but they just wanted to be able to get to peace and live their lives again. that's what the wanted to do. block whether. >> one of the current tops i can the state state of the north ko. several how authorizes have been on booktv discussing their books about the culture, military and history of north korea. all of these programs can be seen in full online at booktv.org. but now we bring you a few segments. we start wivinger to cha, about north korea past and future. mr. which ra is in conversation with scott snyder eight director of the u.s.-korean policy at the couple on foreign relations. >> host: one of the basic features of the book is north

korea is the impossible state because no one inside is empowered to overthrow and it no one on the outside cares enough to risk the cost of changing it. i want to ask you about both of those. in particular starting with no one is embauered to overthrow. why too you think that has been the case in north korea? i mean, especially from a politics perspective, this makes north korea an outliar compared to what we saw with the former soviet union. >> guest: i think that observation is quite accurate, i think. when we look at the soviet union, when we look at the regimes in the arab spring, all of which have had leaders in power longer than the former recently deceased north korean leader. they all collapsed and north korea continues to survive. so that alone is evidence that nobody within the system is empowered to overthrow it. and i think it's also just

because, as you know well, the very strict controls that exist in this country, a society in which -- to use the term ensconced would be an understatement. this is about the strongest state in terms of the control it has on the society and on political freedoms, and even thought. even the way people think. so, for that rope, it's very difficult to imagine that there could be a group within this society that could speak out, that could challenge views at a party congress, these sorts of things just don't happen in north korea. so, that is why it has lasted for this long, i think because in spite of a lot of its problems, economic problems, human rights problems, food problems, it has lasted this long, and that is because no one within the system is capable of changing it. >> host: but there are potential forces for change going on

inside north korea. when you talk about information flows, organization. we're not -- it's maybe post-totalitarian, but we're obviously not to the place where there's no organized opposition. how long do you think it's going to take for us to see the evolution of politics in north korea to a point where it's possible to -- >> it's a good question and political scientists are supposed to be able to determine when these sorts of things happen, when you reach a critical tipping point, but i don't think we can. don't think we can say with any degree of accuracy what the tipping point in terms of when society is ready to act up, and rather than simply be -- follow the rules of the current political system. in the case of north korea, in the book i talk a lot about the

element i think is knew in this picture, which is the growing markets in the country. really starting from the famine of the 1990s, in which people basically had to sell whatever they could find. a cup, a pen, for food, and that was the start of the market and a system that never had markets before. and that has been going on now for 15 years. so i think what we can say is there is an element there that was not a there in the past, that has created more of an independence of mind by the people in north korea, and not being soley reliant on handouts from the government. but when exactly that will reach a point where the system will tip, it's very hard to say. >> host: how do you think the state it adapting? >> guest: they're trying to crack down, certainly on the unofficial markets that have existed. some of the official markets. there have been efforts at

reform, what you might call reform in north korea. some of these economic projects with the of fluent south korea but these have largely been aimed at bringing hard currency in to help the regime, not to much to create real market reform in the country. and so i think that what we're seeing now, if we do see efforts at economic engagement with the outside world, the north korean leadership is doing this because they seek hard currency, not because they're seeking necessarily to create a better life for their people. >> what dnr in what way do you think pockets of protests could emerge, or do you think it's a case where anything that happens is just going to be stamped out? do you see any possibility for the elites tolerating certain forms of dissent?

>> guest: well, right now it's hard to imagine that. the question is to whether you can -- at what point we will see either toleration of dissent or the emergence of dissent, as social scientists we can't predict that but we can point to certain preconditions that exist, that could lead to that. and so i think certainly the market mentality is certainly one of these things. but it's very hard to say -- well, at least there's not a lot of evidence that this regime is tolerant of any sort of dissent. there's not a lot of evidence that they have tried to listen to the -- what the content of what whatever protests have taken place in north korea, and of course it goes without saying that this is a country that is very hard to get any information on what is happening inside the country. so when we talk about dissent or protest, we hear anecdotes and

stories of things that might have happened in this military unit or in that city, but we really don't kw, and it is such a sealed country. and when the day comes where it opens up. and you see a unification like the germany, we'll find out about the political dissent in the country. >> host: do you see the regime as really rigid and, therefore, more likely to crack or do you think it is flexible in the sense it has muddled through now, despite incredible global changes, in the international environments? how to evaluate the character of the regime in order to have a sense of what might come later on. >> guest: i think it is -- if

