Inside Hamas leader's secret Gaza tunnel & North Korea doubles nukes
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It does make you reflect on the nature of fanaticism, really. These people live down there, rank and file Hamas, and it's a pretty horrible environment.

To the Middle East now and more than 50,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war began. That's according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

I'm Venetia Rainey and this is Battlelines. It's Monday, 9th of June 2025. On today's episode, we look at the draconian pariah state of North Korea. The US, as Pyongyang, is in its strongest strategic position in decades. So how has North Korea managed to double its nuclear warhead arsenal and build up the world's fourth largest military, despite being so heavily sanctioned? We'll be answering that later on with our new Asia correspondent.

But first, we've got a dispatch from a rare embed with the Israeli army in Gaza. Our Jerusalem correspondent Henry Bodkin joined Israeli troops to inspect the tunnel where Hamas leader Mohamed Sinwar was living when he was targeted by an Israeli airstrike on May 13th. That airstrike hit the entrance to the European hospital, one of the last functioning in Gaza at the time, and generated a huge amount of controversy.

We'll get into all of that, plus the ongoing Gaza flotilla situation with Greta Thunberg. But first, here's the start of Henry's journey in Gaza. That's the sound inside an IDF armoured personnel carrier, which is currently carrying me and a small group of other journalists into Gaza. The first Western journalist to go into the embattled enclave for nearly five months. We're currently driving down the...

newly created Morag corridor, so-called Morag corridor, which is designed to separate southern bits of the Strip from the rest of it and which for weeks now has been the subject of the world's attention as the war ramps up, the war to defeat Hamas and the humanitarian situation for Gaza civilians worsens.

Humvees are racing past us, faster Humvees on the road. There are berms of earth, artificial mounds on either side into which defensive positions can easily be dug, can be created. We're heading west towards Khan Yunis, which is the scene of a major offensive at the moment.

Henry, we've just had a clip there from your dispatch. What was it like being embedded with the IDF? I mean, they're fascinating in a way. They're also deeply frustrating because it reminds you that you're not allowed in to report independently, which is very frustrating. You are tightly controlled by the IDF. You can only go where they take you and where they allow you to go. It's a mixture between being very interesting because you are getting a glimpse

physically, personally, of this place that...

We spend a lot of time writing and thinking about and frustrating because you are under the control of one of the parties in the conflict who have a narrative to push. So it's a kind of compromising feeling, but it was certainly worth the trip, I think. Were you able to speak to the soldiers who were ferrying you guys around? Yeah, we were there for probably for about three hours inside Gaza. So there was some time where we were just milling around really and spoke to a few soldiers. And I always...

try and ask them, you know, are you a reservist or are you in the standing army? That's their word for the regular army. How many days have you done since October the 7th? Whether it's reserve or main army, you know, the soldiers I've spoken to have been pretty much on the go nonstop since then. Try to ask them, you know, what's the fighting like at the moment? And I said to them, because we were hearing explosions quite close, I said, you know, where's the front line? And

He looked at me, this one chap, as if I was just falling out of a tree and just kind of looked around. It's like, you know, we're in the front line. He said that he'd lost a 28-year-old comrade last week, just a lone Hamas gunman had popped up out of the rubble, started shooting and taken out one of his friends. Yes, spoke to the soldiers and tried to get an idea of what it's like for them. I think it's just, it's a huge grind. I mean, Hamas as an organisation is...

almost unrecognizable from the force which crossed the border on October the 7th and you really could call it a terror army then. They had command and control. They were able to gather and use intelligence. They could move soldiers from different parts of the battlefield around or terrorists but fighters.

