Reporter's notebook: The difficulties of covering North Korea
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On February 27th, 2019, President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un clasped hands and smiled warmly for the cameras at a hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam. Their demeanors were friendly despite past animosity.

Kim had once called Trump a dotard. Trump had promised to rain fire and fury down on North Korea. But in this moment, that was in the past. The two leaders had been trading personal letters. And Trump, in the lead-up to the meeting, even said, quote, We fell in love. They're an odd couple, you know. NPR's Anthony Kuhn was there in Hanoi to cover the meeting as Trump and Kim negotiated about North Korea's nuclear program. The city was abuzz with motorcades of various government whizzing back and forth, and

Everybody in Hanoi seemed to be trying to cash in on it. There were T-shirts with Trump and Kim on it. People were getting these high and tight Kim Jong-un haircuts. And, of course, lots of, you know, Vietnamese kitsch. Despite the fanfare, the summit ended early, without a deal. It was basically the collapse of diplomacy. As Trump said... Sometimes you have to walk...

And this was just one of those times. Although a deal didn't happen, that meeting was a stark contrast to the approach that Trump recently took with Iran.

an approach that culminated in U.S. airstrikes on its nuclear facilities. So when we called up Anthony Kuhn for this week's Reporter's Notebook, I wanted to start there, talking about the parallels and non-parallels between Trump's North Korean negotiations and the ongoing conflict with Iran. This has been on a lot of people's minds, and actually a State Department spokesperson was asked this week, does the U.S.'s bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities carry a message for North Korea?

And the spokesperson replied, well, the U.S. remains committed to the denuclearization of North Korea as to what might happen if the North Korean nuclear issue cannot be resolved through dialogue. She said, well, I can't speculate on that hypothetical situation.

The key point, though, is North Korea now has an estimated arsenal of about 50 atomic bombs, whereas Iran had none. And North Korea also has the missiles to deliver these not only to U.S. military bases in Asia, but all the way to the U.S. homeland.

So a preemptive U.S. strike on North Korea's nuclear facilities is really out of the question. So if anything, the message to North Korea was that when they decided to build a nuclear arsenal, that was a wise investment. That's the difference between what's happened to them and other countries which gave up their nuclear weapons like Libya and Ukraine.

So let's shift gears and go back to just talking about the ways that you have covered North Korea, because it's a more extreme example of some things that I think we also experience when we try to cover Iran, right? It's a tough country to get into. It's a culture which American audiences might not really understand. North Korea especially, there is probably the highest amount of government control over movement and information and media of any country in the world, right?

How do you go about that when you are trying to cover this country? How do you get around the political messaging to know how ordinary people feel about particular issues? Yeah, well, it's very frustrating not to be able to get in there on the ground and speak to people. And even when you do get in,

It's so tough to convey to people the lives of ordinary North Koreans. If you get into North Korea, probably you're going to the capital, Pyongyang, to report. But, you know, Pyongyang is a showcase city. It's for the elites.

And news organizations that have set up bureaus in Pyongyang are sometimes accused of basically just being useful idiots and helping North Korea to, you know, to put out its propaganda without really getting any news. I personally feel that there are ways of, you know, getting the news out of there. There are ways of interpreting what you're seeing and what you're hearing from people there.

Basically, what we do in South Korea is we talk to defectors, and we have to remind people that they are not necessarily representative of all people in North Korea. We read what North Korea says about itself, and it's state media. And while that's propaganda and often gives you very little idea of what's really going on in there, you have to learn to interpret it. You have to be able to read between the lines, right?

And also it's important to get as close as you can. Go to the demilitarized zone in South Korea and look with binoculars over the border to see what life looks like inside North Korea. Go to the Chinese border on the Yalu River between the two countries. Look at how this Chinese city of Dandong is ablaze with lights at night while the other side of the river is in almost total darkness at night. And go to Russia where many North Korean laborers are sent to work.

You've got to get as close as you can and get in if at all possible. And you have been inside North Korea, though. Tell us about that trip. Yeah, that was one of the most amazing experiences of my career as a journalist.

I went with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra when they were invited to perform in Pyongyang in 2008. And this was a sort of brief window of cultural diplomacy, which people had hoped would blossom into something more. And I was in Pyongyang for about three days, and we were taken all around the city. It was an unforgettable trip, and one thing that made it really great was the communication that took place there.

between people and musicians, the use of music as an universal language to get over all sorts of barriers to communicate. And I came away with the feeling that for all the differences and for all the ways in which the two Koreas, North and South, have grown apart, they're still both Korean.

They speak more or less the same language. They eat the same food. Their cultural performances were so similar. So that made me believe that as far apart as they've come, perhaps someday reunification might still be possible. We are very pleased to hear that the symphony orchestra have come to our country. I also think exchange is necessary. ♪

You know, we've been obviously looking backwards here a lot, but there have been some new developments on this storyline. Trump did try to send another letter to Kim recently, right? Yes, this has been what's reported. Neither side has confirmed it. But this story was first reported by an authoritative North Korea news website called NK News. And they said that Trump sent his letters via the only working channel of communication with North Korea, NK.

which is the North Korean embassy at the UN, but North Korean diplomats refused to accept the letters, so they never made it to Kim Jong-un. Wow. So any attempt to try to restart negotiations has so far failed. I mean, that is really remarkable news

to not even accept a letter from the President of the United States. So what it makes me wonder, like, what do you think is different this time? Why do you think that Kim is not engaging at all? Well, we face a fundamentally different scene in the second Trump administration than we did from the first. As we said, they now have a nuclear arsenal estimated at about 50 weapons when they only had about 20 or 30 during the first Trump administration.

They were seeking security guarantees from the U.S. When they didn't get them, they turned to Russia and China. And now by sending North Korean troops to fight Ukraine in Russia, they have a basically a sort of a mutual self-defense treaty. And finally, you know, there was the letter writing between Kim and Trump in 2018 and 2019.

Kim and Trump exchanged 27 letters, personal letters. And there are pictures of Kim Jong-un reading Trump's letters at his desk. You can practically see the letters looking through his sheet of paper. And in the very last letter that Kim wrote to Trump, he wrote to him,

If you do not think of our relationship as a stepping stone that only benefits you, then you would not make me look like an idiot who will only give without getting anything in return. So that's how bad he felt he had been burned by Trump. And as if that weren't bad enough, Trump then took those letters and gave them to journalist Bob Woodward, who publicized them, and they were all over the media. Quick turn from the original flowing oversized envelopes of that correspondence, I guess.

Who would imagine that Trump would just go handing them out like candy, right? That is NPR correspondent Anthony Kuhn, who covers the Korean Peninsula and Japan. Thank you so much for talking to us. Great time, Scott. Thanks. Thanks.