you pose that spectrum, i think it is more on the brittle end of the spectrum, rather one that is mallable. the reason it has been able to muddle through is because the second factor we talked about, it's managed to muddle through not because of anything internal but because of what is happening out of north korea, and that is this dynamic where nobody really wants to put in the effort to change it or to solve the problem, and there's one country in particular that wants to ensure that there is no -- there are no big changes or unstable occurrences within the country. >> host: well, that's, i guess, the second part of your observation about north korea as an impossible state. nobody carolina enough to risk the cost of changing it, and that is quite striking when we look at the history, especially

of how human rights concerns have motivated desires for international intervention in many other parts of the world. rwanda, kosovo, bosnia, and yet somehow north korea hasn't been subject to that same international activism, despite the fact that arguably the human rights conditions are just as bad, certainly for large portions of the population. how is it that this is the case? what makes north korea immune to that sort of focus of the international community? >> guest: well, when we say international community we have to be clear what we mean. i think we mean the developed west. and there are certain issues that the developed west has taken up in terms of human rights. you mentioned some of them.

very clearly they have taken up these causes. there are others, sudan, tibet, others that have been taken up to a great extent by the international community, but north korea is just not one of those issues. for two reasons. the first is through very successful efforts by the north korean regime to ensure that this remains a nameless and faceless policy issue. and not a personal story, a per -- per son fix indication of the story that the average american will be influenced by or take up a cause for. many of the north koreans who defect into china are sent by the chinese in buses with the curtains drawn so there's nobody that can associate a name or a face with this terrible human rights situation in north korea.

for example, south korea, during its military dictatorships, had this person in the name of kim who became the president of south korea and was lie lion rised as a face for democratic -- you have electric walesa l -- lech walesa, and you have personalities that can be identified with a problem and the north koreans have been good in not allowing that to happen and the chinese have been complicit in it. the other reason, i think, is that it just hasn't captured the imagination of some major personality in the west. i know this may sound catty, but practically i think it's true. when somebody like richard gere

takes up tibet or mia pharaoh -- farrow takes up chinese par hsus in darfur, this gives resonance in to the issue and in north korea we haven't that the individual that does that. >> author bruce bechtel, marging the north korea military is capable of being a threat to the united states and the rest of the world. >> let me get into the meat of the discussion right now. why would i call this book "defiant failed state? " i think a lot of you understand, if you watch news, whatever news you watch, whether it be msnbc or cnn or fox or whatever, often we see pictures of north korean people starving. we see a crumbling state

infrastructure. and in fact just last week i remember watching greta van susteren visited north korea from fox nose and was showing many of the same things we have seen for years, since general -- in the early 1990eds. we see a country that people say, why isn't this place falling apart? what many people fail to realize is the reason we have these resource problems, the reason we have this crumbling infrastructure, is because that regime has taken all the resources, hard currency, oil, electricity, et cetera, and they have sunk it into their military, and into supporting the lifestyle of the elite, and so thus we have that conundrum, a defiant failed state, a state based on anyway of the paradigms one would read in foreign policy, every year you look another that north korea meets

all the checkmarks and yet here they are. in fact not only are they here bought the present several key threats to u.s. national interests i'd like to talk about this evening if i may, and they're addressed in my book. so, what i'd like to address are three key questions i hope i'm able to answer. one, is north korea a failing or failed state? two, is it capable of surviving indefinitely, and, three, why and how does it present such risk to asia, east asia especially, and the united states, and its allies? i think it's going to be important to talk about the kinds of things i accomplice my book. north korea's domestic foreign and military policy challenges and the implications this presents to kim jong-il, kim il-sung's son, and i will look

at four key threats that north korea presents to our allies. i'll talk about the north korean nonnuclear threat. all the threats they present militarily that are nonnuclear. i'll talk about the north korean proliferation threat. the north korean nuclear threat which is probably more written about than anything else. and i'll talk bat threat that people don't analyze as bag threat and that the north korean's region session unstable that that causes and how that's a threat to the reason. the succession from kim ongoing toil his son, jim -- kim jong-un. so arrest get into the nonmilitary threat from north korea. what are the biggest challenges that the north korean people's army faces? it's obvious that inadequate resources, particularly food and

fuel, limits the training of traditional conventional forces. when i say traditional conventional forces i'm speaking about armor, maybe niced forces. self-propelled are artillery. they have the equivalent of four mechanized corps, three thousand vehicles. takes a lot of fuel to run those guys out and do field training and the north koreans do not have simulators like we do or our allies or south korea. and this has been an issue, and the dprk must prevent malnutrition to keep from leading into' discipline problems. kim jung ill's father died -- in 1995 there was a resolute in the sixth corps which is in near the chinese border. an entire corps revolting.