And now they can't. Now they're much more of a... Ironically, even though we've always referred to them as sort of shorthand as a terror group, now they really are fighting like a terror group, like a guerrilla organization, just small units of one, two, three, four fighters with light weapons, light explosives, that kind of thing. But I mean, if you're...

and you're in those neighborhoods and in those environments, it's just as scary as it always was. And so, yeah, the fight grinds on. There's still a huge, huge use of air power. The really notable thing we found

from yesterday was that in the several miles that we drove to get to the west of Khan Yunis, you just didn't see a single civilian, just completely uninhabited areas. You also mentioned the Morag corridor. Can you explain a bit more about what that is and what purpose it's supposed to serve? It's an east-west artificially created corridor

road, essentially a defensible road that the IDF has created in the more recent phase of the war. It's defensible, so they've kind of stuck the earth, they've stuck a kind of berm of earth up to the north. You can dig defensive positions in it, and it's a way of supplying themselves into the Strip from the eastern border of Gaza, where Gaza borders Israel, but it's also a way of controlling the movement of population around Gaza, and as we know,

In this current phase, they're trying to push the population in its entirety to the southern bit of Rafa, to just the southern few kilometers, which is very controversial. It's part of that effort, really. It's an entirely man-made, artificial, east-west road that serves a number of military purposes, basically. Let's hear a bit more of your dispatch.

We've just left the Morag corridor heading north which means we're in now residential areas or I should say formerly residential areas.

Buildings to our right, not totally destroyed but certainly uninhabitable. It's all very quiet, overgrown. The roads are strewn with debris, scrap metal. Electrical poles that line the road, slanting dangerously into the road.

obviously been damaged. Just past a breeze block wall to the left of the convoy that I'm in and some holes in it, large holes about the size of a human head. Makes you wonder if someone hacked that deliberately to use as a firing position. More likely if so to be a mass fighter because that's the way they fight.

So we just heard your journey through more residential areas of Gaza there. What was the sort of lasting impression now that you're 24 hours out? What was your lasting impression of seeing all of this destruction? There were a few impressions. One was something I knew technically anyway, but it was useful to

be reminded because the way we have always talked about Gaza, but certainly since this war started, is of a kind of entirely benighted place. But actually, we went through certain neighborhoods where most of the houses were still standing, all deserted. There wasn't a single one that wasn't riddled with bullet holes. But actually, the quality of the houses was

was quite good. They were quite big. It looked like quite a nice place to live, but just entirely deserted. And then you go into another neighborhood and it's total demolition. There's not a single structure standing. And I think you could discern the places where they've probably been bulldozed over these houses because the piles of rubble are individual piles and they're quite neat. And that's an unstated, but privately a very much an acknowledged part of Israel's current offensive, which is

season hold right so once we've got an area we're not going to leave it but part of the seizing of it is widespread demolition of properties the justification for that is you know we're taking a zero risk approach for our troops so anything that could house a sniper or anything that is linked in inverted commas to Hamas we're entitled to destroy it that is a very wide category and they're doing that a lot RAFA down in the south is basically non-existent now

So there was a lot of that. But then there were large areas where the rubble just seems to have been thrown up in the air and landed down in a mess. And those are airstrikes. So different shades of devastation, basically, but no civilians in sight. Okay, let's hear the rest of your dispatch where you arrive at the European hospital where the tunnel was, where Mohamed Sinwa's body was retrieved from.

So I'm standing in the grounds of the European hospital in Khan Yunis, the city in the south of Gaza. I'm outside the accident and emergency department. There's a massive crater in the ground just outside the front door of the department. Now that wasn't created by an airstrike. It was actually dug in recent days by the IDF to get down to a Hamas tunnel network.

About a month ago, the IDF, in a very controversial air raid because it was a functioning hospital, dropped a number of munitions not on the hospital but very close to it, which succeeded, they say, in severing a 20-metre section of tunnel underneath the hospital in which the IDF have confirmed in the last few hours Mohamed Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza and a few of his key lieutenants were hiding.

I've just been down into that tunnel network. The stench of human remains is overwhelming. It's narrow, it's cramped, it feels like a place of death. Although funnily enough the network itself was quite intact which suggests that Sinhwa may have suffocated after the strike or he may have died from the shockwave. The IDF either don't know or aren't saying at the moment how he died.

