--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I want to soak up the sun. All right. Hi, Sean. ZipRecruiter.com slash explained. Great to see you again.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm back. Haven't seen you since we placed a posting for our summer internship at Today Explained at ZipRecruiter.com slash explained yesterday.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, that was a really good time we had. That was a moment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, yeah. You know what? What? We've gotten a bunch of matches from ZipRecruiter. No way. In just 24 hours?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm going to tell you all about them. Oh, my gosh. Please.
--:-- Elise Hu: Hi, hello. What a day it must be. Oh my gosh, I can't imagine so much happened on the Korean peninsula today.
--:-- Elise Hu: I i woke up this morning to a hug that felt historic. Yeah, they hugged it out at the end of the day. The North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, they hugged.
--:-- Elise Hu: They did kind of a full-body hug. I don't think their hips touched right after they signed this joint Panmunjom Declaration.
--:-- Elise Hu: What is the declaration? What does it mean? Is it as historic as that hug felt?
--:-- Elise Hu: Well, it's a huge step. I mean, it's a springboard because it was appropriately vague.
--:-- Elise Hu: I mean, it was vague enough such that it wouldn't tie the hands of other negotiators, for example, the United States, on the thornier issue of just what denuclearization looks like.
--:-- Elise Hu: But the two Koreas, in terms of what they could do with their longstanding disputes and disagreements, went a long way in trying to get to peace, prosperity and unification of the Korean Peninsula, which is the second part of the name of the declaration.
--:-- Elise Hu: The formal name of the declaration is Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula.
--:-- Elise Hu: Today, we will make sure that the agreement we have reached, which the people of the Korean Peninsula and the world are watching, does not repeat the unfortunate history of unfulfilled promises by closely communicating and cooperating with each other in order to yield good results.
--:-- Elise Hu: Wow. So lofty goals. So specifically in there is denuclearization eventually and just peace between the Koreas, which has never been formalized since these two countries went to war in 1950.
--:-- Elise Hu: Is that right? That's correct.
--:-- Elise Hu: Following World War II, Korea got split up under two different types of leaders. One in the north, who was supported by communists, Kim Il-sung, who is Kim Jong-un's grandfather.
--:-- Elise Hu: And then in the South, the forces of democracy. So it became kind of like a proxy battle in the Cold War and continued that way until the North, Kim Il-sung, decided to try and take the entire peninsula and invade the South, which is how the Korean War broke out in 1950.
--:-- Elise Hu: Due to quirks and how this war ended and who participated, North and South Korea can't just end the war and sign a peace treaty themselves.
--:-- Elise Hu: So to actually get to a peace treaty, you're going to need the U.S. involved and China. But what this declaration today, what this joint agreement today does is provide a lot of momentum so that the U.S. and China can get brought in to potentially sign off on a peace treaty to come.
--:-- Elise Hu: You were there for this historic summit today. What was it like? What did it feel like just to be there?
--:-- Elise Hu: And what were the reactions from everyone you were surrounded by to what you were seeing happen between these two leaders who had never met before?
--:-- Elise Hu: That's a great question because they only allowed about 12 pool cameras from South Korea to the border area where the two men held the summit.
--:-- Elise Hu: So for the 1,000 credentialed international press covering this event, we were about 30 minutes south in this giant convention center in the most crowded press file I have ever been in.
--:-- Elise Hu: And I've covered the G7 and the G20 and the Olympics and ASEAN. And I have never been in a press file with so many other journalists that were in there at the same time.
--:-- Elise Hu: We had two huge screens in front of us in order to watch the live feeds of everything
--:-- Elise Hu: And when Kim Jong first emerged out of the North building where he could walk down some steps down to the actual border, you could hear audible gasps that he suddenly appeared, you know?
--:-- Elise Hu: Wow. And, you know, because nobody really sees Kim Jong-un live. Right. When North Korean state media puts out footage and photos of him, it's always taped or photoshopped after.
--:-- Elise Hu: And so to see him huffing and puffing after a brisk walk, to see him sort of like red face, that was a big deal for a lot of journalists.