chim jung ill found out about the revolt from the cmanding general of the corps, who dissed his own officers. kim jung ill's response was to send a crack division from down in the dmz by train up there, and they killed everybody in sight, killed most of the officer cadre. those that were killed escaped to champion where they're still existing today, and promoted the general who dissed his other officers. this general is now chief over the staff in pyongyang. so kim jung ill figure out the first year of his leadership how to prevent malnutrition and health issues from hurting discipline in the army. just kill everybody who may be revolting against you. pretty good plan, actually. also, inadequate force modernization to replace legacy systems is a major issue for the dprk. for example, north korea was heavily subkeysed by the soviet union until 1990.

the last quote-unquote fourth generation or modern military equipment they got was the su25. and they got some mig 29s before that but very few. nothing since 1990. and since that time the south korean military has been building indigenous tanks, self-profelled al temperaturery that looks like it came out of an american factory. very good stuff. north korea has not modernized its military in 20 years. that's an issue. we don't need to talk about missiles and other stuff. we'll do that later. the final thing is, some of you have been to korea -- the dprk does not have sufficient gdp to engage in a traditional arms race with iraq. why is that? north korea's economy last year was rated by the cia fact become as being almost exactly like afghanistan0s economy under the taliban. and what do you compare that to?

their neighbor to the south has the world's 13th largest gdp. they live in air conditioned houses, drive hyundais and kias and they can also drive fords if they want to pay huge tariff rates. they cannot engage in a traditional arms race with south korea. they don't have the money to do it. and finally -- this is tied into that -- information is gradually beginning to seep in from the south. so finally, after all these years, north koreans are beginning to learn what is going on in the south and realize, i'm eating bark and my cousin just sent his kid to ucla. something is wrong here. it's finally starting to seep in. these are challenges. all of these things i just mentioned are huge challenges for the government of the dprk and the military. so how does kim jong-il continue to maintain a credible military threat to the south? the answer is asystem metric

forces, the highest priority for north korea. traditional forces capabilities continue to decline slowly, but they continue to be large and adequately maintained. in other words, yes, the north koreans may be going up against k1 south korean indigenous tanks but their well-maintained but they don't have a lot of fuel to run them out in practice. the result is an evolving that that keeps the status quo on the korean peninsula. literally a cold war in miniature but it's extremely expensive to maintain. so we're talking about one of the key reasons why there are problems for this north korean populace at large because of the huge expense of the military. north korea has nuclear weapons but often little attention is paid to other aspects of the threat it presents to the region and that's what i want to talk about tonight somewhat, and that is the subject of an entire chapter in my book. when i talk about north korea

asymmetric threat there are three key pillars. long range artillery, ballistic missiles and special operations forces. this allows the npk to threaten rok with u.s. forces and affordability in ways that are highly difficult to defend. so let me talk about the long-range artillery first. north korea has up to 900 long-range systems and those systems we would be 170-millimeter guns which have a range of 40,000-meters, and 240-millimeter local rocket launchers with a range of 60,000 meet meters. yes, these systems can hit seoul beyond the tms,and five to 20% of these are assessed to be equipped if chemical munitions and up to 50 of these systemsing target seoul so according to the national defense estimates estid

u.s. dod estimate if these systems were fired at the beginning of any conflict, 200,000 cash advertise are projected just in the first hours of conflict. most of them in seoul and the majority of them civilians. press reports indicate that more systems had been moved closer to the dmz in the past 18 months. in fact, this were six systems moved just last week. within two kilometers of the dmz. in the kaesong corridor, facing seoul, some very interesting stuff, but wait, there's more. north korea has also used asymmetry in its traditional artillery systems and for those who were -- how many people here own a tv? for those who have a tv, and turned on to the news last november, you know what north koreans can do with artillery, and an novel 23rd -- when i had my first coming out party

for this book -- they conducted an artillery barrage against -- on november 23 them they conducted third barrage. they killed two south korean marines and two civilians and they wounded 22 people. and i don't know how many of you saw the actual film but they conducted artillery barrage of a town. they shelled a town. this is very interesting because the north koreans are clearly outgunned by south korean artillery. south korean artillery, including the artillery on the island, this best artillery in the world, an exact copy of u.s. 155 self-propelled artillery and made in seoul and made by hundred day, great stuff. the north korean used geography and surprise, and before the south koreans now what hit them