As I say, it was a very controversial strike because patients were here at the time, doctors were here, the hospital was operating, although the IDF say they warned the hospital. There's some dispute about that. And it symbolises the, I think, frustration or rather the gulf at the moment between much of the international community who are instinctively very critical of these kinds of airstrikes that damage hospitals

near or in some cases directly on in the case of other hospitals humanitarian facilities like this but from the IDF's point of view and one senior officer has just used the phrase world class it was a world-class airstrike he says because they managed to kill a senior terror operative the senior terror operative here who was hiding physically under the hospital at the time

without actually damaging the hospital. I mean, the hospital is a bit damaged, but structurally it's sound and it can be used again when civilians are allowed back here. We were allowed to look through the door of the room in which Sinwar and his key lieutenants died. There's congealed blood on the floor. There's a couple of mouldy mattresses. There's a couple of M16 rifles, which the IDF say were stolen during the October 7th massacre. A television

a couple of suitcases but an incredibly dingy dark place but as I said where Sinhwa the leader of Hamas in Gaza drew his final breaths

How did this tunnel that you saw compare to what you had in your mind? We've seen the IDF have released a lot of pictures, of course, of Hamas tunnels, but what was it like to actually see it in person? The main sensory impression for me was the smell because bodies rotting for a month in a place like that is pretty horrible. But you know they're small. You read a lot about how they're small. This is the first Hamas tunnel I've ever seen. Other journalists have been shown different tunnels.

in different parts of the strip. And it does shock you how small they really are. I mean, I'm quite a tall guy. I definitely had to bend down. But I mean, there's, you know, two people couldn't pass each other easily in it. It really is a very, very constricted space. Very, very cramped. Concrete slabs on either side to hold it up. Communications wiring kind of running at shoulder height or head height, depending on how tall you are along the sides. And it does make you reflect more

on the nature of fanaticism, really, because these people lived down there, really. Sinra, his lieutenants, and of course, not just them, but many, many tiers of more junior commanders and rank-and-file Hamas live, really, in these networks. And it's a pretty horrible environment. The reason you were taken on this trip was to see up close, with your own eyes, the

some of the challenges that the Israeli army repeatedly tell us in the West that they face in terms of fighting Hamas. And that is that Hamas places its infrastructure underneath civilian facilities such as hospitals. We've heard this a lot. It's always been controversial. And there's always this question of weighing the military target against the civilian loss of life. I guess we have to

see both the facts of what you were presented with and the fact that you were taken on? What is a very rare embed? And as you note in your piece, journalists are not allowed into Gaza to report more generally on the situation there. Why do you think you were taken on this trip now? So this airstrike, this assassination of Mohamed Sinwar,

couldn't symbolize better the gulf currently between Israel and much of the international community, including Israel's allies, many significant European states, including the UK, in terms of what is an acceptable way to prosecute a war like this. Israel say they're fighting with their hands behind their backs because people like Sinwar are

live under a hospital. I was speaking to one quite senior officer off the record as we were clambering out of this tunnel. And he literally looked at me, his face just full of exasperation at the way the world thinks about it and said, this airstrike was world-class. That's the phrase he used. He said, world-class. And I said, really? I mean, that sounds a little bit more like a kind of penalty shootout adjective than an airstrike. And he goes, no, no, no. We managed to kill

the top terrorist in Gaza who was hiding under a hospital without hitting the hospital, which it appears is true. They didn't hit the hospital. They hit, they, they dropped specialist munitions, either side of it sealed off the tunnel and,

which killed Sinwa in one way or another, either shockwave or suffocation or even starvation. However, there is video footage that shows, or at least very strongly indicates, that they did kill a whole bunch of people in those courtyards in the compound in order to drop those munitions in the first place. Cue international condemnation. It's a hospital. My God, they're patients. They're patients, loved ones. They're going in to be treated. What are you doing?