--:-- Elise Hu: And for South Korean journalists that were in the room, you actually could hear a roar. You could hear them say, oh, all in unison when the handshake happened.
--:-- Elise Hu: Because, you know, we in the US constantly focus on the nuclear issue, the nuclear issue. But this is something really happening between divided people.
--:-- Elise Hu: And so for South Koreans, you know, we saw the drama of division and unification today, especially during a lot of those symbolic moments, like when they sat together to drink tea or they shook hands for the first time.
--:-- Elise Hu: Wow. Yeah. There are like so many made for TV moments today.
--:-- Elise Hu: It sounds like a budding bromance or something. It almost did. I mean, by the time they got to a hug. It seemed very bromantic.
--:-- Elise Hu: Yeah, I mean, that hug, watching the video, it felt very organic. Like, it wasn't a planned hug. They just kind of went for it.
--:-- Elise Hu: Yeah, that's right. It wasn't an awkward side hug. It wasn't, you know, the dandruff removal that Trump did to Macron.
--:-- Elise Hu: You know, like, it was definitely, it definitely seemed more sincere.
--:-- Elise Hu: What else did they do? They planted a tree, they shook hands, they hugged it out. Did they share a meal or anything like that?
--:-- Elise Hu: Yeah, they had a big banquet dinner together with their wives, and the menu was carefully planned out.
--:-- Elise Hu: For instance, Kim Jong-un grew up in Switzerland, so one of the dishes was the Swiss potato dish called roasty.
--:-- Elise Hu: They also had this chocolate dome over a mousse for dessert where they together had to sort of crack the dome with a mallet.
--:-- Elise Hu: So, yeah, there was all sorts of planning that went into this day.
--:-- Elise Hu: What led up to this meeting between North and South Korea? What was happening there over the past couple of weeks?
--:-- Elise Hu: So starting from New Year's Day 2018, we've seen the pivot led by Kim Jong-un's choice to sort of go in the diplomatic direction.
--:-- Elise Hu: He's always sort of telegraphed this idea that he wanted to focus on the economy after he felt like the country's nuclear deterrent was developed.
--:-- Elise Hu: This year has been all about Kim Jong-un trying to act as a statesman. I mean, we have to temper this with a reality check that this is still a dictator who oversees a totalitarian state.
--:-- Elise Hu: The most inhumane gulags in the world are known to be in North Korea. His people cannot leave. They're essentially prisoners in their own country.
--:-- Elise Hu: And he had his brother poisoned to death. So we have to keep all of that in mind and balance all of these realities.
--:-- Elise Hu: However, he is trying to make a policy shift. And that shift does require opening up more to the rest of the world.
--:-- Elise Hu: I'm so curious how South Koreans feel because you've been surrounded by them all day.
--:-- Elise Hu: Do South Koreans now feel like they can see a finish line in this conflict?
--:-- Elise Hu: Well, South Koreans have been here before. This is the third big try at peace between the two Koreas since 1953.
--:-- Elise Hu: So maybe third time's a charm. But I would say that the South Koreans I've spoken to and that I'm around are viewing this with a wary optimism.
--:-- Elise Hu: A lot of folks warn that North Korea always has something up its sleeve.
--:-- Elise Hu: But we should point out that this is the first time that there's been an inter-Korean summit at the beginning of a new South Korean presidential administration.
--:-- Elise Hu: So that means that this current president, Moon Jae-in, has four more years. He has a five-year term.
--:-- Elise Hu: So he has four more years to try and make his policies a reality and have this work out.
--:-- Elise Hu: And so time is on his side and time is on South Korea and North Korea's side because there won't be a changeover in administrations or political parties.
--:-- Elise Hu: And there some guy over here that wants it to work out too it seems like Yeah Donald Trump has tweeted about this already
--:-- Elise Hu: If you haven already seen Trump declared an end to the Korean War even though that's not technically what happened.
--:-- Elise Hu: He said that Americans should be proud of what's happening on the Korean Peninsula.
--:-- Elise Hu: I believe that tweet was sandwiched between some tweets about Kanye West and Chance the Rapper, so definitely got his priorities all lined up.