they had 4 casualties. >> now we hear from br meier. mr. meyers, who teaches north korean literature and lives in south korea, takes an in-depth look at north korean society and ideology. >> okay. what can you hear.north korea you haven't heard a thousand times? really only the most important thing, which is what do the north koreans think and how do they see themselves in the world around them? i'd like to talk about at analogy. let's imagine the house next door to where you live has been empty and somebody moves in and you see them unloading assault weapons, grenade launchers, bazookas. this is america so it's probably all perfectly legal. [laughter] >> but as you lie awake at night having put your house on the market, you're probably asking yourself certain things, and i don't think you're asking yourself what kind of cognac

that man drinks who are will inhart the house and you're not all that much interested in how many calories his kids are getting. you're probably more interested in what he thinks, how he sees himself, what he is teaching his kids. this is why i find it so baffling that in the united states that although we fought one war with the north koreans, losing 54,000 people in the process, and although we came very close to fighting another war in 1993 and 1994, and although we have been locked in this increasingly dangerous nuclear standoff with the north koreans we're still not interested in what ideology they have and why they're doing all this. in the meantime, we're sort of compulsively accumulating hard facts and then we wonder why we still don't understand this country. it's almost as if we didn't know that iran was an islamic country. it wouldn't matter how much intelligence we were able to gather about iran. its behavior would baffle us,

and this why i'd like to talk to you about north korean ideology. that sounds like a dull topic, so i've chosen the parts of my book that i think lend themselves more to a visual presentation like this. there's some heavier stuff in the book as well but i thought i'd keep it out of the talk. ideology is especially important because this regime and this man you see here in this picture, enjoy a much higher degree of mass support than we tend to assume. we tend to think of north korea as a country in a sort of permanent lockdown that survive purely by repression alone and that's not the case. the evidence lies in the north korean border itself. on the left you have the east german border which i remember very well. i was student and i would go to berlin quite often on the train and we'd have to go through the border and on the right you have the north korean border and you can see they're very different.

this this border to china and not the dmz. a very easy border to cross, and very interesting statistic is that 50% of those who do cross the border into china, bribe their way back into the country. now, nobody tried to bribe their way back into the soviet union, or back poo into east germany. so i warn you against taking the high personally of a lot of these north korean refugee ngos seriously. they like to talk about the underground railroad that is helping north korean mike grants to safety. i don't know of any people bribing to get back into the country. so this country survives not by respeakssiveness but because it is able to inspire its people still. so that's what i want to talk about it how it inspires people. want to stay in the here and now but we need to go back into history a little bit and i want to talk about -- it's actually

not the main ideology in north korea. it was a reaction to this man here, to the chinese personality cult, which began exploding in the mid-1960s. the north koreans felt the need to match this cult. so mao claimed he was poet and enjoyed international renowned so the north korean personality cult suddenly remembered plays which kim il-sung had allegedly written in his youth, which no mention had been made until then. mao had the long march for which he was very famous, on which he led his troops and the north korean been historians remembered the march kim il-sung has taken his troops on. mao had the ideology and forced the north koreans to come up with juja talk. this is a a dry topic and doesn't lend itself to talk like this but i want to give you an

example of this sham doctrine it exists to be praised and not to be read. it exists really only to enable the claim that kim il-sung is a great ideology. this is just an excerpt from it. a representative excerpt. i recognize this process d prose style because this is how i used to write when i had to term paper due and i had to fill ten pages and at the same time make sure the professor didn't actually read them. so, i would just repeat things over and over again and make it as dull and stodgy as possible and that's what you see in this so-called juche thought. now, the regime, when it actually has a message its wants to put across, it can do it well. these of the best prop begannists in the world. and it knows that when it wants to get a message across that's not the way to do it. this is is the prose they use to fell the books so the people can look at the book spines and say our kill ill sung is just as

greating a mao. but in court korea, ideology is not so much learned from the leaders as learned about the leaders, in other words. what people are taught in so-called political study sessions or the fantasy biographies of the two kims. it's not what they said but what they did. the north korean encyclopedia entry on the juc he power is twice as long as the juche thought. i don't want to talk more about that today. now to go back a little bit into history, do we have in the koreans here today? ya? okay. now, if you live in korea, as i do, then you've may well be fan of these historical korean tv dramas, and if you watch them, you will have people maybe a thousand years ago talking about the korean nation, or the korean race, and actually the word