Israel says, how can we fight this war if we can't go after commanders wherever we find them, plus we didn't destroy the hospital? That's the debate. And that's why Israel was so keen to show us what they'd done. They show us, in their eyes, the precision of their strike. They deny that civilians were killed in the strike, and they've put out some messaging which is questionable about

to what extent they warned the hospital and to what extent it was evacuated. It doesn't appear to have been evacuated. But it's A, because Simois is so important, but B, because of the kind of peculiar nature of the strike. It is symbolic of the

of the gulf really at the moment between Israel and much of the rest of the world. How do you weigh this rhetoric around precision strikes with the death toll, which we only have the Hamas around health ministries numbers to go on and they're increasingly seen as being inaccurate, although more likely an underestimate than anything else according to lots of reports, including one recently in the Lancet.

But this Gaza death toll says that it's nearly 55,000 people dead and they don't distinguish between civilians and combatants, but a large proportion of those are women and children who we can assume are not combatants largely. How do you weigh the Israeli rhetoric of precision strikes and avoiding civilian death toll with these sorts of numbers? How do the Israeli government weigh that? I think that when an Israeli spokesman

answers the phone or goes on telly and says, look, we use intelligence to minimize civilian casualties as far as possible. We're the most moral army in the world. To a large extent, they really believe that. They're always thinking we're in the shadow of October 7th, this huge, huge violation of Israel, of Israeli civilians. And so they're

That, I think, gives you an idea of where proportionality is for them. I mean, it always comes back to the fact that they, and this is unprecedented because there's been several wars in Gaza, that they don't let international journalists in to work independently. So they're causing the ambiguity there.

much of the ambiguity in these figures. Because we can't get in, we don't know who the ambiguity favors, whether it favors Israel, as in if we could get in there and have a look around ourselves, we'd realize that the figures would be even higher, or if it favors Hamas, whether if we get in there and have a look around, we'd realize that it's been inflated. So we don't know who it favors, but we know where the ambiguity is coming from, which is coming from Israel.

I mean, the classic example is some of these airstrikes, not so much the Sinoir.

airstrike. That's quite specific. But I think about 10 days ago, a school that's no longer functioning as a school but was functioning as a shelter for refugees near Gaza City was hit. About 30 people were killed according to the local Hamas-run health ministry. There was some very, very upsetting video of a little girl trying to get out of the building that was on flames and pictures of charred corpses, including children.

Now, Israel said two things. They said, one, the death toll is probably exaggerated. You can't trust Hamas. And they said, two, there was a Hamas commander control center underneath. Now, if journalists could get to that site, not all of the sites, but a sample, you could begin to check out both of those claims and you could begin to work out

to what extent the published death toll is accurate or not. With the death of Mohamed Sinwa, Hamas has a new presumed commander, and that's Izz al-Din al-Haddad. You recently wrote a piece about him, The Ghost, and he's believed to now be the last man standing of the five brigade commanders on the eve of October 7th. What more do we know about him? We know that he joined Hamas really at its inception in the late 80s,

And he rose up the ranks, platoon commander, battalion commander, brigade commander. That's a reminder, if anyone needed them, just how much they really did structure themselves on a proper army. The Israelis have been after him since 2008. Apparently, they've tried to get him at least six times. I spoke to a former national defense advisor for Israel. He was very rueful. He said, you know, it's a big mistake that we haven't managed to kill him yet.

