I'm John Bachelor, Gordon Chang, at Gordon-Gee-Chang, my colleague and co-host,

and we're very pleased to

bring on Bruce Bechtel, our guide on North Korean armaments and aggression. These many years.

Bruce, a very good evening to you. Striking video of Xi Jinping being greeted by Kim at the airport, Pyongyang Airport, including an honor guard,

walked down the red carpet together. Suddenly, the man in charge of 1.4 billion people for life

was walking equivalent to the man who's in charge of a starving tens of millions for as long as he can stay upright.

It was odd to see Xi Jinping give credibility to Kim and his kleptocracy.

Why are they doing this?

This was the first visit she made outside of Russia, outside of China this year?

Why the honor to Kim? Good evening to you.

Good evening, John. And good evening, Gordon. Well, I think it's all about about North Korea's

a relationship with Russia. As you and Gordon, both are very well aware, because we're all old guys during the Cold War, Kim Il-sung essentially played the Soviet Union and the PRC off against each other, getting what he could off both of them.

And he was highly subsidized way more than by China by the USSR

right up until 1990. And I think what's happened now is with these huge arms sales,

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, John, but 50% of the artillery ammunition, the

munitions being used against Ukraine

coming from North Korea, 40 percent of the ballistic missiles, that's a lot. Last year, they had made

$20 billion in, in, paid lots of ways, not just oil and money, but also in developing new

weapons systems and food stuffs and lots of other stuff in 18 months. That's pretty

incredible for a country like North Korea whose GDP is 26 billion a year for everything, and not counting the

illicit stuff, which these arms are. And a year later, after those figures were released,

it looks like they made even more. And the proliferation and the money and oil and food

...