What Does Kim Jong Un Want? | Richard Hanania & Peter Ward

About this episode

Richard Hanania interviews Peter Ward about North Korean ideology and the implications of Kim Jong Un's abandonment of reunification as a goal.

In this episode, Richard Hanania speaks with Peter Ward, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute. Ward studies North Korean foreign policy, political economy, human rights, and Korean security issues. He also writes for NK Pro (NK News) and has published in various academic journals. This discussion explores the structure of the North Korean state, its evolving legal system, ideological shifts, and everyday life under Kim Jong Un, including stand-up comedy, sports, pornography, religion, and the ways in which the government has allowed markets to function. The conversation spends significant time on what may be the most consequential shift ever in North Korean ideology: Kim Jong Un's abandonment of Korean reunification as a goal. For generations, reunification was the animating myth of the North Korean state. Kim has now declared South Korea a corrupted and permanently hostile country, in many ways little different from any other enemy. Ward explains why this happened and how it changes the geopolitical situation. As it turns out, there is both a more optimistic and a less benign interpretation of this change. Ward talks about the emergence of the category of “unsocialist”…

People in this episode

Host: Richard Hanania

Guest: Peter Ward

Topics covered

• North Korean foreign policy
• political economy
• human rights
• Korean security issues
• Kim Jong Un
• ideological shifts
• cultural deviance

Keywords

• North Korea
• Kim Jong Un
• reunification
• political economy
• human rights
• cultural deviance
• markets
• ideological shifts

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Sejong Institute, NK Pro, NK News

Books & works: The Cleanest Race

Places: North Korea, South Korea

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