And I said, well, what is he, is he cautious? And he goes, yeah, he's very cautious, but they're all cautious. He's also probably been lucky. And the phrase was that this, uh, this Israeli spook said is like, uh, he said, he's never made the mistake that's allowed us to kill him. He was the commander of the Gaza city brigade, the Northern Hamas brigade on October the 7th. He was one of the secret holders in inverted commas. He knew about the plans before the night before, which was when the

the rest of the Hamas commanders were briefed and when they started getting ready, very tightly held secret, he supervised the incursion into the northern bit of the Gaza envelope. And that includes really significant massacres like the Nahalos massacre,

IDF base, which was overrun, I think about 60 IDF and about 15 or 16 civilians were massacred in that. So a huge player in Hamas and one who has survived during the ceasefire earlier this year, he was reportedly tasked with trying to rebuild both militarily and in a civilian sense, rebuild the organization.

since Sinoise's death, he is presumed to be the most senior person and he would have taken over. He certainly got the stature to do it. He's a proper fanatic. I mean, he's lost two sons in the last 18 months in the war. He will be a hard man to get. But now that if he is in charge, then presumably he will have to be more communicative and therefore may be

give the Israelis more opportunity to get him. What the military effect of getting these people, getting Mohamed Sinwar, getting al-Haddad, if they do, will be is an open question because as I said earlier, they're not fighting like an army anymore. They're small units in the rubble having opportunistic pops at the Israelis. But for the Israelis, obviously, it's very important to keep going after the senior guys as part of a

multi-pronged strategy to finally wrap up Hamas for good. There's two more stories I want to ask you about quickly before we end. One is this whole controversy over the aid distribution. We've seen in the last week or so, this US backed plan to distribute aid out of a few hubs. And there've been lots of deaths. There were 13 people killed on Sunday, but there's still lots of uncertainty around

who's killing these people and why things seem to be going so wrong day after day after day. What's going on? Technically, we're into the third week that this new distribution system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US company, has been operating. So there were a number of mass casualty events with multiple eyewitnesses saying that Israeli soldiers are

There's been disputes over the casualty figures. I think probably the most difficult one for Israel was last Tuesday when the International Committee of the Red Cross, which isn't under Hamas control, said, look, we had 27 people turn up.

to our hospital killed from an event near the aid distribution center in Rafah where they said that the Israelis opened fire. They said, I think 19 turned up dead, eight turned up wounded and subsequently died from that event.

That was very difficult for the Israelis. They say they're looking into it. They say warning shots were fired. And when that failed, we fired near, in inverted commas, the Palestinians. More recently, the aid centers were shut again on Saturday. And GHF said that that was because Hamas were posing a threat to them. It's very difficult. I mean, the Israeli government tried to put out as strongly as they could last week that the mass casualty events last week were the result of Hamas attacks.

They didn't provide any evidence for it. They pushed one video very hard, which showed apparently a Hamas gunman murdering someone in the street who had picked up a bag of flour. Now that turned out to be somewhere else entirely. It's entirely possible that Hamas are trying to disrupt it, but we're kind of waiting to see the evidence on that. And meanwhile, there's just a lot of criticism about the

how humanitarian this kind of humanitarian distribution is. If you're forcing people to walk long distances, pick up aid, walk back. I mean, someone told me that they'd

They'd spent something like 20 times the value of the aid that he picked up in cash getting taxis back and forward. He comes from northern Gaza. He'd have to come all the way from Gaza City to get some aid. The Israelis are saying, you know, it's going to work. It's got to work. There were two centers open yesterday, one in the south, a new one in the center of Gaza. They're in control. Certainly,

The amount of aid that's come in either through this new system or a trickle of UN trucks that are still coming in, I don't think it's yet making up for the two months, nearly three months of total blockade and the hunger that that's caused. I think that that hunger is still escalating and that people are getting more and more desperate. One of the problems with the GHF

model is that the Israelis provide an umbrella of security around these sites. They don't want to interact directly with the Palestinians. There's probably a justifiable fear that Hamas would get in and shoot them that way. But they provide an umbrella of security around the site so that people can go in and then deal with the American contractors who actually run these sites. But the

that involves a sort of broader type of crowd control, not in the sense that we see in the UK, but a broader kind of, right, this is where people are allowed to go. This is how they're going to flow in. And the IDF are just not set up for that. They are trained when they cross the wire into Gaza and,

essentially to shoot anything in front of them. It's a controversial thing to say, but the evidence does back it up. You've got the hostages who were waving a white flag last summer after they'd escaped and they were all shot. They are very, very jumpy. They're very, very aggressive because they're fighting a very nasty terrorist organization. And suddenly they're having to deal with Palestinians coming relatively close to them. I think it's something that they are finding very, very difficult to manage. It's an ethos thing.