minjuk did not appear in the korean language until the japanese brought it to the korean people, and it was said there was no strong sense of belonging to a korean nation until late in the 19th 19th century. in other words the koreans were not nationalist. they were seep know phobic but there's a difference -- xenophobic. this is a korean map from 1402. they believed their country to be on the outskirts of this chinese realm. they saw themselves in the student position to the great chinese teacher. so, in 1910, of course, korea was annexed. here you see the korean soldiers. and for the first few years of the japanese occupation of korea, the japanese ruled their subjects so heavy-handedly that the nascent korean nationalism bubbled over into a big

demonstration in 18919, which frightened the japanese, and after that the japanese relaxed some of the repressive policies that had inflammed the koreans and decided to coopt korean national jim instead of trying to stamp it out. they did so with a campaign called, -- which means japan and korea as one body. you see from the map on the left, japan and korea both painted the same color on the school map. the message the japanese spread in korea was that you koreans and we japanese may have drifted apart over the millenia, but we are actually one people. we good back to the same devine progenitor. we all have this uniquely pure racial blood line, and this blood line makes us uniquely pure. makes its pure hearted and morely superior to people in other races. >> you can watch the complete

myers program and all the programs featured here online at booktv.org. next, author marion creekmoore, moderates a panel featuring former president jimmy carter and former u.s. ambassador to south korea, james laney. they recount president carter's intervention in the 1974 north korean nuclear crisis. >> in 1994, the united states and other countries, as well as the international atomic energy agency in vienna, knew that between 1989 and 1991, north korea had reprocessed a small amount of plutonium. blew tonum is one of the ways you can make a nuclear weapon. the united states and the iaea support evidence by south korea and others, demanded that north korea subject itself to special

inspections by the international atomic energy agency, so that the agency and the rest of the world could know precisely how much plutonium north korea had. north korea refused to allow those inspections. the u.s. had another concern. the five megawatt reactor that they had in operation had spent fuel in it that they wanted to discharge. that spent fuel, when discharged and cooled in cooling ponds, would be able to be plutonium would be able to be separated from it, and from that. five to six nuclear weapons worth of plutonium could have been produced. the united states in those early months of 1994 took the tissue the united states nations security council, seeking economic sanctions. at the same time, it augments its military forces in and around the korean peninsula.

north korea, stated both publicly and privately, it would regard the declaration of sanctions by the security union as a declaration of war and react accordingly, and then in may, 1994, north korea began to discharge its fuel rods into the cooling ponds from which more plutonium could be distracted after the cooling period. this was the moment when former president jimmy carter, then citizen jimmy carter, decided that he needed to go to north korea and see if he could not diffuse this crisis. i'd like to start by asking two questions. first to james laney and then to president and mrs. carter. jim, can you tell us,sons you were the american ambassador in south korea at the time, can you tell us how the clinton administration was trying to deal with this issue in the

period of the several months before? as well as how was the south korean government working on this crisis with the north? and then i'd like to turn to president and mrs. carter and ask you to tell us about your interest in the korean peninsula, the invitations you received from the north koreans, and most particularly, why you decided that you needed to go to north korea. jim? >> well, first of all, marion, i want to add my own word of congratulations on the publication of this remarkable book. it's masterful and definitive and will stand a long time, and it's also very readable. aafree with john. i would like to take this opportunity before a local audience to express any heartfelt express to president carter, who was instrumental, was the key person in seeing that i was named ambassador in

1993. and i want to make that very sincere but also ironic because he dumped me into that nest -- [laughter] >> neither he nor i realized what an enormous crisis was looming, and as only of i got there that i realized that we were in a whirlpool and looked like we were on our way to war. >> i would, whichize the situation as as -- characterizee situation as being one in korea, as mentioned in the news, of great anxiety. short of panic but great anxiety. the american mothers had taken their children out of school in april and had gone home. it was kind of a slow, quiet evacuation. the threats that had gone back and forth between north korea and washington increased in intensity, and vitriol.

