because he may be in the driver's seat for decades to come.

But this is very different from the succession plans before and the succession plans in Beijing.

This is a succession plan that is happening in plain sight.

It's something that his father and grandfather were never able to do.

They had their leader sort of introduced to the world more or less when they took the stage.

And this is a very different model.

So we'll have to see.

I don't have any intelligence into whether or not she is indeed the one.

Certainly at the age of 12 or 13, it's hard to imagine her taking over if something would happen.

And you're living in Beijing.

You're watching it there from being the Wall Street Journal's Beijing correspondent.

And yes, the Chinese have leaned in a little more to North Korea recently, in part because otherwise they're losing influence.

How do you think the Chinese government perceives North Korea right now?

I think historically they've seen them as a bit of a nice asset to have.

Certainly, they don't want a unified Korea that is backed by the US on its border.

Certainly not a nuclear power as well.

Certainly not, yes.

But they also don't love that they have an erratic, uncontrollable... And by the way, I don't think the Chinese can control.

I don't think they can dictate terms to Kim Jong-un.

That's got a volatility all its own.

But I think that insofar as North Korea creates more problems for the West than it does for China, I think they're okay with it.

It is what it is to a certain degree.

Korea has always been its own independent kingdom.

It has never been fully absorbed into China.

If you go back through all the dynasties, it's never been that way.

And so I think they're comfortable with it being there.

And again, perhaps there is some stability there in having an undeniable nuclear deterrent.

I don't think that Beijing worries too much that Pyongyang is going to turn those nukes in their direction, but you never know.

I think certainly that is the ultimate uncertainty and perhaps the ultimate card that Pyongyang has to play with respect to China.

Should things ever go in that direction?

And they almost did during the Cultural Revolution.

There was a time when Kim Il-sung was so afraid of Mao or so afraid of the relationship with Mao that he himself was worried about flying over China, these sorts of things.

So I think they're happy to have something there that keeps policymakers up at night in Washington in addition to all the other fires that are raging around the world, that they also have this to keep the Americans off balance.

And, I mean, the South Koreans are the country that, you know, has the most at stake.

Do you get a sense that that is, that that dynamic between North and South is changing as the North feels more confident, as they have more international engagement, or are they still just as fundamentally concerned that the whole thing can unravel if we don't manage South Korea right?

No, I think North Korea has changed.

Kim Jong-un, perhaps the biggest deviation that he has made from his father and his grandfather, is precisely on this point.

He's repudiated unification as a goal for the North Korean state.

And that is, to again put it in religious terms, it's heresy for him to have said that.

And the fact that he could get away with such a heretical statement speaks, I think, to his ability to stand alone as the unquestioned leader.

We don't see his portrait up on the walls alongside his grandfather and father yet.

We don't see his birthday elevated to the same level as his grandfather and father yet.

We don't see his statues going up around the country yet.

But the fact that he is able to take something that Kim Il-sung had put at the center of the state, this is almost kind of the promised land that Kim Il-sung had set up.

That one day, under his rule, the American troops would be kicked out of South Korea, and that under the benign rule and love and benevolence of this Korean messiah, that Korea would be united, that this paradise would come to pass.

And so for Kim Jong-un to come along and say, "No."

South Korea is not our other half.

It is not half of the country to be reclaimed.

It's an enemy state.

It's an enemy state to be defeated.

It's a very different paradigm, and it's quite a shift, and quite a daring shift.

And at first, there was a lot of question about whether it was merely rhetorical, but it does seem more and more that this is really the new policy path of North Korea.

So I would single that out as the one biggest heresy, as it were, from his father and his grandfather.

So Trump is planning this much anticipated trip to Beijing.

What do we think the Americans and the Chinese really want to accomplish here?

Sure.

Well, I think China, if you look at the trade war last year and how China responded to the tariffs, they were the only country in the world that not only pushed back, but pushed back successfully against the US.

I think when Trump comes to town, I think the problem is the tariff cudgel doesn't work anymore.

It doesn't scare the Chinese.

I think the Chinese are happy to have him come when he's distracted.

If Iran is an utter quagmire by the time he arrives, I think they're going to feel pretty good.

I don't know if the summit will happen if it's a quagmire because the optics of that, both for Trump and for Xi, may not work.

But presuming he does come, I think they're going to feel pretty good.

What China is trying to project is they're trying to project this G2 idea.

We are at parity with the US, but we're the ones to the rest of the world that you want to work with.

We're not the ones who are going to be launching unilateral strikes on other countries.

We're not the one who is going to be ratcheting tariffs up to 100% or beyond.

We are a reliable country here.

You may not like everything about us, but we're a reliable country, and you can work with us.

You can do business with us.

And I think by having Trump there in Beijing, I think that's precisely what Beijing will be able to project to the rest of the world.

I think the other thing they want is, I think they do want to run out the clock on President Trump.

We're now into his second year.

He's term limited, and he's tangled up in all these other conflicts around the world.

So keep him at bay.

Keep him happy.

Flatter him.

Make sure that he doesn't lash out at China.

And let's see where things go.

Ultimately, the big prize for them is Taiwan.

If they can make a little bit of progress on Taiwan, if they can get Donald Trump to shift the official US language on Taiwan towards opposing, let's say, independence for Taiwan, that will be something that they can pocket.

And what does President Trump want?

Well, I think that's a bit of a question for all of us.

I think he is also looking for some stability.

He does have a lot else going on.

And I think with the only other country that can rival the US economically, militarily and otherwise, I think probably what he's looking for is some measure of stability.

And I think he'll probably find it because I think their interests are aligned on that front.

Both Xi and Trump want placid waters when it comes to the US-China relation.

Johnathan Cheng, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me.

And now to Puppet Regime, where Kim Jong-un shares his tips and tricks on how to create a safe space.

Where does true security come from?

Vladimir Putin here.

- With Xi Jinping.

On this episode of our wellness podcast, This Authoritarian Life, we have a very special guest.

Old friend from the neighborhood, Mr.

Kim Jong-un.

Hmph.

- Uh, Kim?

Hmph.

- Oh, come on, let's break this pattern.

What's the matter?

I used to be the center of attention, guys.

Every missile I fired struck fear.

These days it's all Venezuela, Iran, Middle East, whatever.

It's like, hello, I'm right here, just firing missiles into the ocean and writing songs that nobody even hears.

Did you say writing songs?

Would you like to share some of your work?

That was really beautiful.

Kim, let's reframe these negative feelings.

Tell me, why do you think there is so much attention on Iran and Venezuela?

Because America attacked them.

And would the world ever be watching America do that to you?

Of course not!

Because I have nuclear weapons and those countries do not.

Bingo!

You see, these external signals that were giving you a negative self-perception are actually a positive thing.

You're being ignored precisely because you are so strong and secure.

Oh wow!

Thank you guys!

No, you did the work yourself.

You walked that path of growth.

But, uh, I am... You what?

Still going to fire like a hundred more missiles into the sea until Donald Trump invites me to Mar a Lago.

Do you understand?

Cut his mic off.

Okay, you know what?

On second thought, maybe ignoring this guy is important for our mental health.

That's our show this week.

Come back next week and if you like what you've seen, or even if you don't, but you're now sleeping with one eye open, why don't you check us out at GZEROmedia.com [music] Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains.

With a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at Prologis.com.

And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is investing in the future, working to create an impact in advanced recycling and in emerging technology companies that will help shape tomorrow.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, and... ♪♪♪♪♪