And the system has had some serious growing pains. And just finally, we've currently got a Gaza flotilla that's been detained by Israeli Navy. On board is Greta Thunberg and a bunch of other pro-Palestinian activists. Our listeners may remember the last time there was a flotilla trying to break the so-called siege of Gaza was back in 2010, and that ended with fatalities. What do you think is going to happen this time around? It's all about the PR, and I think this has been...

as good a PR outcome for Israel as they could possibly get. The big victory for them was on the 1st of May when they took out the proper boat, the big ship that the Freedom Flotilla were using to try and break the blockade. It was registered as a passenger ship. It's a serious vessel. And they used drones to disable it without hurting anyone. So this so-called

selfie yacht is a sort of plan B and it's much, much easier. They could just come up to it in a rib and get on it and take control of it in a way that doesn't look that aggressive. Whereas, I mean, imagine if they were having to land commandos roping down off helicopters onto a big vessel and then kind of like bashing their way down to the engine room to turn off the engines or whatever and turn the boat around. That would have been a huge problem for the Israelis. And it all comes from 2010 when they did

kill a bunch of people on one of these Freedom Flotillas. And I spoke to a top security person who actually was part of the committee that started looking at their tactics following that PR disaster. And basically, the conclusion was, you know, we're going to try and stop these flotillas at source.

do what we can, firstly through diplomatic means, try and get European Mediterranean countries not to allow these boats through their waters. But if not, then hit them out at sea. And that's what they did with the big vessel. And it forced Greta Thunberg and her allies onto this small yacht, which made it very easy for the Israelis to

board and they think they've had a big PR day kind of filming themselves handing out sandwiches and bottles of water to Thunberg and her mates. So I think it's ended as well as it could have done for the Israelis, assuming that they now let them go and deport them fairly quickly, I think, rather than throw them in jail. But I'd imagine that's what will happen. That is a developing story. So please do check out the Telegraph's website for further information as we record this podcast.

Thank you so much for joining us on Battlelines, Henry. As ever, lovely to talk to you. Okay, thanks very much. Coming up after the break, how did North Korea manage to build up one of the world's largest militaries despite being so heavily sanctioned?

Did you know that foreign investors are quietly funding lawsuits in American courts through a practice called third-party litigation funding? Shadowy overseas funders are paying to sue American companies in our courts, and they don't pay a dime in U.S. taxes if there is an award or settlement. They profit tax-free from our legal system, while U.S. companies are tied up in court and American families pay the price to the tune of $5,000 a year. But

But there is a solution. A new proposal before Congress would close this loophole and ensure these foreign investors pay taxes, just like the actual plaintiffs have to. It's a common sense move that discourages frivolous and abusive lawsuits and redirects resources back into American jobs in

Innovation and growth. Only President Trump and congressional Republicans can deliver this win for America and hold these foreign investors accountable. Contact your lawmakers today and demand they take a stand to end foreign-funded litigation abuse. Out here, it's not only the amazing views, but the way time stretches out a little longer, how laughter bellows louder among friends, and how the breeze hits just right at the summit.

With AllTrails, you can discover and experience the best of nature with over 450,000 trails worldwide and navigation right at your fingertips. Find your outside with AllTrails. Download the free app today and find your next outdoor adventure. Welcome back. North Korea is one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world. It's also one of the most secretive.

but it's become clear that the so-called Hermit Kingdom has managed to build up one of the world's biggest armies and double its nuclear weapons arsenal. To explain how, I'm joined by The Telegraph's new Asia correspondent, Allegra Mendelssohn. Allegra, welcome to Batlines. Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself and your reporting experience?