the north koreans say we will turn seoul into a sea of fire and they cobols they had thousands of long-range artillery that seoul, city of 15 million people, within range of their shells. the united states said, beginning with president clinton, if they tried to make a bomb and use it, they would be no north korea. he said that on the dmz. and equally stern warnings followed up. everytime the negotiations that marion had spoken about, in terms of the business about trying to get inspectors and the unitees nations and the international atomic energy agency -- everytime they broke down, the tension ratcheted up another notch. fortunately i had a very good relationship with the commanding general there. we had breakfast every week.

we shared our concerns and assess. s, our plans and thoughts, all worked precisely together in step. it was not any daylight between us, and he i and both agreed -- i relied on miss military assessment -- that a war would not only be catastrophic, a second korean war, but that is was foolish and unnecessary. that we had not exhausted all possibilities for trying to resolve this situation peace any. but when i would go back to washington, i could find no center where the decision was being made. i went from the state department to the secretary of defense, and to the national security council, and they were always committees but i didn't know where the decision would be made for any kind of initiative. it all seemed reactive. and it was at that point that i went to the chief of staff of the white house and said, look,

we've got have greater kinds of overtours to the north, and the response was, president clinton, you know, is vulnerable on the issue of military service and he has to be tough, and any attempt to talk to the north would be seep as appeasement. at that time the american press was full of columns, calling for bombing of the north, bombing the facility, be ready for war, and so forth. and even the american people, the polls indicated they would support military action against north korea. and i said, well, it may be a political downside in terms of talking with the north, but if they have 5 5 thousand body bags coming back to the united states that's going to be a downside politically, too. and it turned out that at that point, that afternoon, the white house called the secretary of state christopher, and he appointed bob lucci to be the point map for north korea.

but the problem was, even with that, as mar obvious and brilliant as bob was there was no willingness to take the initiative. at one point we tried to talk senator nun and lugar into going as representative office the government from the senate. and they were prepared to go. but the trip fell through at the last minute. it was under those circumstances that coming back to atlanta for the commencement in may that i took the occasion to share my concerns and alarms withpresident carter. who had worked together in the carter center, and i felt very close to him and held him in such high esteem and knew he was a peacemaker in his heart and his mind, and we talked about that and shared that, and as they say, the rest is history. he said, do you remember -- he and i talked about it before i went to korea -- he had received an invitation from the leader of

korea, kim il-sung, and it hospital worked out because of washington, guess. but he was going to check to see if that was possible, and it was -- i think i left that meeting with president carter for their first time with some glimmer of hope, that if you would get involved, if it was possible for that to work out, that we might begin to break the log jam. but it was a long shot, and it was in your hands. i felt so much better. you have to realize here was a neofight ambassador with little foreign service experience, none at all, and going outside of government, having given up -- i shouldn't say that's so flatly but there were wonderful bright people but just no place where the situation could be released. it was like two ships that were on a collision course, and none

would change course for fear that they be seen as a coward or apiecer or weak or michigan like that. and we really hadn't checked it out. and it was the need to have that face-to-face that was so important, and that where the carters come in. >> beginning in 1991, kim il-sung, the dictator of north korea, whom i really despised because i had been in the submarine force during the korean war and i had seen 66,000 of my fellow people in armed forces killed. in that war. but beginning in 18991, he began to send these messages that somehow or another he wanted to have conversations with somebody that represented the united states. and i thought then, as a negotiator, that the stupiddist thing is to refuse to talk to

someone like this and let them simmer and threaten them and build up an animosity and fear in the country and particularly applicable to a closed society that is already paranoid to be further isolated and excused from direct talk with the people who they fear. also, i had some private conversation witches some chinese friends of mine. i normalize diplomatic real estates with china in 1979 and they were close to me, and they told me they knew pyongyang better than anybody else and if sanctions were declared by the united nations the korean people would see this at a declaration that their nation was an outlaw nation and their leader was a criminal. and they could probably accept the criticism of their nation but you have to remember that

kim il-sung treated almost as if he was george washington and jesus christ combined. he was exalted as a military, political, and spiritual leader. and to see if disgraced is something the chinese said they could not accept. well, i knew that we could destroy north korea militarily...