--:-- Elise Hu: Just another day in Washington.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Elise Hu reports on Asia for NPR. We in the U.S. constantly focus on the nuclear issue. The nuclear issue. After the break. The nuclear issue.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rottmastrom. This is Today Explained. Okay, ZipRecruiter.com slash Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I got to say, we've got 20 matches. 20 in 24 hours. That's almost a match an hour.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We got Max. We've got Daniel. We got PH Steven. We got PHA Steven. Is that Stefan? I don't know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've got Stephanie. We've got Maria. We've got Kiana. We've got Oscar and Emily and Salva. We've got them all.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've got so many matches. You know what we got is work to do because now we have to go through these.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I know. It's like the dating app of... stop it just stop while you're ahead or behind jeez ziprecruiter.com that's not what I meant it's like the dating app of professional matching you know just when I thought this was all over you go and redeem yourself ziprecruiter.com slash explained that's my name
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We in the U.S. constantly focus on the nuclear issue. So it's a pretty big deal for what's going to happen between Kim and Trump later on, either in late May or June.
--:-- Alex Ward: You can think of this Kim and Moon meeting, if this were volleyball, as like a set.
--:-- Alex Ward: And it's up to Trump to kind of have two options of what to do with the ball.
--:-- Alex Ward: He can either spike it or he can block it.
--:-- Alex Ward: Did Trump know this meeting was going to happen? Yes, he was thoroughly aware.
--:-- Alex Ward: The U.S. and South Korea have been quite united, actually, as a front on how to deal with North Korea.
--:-- Alex Ward: They've had some disagreements about when to push, when to not. But this is all kind of part of a bigger plan, it seems.
--:-- Alex Ward: And based on the agreement that Kim and Moon signed, this does look like a longer-term process, with now the Kim-Trump summit being sort of the next big step.
--:-- Alex Ward: What does a denuclearized North Korea mean for the United States military, for the South Korean military, for the region.
--:-- Alex Ward: So it would be a massive shift in sort of the geopolitics of that whole region.
--:-- Alex Ward: Right, I imagine. So North Korea has, I mean, let's give some credit where credit is due to Kim Jong-un here.
--:-- Alex Ward: By massively accelerating the missiles program, the nuclear weapons program, he's able to get a meeting with the South Korean president, but most importantly, with the most powerful man in the world, Donald Trump.
--:-- Alex Ward: It's an amazing thing for an impoverished country to get. Yeah. So he earned this moment.
--:-- Alex Ward: So stepping from here now, no one really believes that Kim Jong-un is going to completely get rid of all of his nuclear weapons, right?
--:-- Alex Ward: Because imagine what could happen then. You could imagine that the US or South Korea would attack, right?
--:-- Alex Ward: North Korea and Pyongyang has no real opportunity to respond because they're out of nuclear weapons.
--:-- Alex Ward: So that's something that Kim Jong-un wants. but Kim would probably want some sort of guarantee like the removal of America's 28,000 or so troops out of the peninsula that would be a massive deal and it would be a huge blow to kind of the way the US and South Korea have an alliance structure that's the security guarantee is one of the backbones of that going even broader you've got China backing North Korea this entire time effectively yeah because for China what it does like having is North Korea is a buffer state between the US military and South Korea which is a government that is sort of weird with Beijing
--:-- Alex Ward: And of course, Japan would be on the U.S. and South Korean side in this case.
--:-- Alex Ward: So like, but what you have to know is like a lot of the geopolitics of that region has been completely dependent on a nuclear North Korea, right?
--:-- Alex Ward: The U.S., South Korea, Japan, even though they all have their own animosities towards each other to a certain extent, have kind of served as a front.
--:-- Alex Ward: You've had China kind of serving as a backer for North Korea. But all this has been based on a nuclear Pyongyang.
--:-- Alex Ward: What happens when that changes? That's a big reshuffle.
--:-- Alex Ward: This feels very historic but I feel like it important to point to the fact that North Korea has promised to denuclearize before
--:-- Alex Ward: We haven been here in terms of the optics of this right Yeah. Like a North Korean leader stepping over the DMZ line, holding hands with the South Korean leader, signing a joint.