So I joined The Telegraph about six weeks ago, based in Taiwan. I've been here for almost a year. Before that, I was in Thailand and Cambodia covering Southeast Asian politics and conflict, specifically, mostly the civil war in Myanmar.

Today we want to talk about North Korea. It's a country that we haven't covered for a while on the podcast. You wrote an excellent piece for The Telegraph about how despite being one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world, the authoritarian state has managed to expand its army and its nuclear arsenal. It's a really good piece and I'll link to it in the show notes.

Can you start by giving us a little bit of an overview? How much more sophisticated are North Korea's armed forces today compared to, say, 10, 20 years ago? I think firstly, it's important to note that it's really, really hard to measure North Korea's defence capabilities because so little information comes out of the country. So when we're talking about how it's growing and how it's developing, we're really using a lot of estimates and

That being said, there are some key things we can see. For instance, its number of nuclear warheads. There's a pretty good indication that they have probably doubled in the last 10 years. So estimates from 2015 had it around 20 nuclear warheads, whereas today we're seeing a number closer to 50 with the potential for that to grow to 200 by 2027. So that's a good way of measuring one of its areas of growth.

Other things we're seeing is the development of the types of nuclear weapons. So the distances, for instance, that the warheads, the intercontinental ballistic missiles can travel, they now have missiles that, you know, for instance, could reach continental USA from North Korea. So that's, you know, a big development as well. You talk about in the piece how North Korea has had to make some choices because it doesn't have that much money. You mentioned that it has a defence budget that's less than 1% the size of China's, for example, or

That's a pretty big military to compare it to. So it's had to make some choices between conventional and non-conventional weapons. It's decided to go heavily down the nuclear route. Can you explain a bit more why? I think, as you mentioned, it does have a relatively small defence budget considering its goals and aims. It wants to be the biggest, it wants to be the best. And it only has a defence budget, again, we're talking estimates, but of around $1.5 billion, which is compared to China's

almost $220 billion. That's a pretty big difference. So I think it had to basically decide, are we going to focus our energy on a nuclear program, which is very scary and would be the ultimate deterrent against pretty much any other country, but especially the US? Or are we going to try and build up our conventional weapons, fighter jets, warships, which are

are not quite as scary because everyone really has them. The US already has thousands, China already has thousands, even South Korea has a relatively strong military. So it makes more sense to focus all your energy and resources on a nuclear program. And you mentioned that it's got the fourth largest military in the world. I assume that's based on troop size, 1.3 million troops.

Do we know much about how well-trained these troops are? They don't seem to be very well-trained. As far as we can tell, they don't have very much experience. Again, they're not focusing very much on the training. They're also operating aircraft that are very old, potentially 50 years old. So speaking to experts, the thing that comes up time and time again is they're not very experienced. Is North Korea's armed forces essentially for show?

Potentially, potentially. That's a good question. My guess would be that they need to have some kind of military. They obviously want people who are loyal to the regime. So forcing men and women to be soldiers is part of that. It's a key part of how they brainwash them as well. So potentially. Your piece focuses on how North Korea has managed to make these staggering improvements to its military, mainly in terms of nukes, as you mentioned.

Tell me a bit about how it's financing this change. You mentioned lots of different factors. Where do you want to start? One of the biggest and maybe the most interesting is it's cyber theft. You hear a lot about its use of cryptocurrency, its use of these various and highly sophisticated schemes such as laptop farming, where they're basically able to bring in huge amounts of foreign currency often, in fact, almost always through illegal channels.

When we're talking about commercial means, China is a key partner for North Korea. You have a lot of North Korean workers in North Korea producing commercial goods like wigs and eyelashes. And because these goods can't then be sold normally through the international market because of the sanctions imposed against North Korea, there's pretty sophisticated ways that these are then funneled through China and then sold on the international market, which has been a big source of revenue for the North Korean regime as well.