intercepted my letter and he said he called me on the next morning and said if you will change that -- so he was going to call clinton and i said don't clear that up with the state department. i know it will be vetoed. cities that president clinton had given me permission to go so we got a quick round from cnn,

for instance. i was a nuclear scientist engineer in the needy. having briefed a professor at georgia tech to see what the issue was and i went to get some briefings there and they turned out to be absolutely erroneous. there was nothing accurate. >> we conclude our program on north korea with kurt pitzer book eating with the enemy. as an unofficial liaison he hosted meetings with north korean officials at his new jersey restaurant and then passed along the information they provided to the fbi. i am going to read three sections from three different parts of the book. the first one is near the

beginning, and it is right after bobby met hanz, and hojunk, ambassadors from korea, met them from new york city and was wondering if they would follow up with a call after the first meeting. i kept and on the phone for the rest of the afternoon and all the next morning. when the north koreans haven't called by 4 o'clock the following day, i went into my back office and dialed the number on the napkin. dprk mission, said a man with a thick accent. i asked for hojung. after a few minutes a soft voice i recognized as hanz came on the line. mr. hanz, i said, its bobby egan, we met two nights ago. how can i help you, mr. egan? call me bobby. hanz didn't say anything.

after a few moments i said you asked me to meet. i just following up. >> what are you following he asked? outside my office a dishwasher more easily stacked plates and i shut the door with my foot. our meeting, i said. i figured you would want to meet again. are you requesting a meeting? i'm not requesting anything that you said you wanted to meet. why do you want to meet? i wondered if he was trying to piss me off. did i say i amounted to meet? i said if you wanted to meet we could meet. this wasn't getting us anywhere. i switched the phone from one year to the other. we could continue our conversation, i said. >> what do you want to talk about? i thought about bringing up my interest in the p.o.w. but i wanted to form a relationship first. you can talk about whatever you want. i am busy, hanz said. this must be hell a girl feels after a guy takes her on a date and feels she is too ugly for another one. is ho jung there, i asked? he is busy, too.

we have a delegation from pyongyang. maybe speaking for ho jung was showing me they were on equal footing. i didn't on the call to end like this. did you get them something i asked. hanz asked who? the delegation. an idea was starting to take shape in my head. have you gotten any welcome present? what are you talking about? like when you go backstage after a concert or a party. they give you a t-shirt in a doggie bag. you think i should give our delegation a t-shirt? why would i do that? its customary, i said. why is it called a doggie bag? is it for all this? >> it's like the doggie bag that you to come from a restaurant when you can't eat everything on your plate and they give you a bag to put your leftovers to it i realized that in his country people were starving and they probably didn't have leftovers. call it a good feedback, and you can call whenever you want. it's for souvenirs. why do dogs get a souvenir? that is one is from a restaurant and i said pity and call it a gift bag. why do you get a t-shirt?

it doesn't have to be, i said. forget the shirt. it can be anything. you get a bag and fill it with little things colleagues can get from pyongyang had decorative soak for the ladies at home, bourbon, pantyhose. i was speaking of swag, stuff we all get. something that says we are happy that you are here. make them feel like a vip. you know what cvip is, right? yes. they must be cvip if your government is sending them to new york. the question is how are you going to make them feel that their visit? i told them i could use my membership in a discount warehouse and put together a gift bag for $20 a pop. let me do it as a favor, i said. i'm not going to give them something for a dog, he said, and he on that. about a now or later i got a call and she said it's your kurri and boyfriend, handing me the receiver. not berlin, scotch and vodka.

i didn't know at the time i touched on one of his responsibilities as the new minister counselor to the u.n. which was to make sure that the dprk delegations gave a good report when they got home. we put together a quick list of things a visiting group might enjoy. as i was to learn many times in the years to come, hanz wasn't shy about saying what he wanted. he was very specific, candy bars especially with nets, marlboro and camel cigarettes, vodka and scotch, gummy bears, chewable multi vitamins, fruit, vegetables and flowers seeds. seeds? for gardening, he said. hard to find at home to bed i drove to the national liquidators wondering how that must be to live in a country where growing flowers in your window box was a luxury even for a high-ranking government official. lilly covered for me at the restaurant so i took andrea along with her legs sticking out of the seat i have heard around the store until i found gift bags like a stuck full of goodies. i picked up packages of seed,

strawberries, pumpkins come cantaloupes and carrots to i moved to the flower section and thought what the hell am i doing here? i can barely pay my meat bill at cuby's. how much is likely to spend? i have a little girl sitting in front of me. the responsible father thing to do would be to spend the money on her and lillia but my gut kept saying go with it. i felt alive. in a scheme of things it was a small act to buy a gift for the koreans. but who know where it would lead? i've never been someone to plan things out. i get into a situation and see what comes of it. iger out more packets of seeds, pansies, snapdragons, morning, calendulas and forget-me-nots. i felt his request for can become a booze and multi vitamins along with cigarettes i threw in some nicotine patches to try to get the north koreans to quit smoking. at the checkout stand i picked up a few boxes of beef jerky. hanz asked me to bring the