--:-- Alex Ward: Like that was amazing. Historically, in terms of substance, we have a different issue.
--:-- Alex Ward: So in 1991, you had North Korea and South Korea agree to basically to end hostilities.
--:-- Alex Ward: Yeah. They never signed that agreement. So the Korean War continues to this day.
--:-- Alex Ward: That agreement of peace between the Koreas was December 1991. The following month, January 1992.
--:-- Alex Ward: Both countries agreed not to test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy, or use nuclear weapons.
--:-- Alex Ward: And then also possess nuclear reprocessing and uranium, blah, blah, blah. Sure. Of course, we know this not to be true on North Korea's side, right?
--:-- Alex Ward: They've clearly been developing a nuclear program. They've clearly been developing missiles that can hit not only Japan, South Korea, but also the United States.
--:-- Alex Ward: So did they sign that one? It was signed. So they said they'd do it, but they just opted not to do it. They haven't done it. They backed out.
--:-- Alex Ward: Was that it between 92 and now? There were other sort of agreements, but the one people still point to as kind of the missed opportunity was 2005.
--:-- Alex Ward: There's this thing called the six party talks, which were the U.S., China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and then North Korea.
--:-- Alex Ward: This is under President George W. Bush. This would be under George W. Bush.
--:-- Alex Ward: Here's what North Korea pledged to do, that it would get rid of, quote, all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs, unquote.
--:-- Alex Ward: That was an amazing agreement, right? North Korea is agreeing to give up its nuclear weapons. Sounds pretty good. Sounds pretty good.
--:-- Alex Ward: The U.S. effectively and others kind of go, okay, well, in exchange for that, we will normalize relations with you, which means like actually having diplomatic ties, give it economic aid, right?
--:-- Alex Ward: North Korea is a desperately poor country. Yeah. No more threats against North Korea. So kind of like stop coming at us, give us money and let's be friends. It's kind of the general trade, right? No more nuclear weapons for that.
--:-- Alex Ward: Yeah. Backed out in 2007. North Korea said, no, screw that. We still want our nuclear weapons. It's still a security guarantee. So we're still here. We're still at this point.
--:-- Alex Ward: So let's be very careful to not kind of fall in this trap again, right? It's weirdly kind of like going back to an ex-boyfriend. Who's like treated you badly, promises they'll change. You go back. You're like, this time it will be for real.
--:-- Alex Ward: And it's possible this time could be for real. we have new actors in a new context. The new actors, of course, you have Trump who desperately wants a deal.
--:-- Alex Ward: You have Kim who looks like, who has said now the economics of his country matter to him a lot. And he's also probably worried about a strike from the U.S.
--:-- Alex Ward: You've got a South Korean president who desperately also wants a deal. And Moon, the president of South Korea, is the son of North Korean refugees.
--:-- Alex Ward: The other context is, well, when they were having these negotiations in decades past, North Korea didn't have a nuclear weapon seven times stronger than Hiroshima and possibly the delivery system, the intercontinental ballistic missile with the ability to reach all of the United States.
--:-- Alex Ward: Yeah. So we've never been in this moment with three leaders who are looking for something.
--:-- Alex Ward: One of the things the U.S. has always done was kind of hold the meeting with the president hostage to negotiations with North Korea. Like until you do what we want, you will not meet the president.
--:-- Alex Ward: Trump has flipped that on its head. let's meet first and then let's let the lower level folks kind of figure out the implementation plan in a weird way it's crazy enough to work historically this is insane but these two leaders might kind of get along they are impulsive they are hot to anger they are strong willed they have funny hair it might be worth seeing what comes of this
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All right, ZipRecruiter.com, Sash Explained. I just want to ask, it's been a week. It's been an adventure. It's been epic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We've got a posting up on ZipRecruiter. How do you feel looking back on this week?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Man, you know, it has been a really nice week.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And after a week of calling you ZipRecruiter.com slash explained, I'm so excited to go back to calling you Luke Vanderplew slash explained. oh yeah that's close
