♪ welcome to "amanpour" on pbs. tonight -- the winter olympics are under way in south korea. but will the north be looking to play a game of sport, power or politics? my conversation with chung-in moon, special adviser to the president of south korea. also ahead -- the celebrated british artist creating a splash with his californian canvases. david hockney opens the doors to his l.a. studio for a rare, revealing interview. >> announcer: amanpour on pbs

was made possible by the generous support of roslyn p. walter. good evening and welcome to the program. i'm christiane amanpour in london with the global perspective. the winter olympics are under way. the politics that infuse every games are heightened this time by nuclear tensions on that peninsula. but its northern neighbor has fueled hopes of a thaw by sending athletes and an official delegation, including kim jong-un's own sister, an influential figure who will dine with the south korean president, moon jae-in, even as her brother threw himself a massive military parade in pyongyang on the eve of the ceremony. this show of force, a reminder that the threat remains high. vice president mike pence, who is leading the u.s. delegation, vowed to keep up the pressure with, quote, the toughest and most aggressive sanctions yet.

still, the united states is backg south korea's diplomatic outreach for now. and their so-called peace olympics, as i heard from the president's national security adviser. dr. moon, welcome back to the program. good to see you. >> thank you. >> so you sit at the right hand of the president of south korea. you're there in the blue house, the presidential palace. to your mind, what is the state of affairs right now? has the tension been dialed down, or is it still red hot between you and north korea? >> i would say it is a transitional peace. president moon jae-in really want to have pyeongchang olympic peace, but his task is how to transform peaceful olympic into lasting olympic peace. >> well, is it possible because as you know, all the critics and skeptics think north korea is playing a clever propaganda game and it's getting all the attention and the world thinks

it's behaving really well because it's coming to south korea. it will march under a joint flag. even your ice hockey team will be a joint team. >> yes, we understand north korean intention. north korea wanted to show that it isa normal state while having nuclear weapons. but we cannot accept it. we also know there are a lot of critics in washington who are extremely skeptical of this inter-korean thaw and also the opposition within south korea. coervative south korea have been arguing it's nothing t a show, but president moon -- presenmoon really believes that he can make a transition. >> so is president moon right in believing that? it's one thing to be hopeful. it's another thing to base that hope on rational geopolitical strategy and events. do you think the time is right for north korea to engage in the way you want it and the u.s. wants it to?

>> yes, time is right. time is on nobody's side. it is better to have talks with north korea earlier. in the sense president moon jae-in made the right choice. there are critics, but ignoring critics and trying to bring north koreans to south korea, trying to have some kind of momentum for bilateral talks between pyongyang and washington that will be great diplomatic achievement for president moon jae-in. >> do you think there will be actual peace talks between moon jae-in and kim jong-nam, the highest ranking north korean official to set foot in south korea, and second only to the leader kim jong-un? he is coming to your country at 90 years old. >> that's true. kim jong-nam of the standing committee of the supreme people's assembly of north korea is attending pyeongchang

olympics. and that's very significant. but i wouldn't say that his visit and any kind of encounter or meeting between president moon and chairman kim will be a talk for peace. it is just simply a starting point for the meaningful talks in months ahead. i really don't think there will be a truly peaceful talk per se. >> you don't think this will be formal peace talks or even informal peace talks? it will be a get to know you and set the table for the future? >> it is getting to know each other and trying to figure out what is the north korean tention? what's the next plan forurther talks? >> what about vice president mike pence? he will attend the opening ceremonies, and he is bringing the father of otto warmbier, the american student who basically came back and died in the united states after being imprisoned in north korea. how will that go down? what will the north koreans think about that? >> vice president pence's

message very clear. that you got -- north korea, you got to really give up your nuclear weapons, and you have to pursue democracy and human rights. those are american goals. but north korea -- it's very difficult for north korea to accept vice president pence's demands. however, we are hoping that there would be some kind of new momentum for having a meeting between vice president pence and the chairman kim jong-nam. it would be really good for us. >> but that would be pretty huge. that would be the highest level meeting in many, many years between an american and a north korean official. >> north korea then should give some kind of positive message to vice president pence. otherwise, there's no reason for vice president pence to meet the north korean leader. therefore, it is very important for north korea to come up with some kind of meaningful messages to vice president pence. >> do you expect that to happen? >> i hope. >> do you think it's a realistic possibility? >> i think it is a realistic possibility if north korea is

smart enough to turn around the pyeongchang olympics into some kind of meaningful dialogue between the u.s. and north kore >> so now to president trump. is president trump, today, right now, helping your president to dial down the temperature, to try to implement some diplomacy and move back from this war of words and, you know, a potential real war? >> i think so. president trump endorsed inter-korean talks by saying that i support what you're doing, what president moon jae-in is doing 100%. at the same time, he kindly agreed to suspend the joint military exercise training temporarily. that means that president trump is having some kind of expectations from the pyeongchang olympics. but his position would be wait and see. okay, now i give endorsement. president moon, you've got to deliver some kind of meaningful breakthrough.