backstedt in the see the next day. the north koreans worked out of an office on 72nd street in a brick and glass building half a mile away from the east river putting it was dark and cavernous and when i told the old guy at the reception desk where i was going, he glanced at my bags, gave me a strange look and asked friday. the wooden door of the mission had a gold plaque with a few lines in what i considered was the corrine alphabet under which it read in english permanent mission of the democratic people's republic of korea to the united nations. a small surveillance camera on aid me from the ceiling above the door. a skinny man looking into the waiting room like you find in a dentist's office to get on the and here to see mr. hanz or mr. mr. ho jung. he disappeared and left me alone. i sat on an invitation letter chair and looked through a magazine. had pictures of flags, statues and military leaders visiting schoolchildren, government propaganda. be needed on the table was a six month old copy of "fortune magazine." the minutes ticked by.

15 minutes, half an hour. why did the invite me to their mission if they were just going to make me sit around? maybe they wanted to see how i would react. were their surveillance cameras inside this room, too? probably. i sat back and tried to seem comfortable. i leafed through the pictures of the magazine with an interested look on my face. then i picked up the "fortune magazine" and flipped through it with exactly the same amount of interest so anyone watching would see how even-handed i was. would they be watching, too? this had to be one of the most spied on offices in america considering its occupants. who else was here? i barely contained my urge to waver around the room and wherever the hidden cameras might be to let everyone who was monitoring the know that i knew. after more than an hour i was thinking i should pack up and leave and when he came through the door without apologizing. i needed a point of not hearing past him into the next room so he would know i wasn't trying to snoop. he rifled through the bags and

dumped the contents on to the coffee table. what are you looking for, i asked as he separated a few of the beef jerky packages from the others. microphones, please send? he said we should trust each other. note terrie yaki come he said handing them to me. what do you mean? i thought you left terry yaki. he looked like he was trying to figure out if i was kidding. we don't like japanese flavor, she said. later when he sent me to pyongyang and i saw the photos of atrocities by the troops of ander stood. i had a lot to know about my new friends to be for one thing, i had to get into the psychology of the people who'd been occupied by the japanese for the first half of the 20th century when he talked about japan was with a reasoned that if a kid i got the lead in school and wasn't going to get over it. was that with the north koreans were like? the lonely week kids? they were surrounded. they were surrounded by more powerful neighbors, russia, japan and china had threatened by the public in the united states to the south.

fine, no terrie yaki degette how about barbecue next? two years later around nine a morning i put the key in the front door when i heard a hard plaque on the pavement behind me to get it wasn't the sound of rubber soled shoes which is what everybody in the restaurant business where is to work. i turned to see an asian guy in a dark blue suit coming up the walk. he was alone in my first thought is that han and ho jung's guys were here to break things off with me. good morning. he had no accent. he held out his hand so i gave him a new jersey shake pity he kept smiling a big american smile. can i talk to you, he asked? you are a said. i don't want to be with you guys. we are not all the same, he said. he glanced around the empty parking lot. can you give me a minute or two? >> that concludes our collection of programming about north korea to be all these programs can be viewed in their entirety on line at booktv.org. here's a look at some of the

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one of the problems when the judges are appointing the public defenders is that the public defender's job is reliant on their approval, and judges are judged on their efficiency of it. how fast do they process cases? how quickly do they get through the dhaka it? so they are going to want a public defender that goes along and gets along that does their bidding and that is a challenge. and new orleans for a long time the system is that when one of public defender was assigned to one court remanded the same judge, said they were always arguing before the same judge. and the problem with that is that they were then kind of trading clients in a way like okay my private paying client if you let me spend a little time and take his case to trial i persuade this client to plead

guilty. there was a sort of trade-off going like you could cash in your favors only on some of your clients and they really need for a very corrupt system dw there. if you cannot afford an attorney one will be provided for you. kirchen on their right to free representation. tonight at nine on "after words," part of book tv this weekend on c-span2. and now we hear from simon winchester. he presents a history of the atlantic ocean which he describes as the cradle of modern western civilization. this is a little under an hour. >> ibm barbara mead, one of the owners of politics and prose. the first time that i met sign simon winchester was about 12 years ago in 1998 and he had come here to speak about his book "the professor and t