Well here's

another question which I'm sure there's not a precise answer because a lot of what we know about North Korea is sometimes difficult to actually know. Do you believe Kim Jong-un is rational?

It's possible to act in perfectly rational ways and to be a rather unpleasant person and to have rather unpleasant objectives I think. The greatest evidence that he is rational to me would be the fact that so far as I know he's not in a pine box today and he came into power into supreme power maybe but into power in North Korea 12-13 years ago inheriting not a terribly good legacy from his awful

father

Kim Jong-il who was not only a terribly wicked man but also a very bad emperor who had destroyed the North Korean economy largely as far as we can tell destroyed the party apparatus run down the state administration all of the sorts of things you're not supposed to do if you're kind of like in the dynastic succession business against very long odds Kim Jong-un restored the North Korean economy a bit albeit very low base he rebuilt the party apparatus he got the state administrative function more back towards sort of capabilities a dictator would like to have and then of course things things have gone in a kind of a peculiar direction since the nuclear drama of 2017 and covid and now this new quadrangle of Tehran and Beijing and Moscow and Pyongyang considering what he inherited I'd say that I'd say that the little fellow has played his hand pretty well not that I like that no much like what he does as he may appreciate but you'd have to give him credit for what he has accomplished given his you know given his lights and I mean he's he's running the most effective outdoor prison camp in the world he is maintaining an absolutely outsized global threat put it global influence compared to his level of national economic capability and nobody's put a you know nobody's put a bullet in his head so I would say all things considered he looks like he looks like a pretty rational guy and he's having a better run than Al Capone day

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you this you you famously wrote a book in called the end of North Korea are you surprised that it's lasted that you're that we're talking about it almost I think 25 years after the book was published that North Korea is still in place.