Last November, North Korea signed a mutual defense treaty with Russia, which has been quite significant for opening up

lots of different types of extra resources for North Korea and new types of hardware and technology. Can you tell us a bit more about that and also the cost for North Korea in exchange for all this new stuff? It seems that Kim Jong-un, the leader of the North Korean regime, saw an opportunity following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to build up a closer relationship with Moscow. In doing so, he agreed to send troops

The estimate has around 14,000 to 15,000 North Korean troops to fight alongside Russian forces. In exchange, he basically seemed to have his pick of sophisticated Russian hardware that has slowly been trickling into North Korea. So we've seen examples of short-range air defense systems, advanced electronic warfare systems with jamming equipment,

There's also evidence to suggest that Russia has been helping with North Korea's drone program. And then we're also seeing different kinds of missiles that, you know, resemble Russian missiles. So there's lots of evidence. Again, it's so hard to confirm, but there's lots of evidence to suggest that Russia has been returning the favor by helping boost North Korea's defense capabilities.

And is North Korea still sending troops to Russia to fight in Ukraine? They've only just confirmed about a month ago troops that were sent last year, and it was only kind of when their mission had ended. So if there have been any, I don't think we'll see any confirmation of that for quite some time. What's the cost of all of this for ordinary North Koreans? I mean, how does Kim Jong-un sell this massive investment in his military to ordinary North Koreans who, by all accounts,

live in poverty? I mean, they don't really have a choice. There's so little information that goes in or out. But based on what we can tell, it's a state that's run through huge

mechanisms. He has launched a full-scale information war to completely distort perceptions of reality inside the country to prevent information from going out, to prevent information from coming in. There was a new law introduced in 2020 that increased the punishment for anyone caught consuming or sharing any kind of foreign media. There have even been unverified reports that people caught doing that have been executed. So there

there's very little freedom in the country. There's very little opportunity to seek out alternative types of information. How does it work reporting on somewhere like North Korea? Where do you get your information from? There are a number of outlets that focus specifically on North Korea. You have the NK Daily, NK News. In fact, I spoke with one of NK News' reporters for this story, and they have managed to defy all odds and speak to people inside the country and really report on

this incredibly secretive place, which is just so impressive. And then there are other outlets in South Korea, Yonghap News Agency, for instance, that do really incredible reporting as well. For someone like myself or reporters outside of that bubble,

You really rely on the expertise of individuals who've spent a long time, usually several years, trying to get bits and pieces of information. You speak to defectors, if possible, people who've been inside North Korea and have fled. They're usually the best source of information because they've obviously witnessed these things firsthand. And especially elite defectors who have been privy to information within the regime are especially helpful.

I suppose the other source of information that we have is what the North Korean government, if we can call it that, the state released themselves.

These very high impact videos or pictures of Kim Jong-un watching a missile being launched or holding his binoculars or inspecting the troops. It always seems to be military focused, right? Yes, a huge part of the state propaganda is showing off the military might. And then you also get kind of really mundane stories of him going to inspect a farm in the countryside. It ranges, but it's always something that will paint Kim Jong-un in a very positive light. That's almost a given.

Thank you so much for joining us on Battlelines. Allegra Mendelsohn, our Asia correspondent in Taiwan. Thank you so much for having me. That's all for today's episode of Battlelines. We'll be back again on Friday. Until then, goodbye. Battlelines is an original podcast from The Telegraph created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Venetia Rainey and Roland Oliphant. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Battlelines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it really helps others find the show.

To stay on top of all of our news, subscribe to The Telegraph, sign up to our Dispatches newsletter or listen to our sister podcast, Ukraine The Latest. You can get in touch directly by emailing battlelines at telegraph.co.uk or contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show notes. The producer is Peter Shevlin. The executive producer is Louisa Wells.

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