At the Brink with North Korea

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2017

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Donald Trump mocked Kim Jong Un by calling him “rocket man,” and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if the U.S. or its allies were attacked. Kim, in turn, dismissed Trump as a “barking dog Evan Osnos recently reported from Washington and Pyongyang on the tensions between the United States and North Korea. Osnos tells David Remnick that North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons; they are no longer a bargaining chip but a source of national identity and security. Despite the forceful rhetoric and threats, Osnos found little appetite for war in either government, concluding that North Korea is not “a suicidal cult.” And he predicts that Trump will contain the risk, rather than eliminate it. Plus, critic Amanda Petrusich picks a book, a T.V. show, and an album for the end of summer.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is rule of trade to God.
0:03.0	The One World Observatory is straight of the block
0:07.0	to West Boulevard and makes that right.
0:10.0	They didn't break that, but they have pretty good access to those people.
0:15.0	She herself consciously mocked that lineage.
0:18.0	So that's happening.
0:20.0	It seems like an incredible story here on many fronts. that lineage. So that's happening.
0:23.7	It seems like an incredible story here on many fronts.
0:29.3	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:32.4	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:35.5	The provocations by Kim Jong-un's government keep escalating,
0:39.6	and Donald Trump's rhetoric is following suit. He said at the United Nations that we would
0:44.3	totally destroy North Korea if the U.S. or its allies were ever attacked. Staff writer Evan
0:51.6	Osnos has been reporting from Washington and from Pyongyang,
0:55.0	which is no easy feat, trying to find out just how close we are to the brink of true disaster.
1:01.1	I thought one of the most chilling parts of your long and extraordinary piece in the New Yorker
1:06.3	was when various sources would talk about how they felt about what war would look like.
1:12.6	And they would talk about how, yes, hundreds of thousands of people would be killed, but a few of us would survive and we'd start all over again.
1:21.6	In essence, what would war really look like if that horrible outcome were to come about?
1:35.1	The war, if it ever happened between North Korea and the United States today, would be a horror.
1:45.0	There's been, just to take one study, a look at what would happen if North Korea used its artillery that is now positioned on the border with South Korea.
1:50.1	And the best estimates are that in the first day, 65,000 people would be killed.
	...

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