therefore, the burden is on the shoulder of president moon jae-in. >> the other criticism in washington is that north korea is just trying to drive a wedge between south korea and its ally, the united states. is that true? can it do that? >> it is true, but we are not dumb. we know north korean intention. but we go along with ally -- well, with north korea, therefore -- >> you stick with your ally, not with north korea? >> of course not. we stick with our ally, but we're hoping that -- we are hoping that north korea would understand reality and the driving wedge would not rk, but north korea should come up with talks with south korea. >> do you think president trump's fire and fury, little rocketman, bigger button than yours, do you think that public rhetoric toward north korea has helped clarify u.s. intentions

and let north korea know exactly where the u.s. stands, or has it complicated the issue in the region? >> president trump has been sending rather conflicting signals. on the one hand, his position is tough, but on the other hand, he hints at the possibility of dialogue with north korea. therefore, it is all matter up to how north korea responds to president trump's message. >> you say conflicting, but many people use diplomacy backed by the credible threat of force. that is an internationally accepted diplomatic, military, maximum pressure, as you all call it, tactic. so again, does it work? >> it hasn't worked so far. american strategy has been so far deterrence first and then compliance. either to curb north korean behavior by use of force or showing them it's a formidable force to north korea. >> you say it hasn't worked yet, but north korea has sort of calmed down its rhetoric. it is sending this delegation to

south korea. you are talking a little less fire and fury these days. >> i really don't think it is the result of american hard-line policy on north korea but rather president trump's endorsement of inter-korean talks and hinting possible dialogue with north korea that worked more positively in bringing north korea to south korea rather than compliance and hard-line military threat. >> so the north koreans are interested in possibly talking to the americans? >> definitely. the whole issue is whether it's conditional or unconditional. north korea wanted to have unconditional talks, but american position is unless you show very concrete moves toward the denuclearization, we're not going to talk with you. there is some incompatible elements between the two. >> all of these talks, all of this effort between your president and everybody to try to calm the situation down, and you would like to see a denuclearization. does all this time simply give

north korea more time to continue its military program, its missiles, its nuclear warheads? and they plan to have a massive military parade as we speak heading into the olympics. >> yes, but look. what north korea is showing is reality, not fiction. we've got to have a more realistic approach on north korea and also a more flexible approach to north korea. we cannot really dicte north korea to give up its nuclear weapons. it's not realistic. also we should come up with some kind of incentives to north korea to disarm north korean nuclear weapons. >> in the united states, republican presidents have dismissed any rapprochement or any progress that democratic presidents have made with north korea saying that these democratic presidents were taken for a ride, that north korea just cheated. for instance, what president

george w. bush did back in the early 2000s when he just canceled all the rapprochement that clinton had done. and now we see that president trump dismisses what president obama was doing, which you say was not very much, but nonetheless, that north korea has taken the u.s. for a ride over and over again. is there any way to -- is that right? >> you're absolutely right. george w. bush, anything but clinton was a real cause of the problem with regard to north korea. now president trump would come up with anything but obama. and wiping out any possibility for positive engagement with north korea. therefore, we see some kind of lack of coherence and consistency in american policy on north korea. >> do you think the accusation that north korea is always cheating no matter what deals the americans broker is on target? is that correct? >> yeah, north korea has been cheating, but we've got to make a decision between cheating and hedging. >> cheating and what?

>> hedging. if they show a hedging behavior, then we should not treat it as a cheating behavior. >> okay. but they've hedged their way into dozens of nuclear warheads and a potential intercontinental ballistic missile capability thatan potentially reach the united states, and everybody is scared now. >> precisely. >> is that cheating or hedging? >> it's both. cheating to the united states and hedging from the point of view of the north korean national security. >> as you know, there's one example of restricting a country's nuclear program. and that is the deal iran struck with the u.s. and the rest of the big powers. if that deal is broken or somehow disappears, what message does that send to any attempt by your president to try to bring north korea in from the cold? >> it will create a very difficult situation for south korea and north korea. north korea will not try to come to any kind of negotiation table, and south korea will have a real hard time in persuading

north korea to come to the negotiation table. >> because? >> because america is not trustworthy. u.s. can change any time. whenever there is a change of government. >> a lot of people don't really know what the thinking of the north korean leadership is. are they sitting there with their finger on the button? are they trying to read the messages that are coming out of the united states? what are they thinking? and what will all these external pressures do to them? how will kim jong-un react? how do you analyze what they are thinking and what their next move will be? >> kim jong-un, like any other leader of the nations, you know, really concerned about nationa securityndegime security. north korea is concerned about how to secure credible, minimal nuclear deterrence against the united states and how to deal

with deteriorating conventional arms race with south korea. how to co-op the military. how to sustain its regime and how to enhance international peace treaty. north korean logic is no different from other nations. >> so you don't think that kim jong-un would somehow irrationally launch a first nuclear strike? >> no. american intelligence community comes up with a very interesting report saying that kim jong-un is not irrational. is not crazy. if i think it's a kind of a leader which we can have a talk. >> and so will kim jong-nam be vital to that? if you can talk to him in south korea during these olympics, is he the first big opportunity you've had to talk to a very, very senior north korean leader? >> yeah, i think it is very good opportunity for us. but he would not make a decision. it's kim jong-un will be making decision. but he will convey our messages to kim jong-un very clearly. >> and kim jong-un's messages to

you? >> that's true. >> dr. moon, thank you so much indeed for joining us. >> thank you. so from the icy landscape of sport and power politics, next, we relax by sun-soaked pools in california. those painted by the one and only david hockney. he's among the world's greates living artists. the brit who left dark and gloomy northern england for the brilliant light and colors of los angeles. most know him for his paintings of swimming pools, but his career spans huge scope and vision and time. he's notoriously difficult to pin down for an interview, but now that he's turned 80, he's in a reflective mood. with sellout retrospective exhibitions, he knows he'll probably not see many more of these. and our nick glass met up with hockney in his hollywood studio, and he found the artist expansive and as eccentric as ever, smoking up a storm in a

cheeky rebuke to california's health-obsessed culture. ♪ >> david hockney remains a committed smoker, as everybody knows. the great retrospective has now reached its final venue, the metropolitan museum in new york. measly before that, at the centre pompidou in paris. and hockney felt compelled to see it there twice. >> i thought it was a marvelous show, actually. yes, i did. we went back to see it in september because i realized, well, it's the last time this will be done in my lifetime, i'm sure. >> hockney has always been a matchless draftsman. probably without peer in the modern age. and over time, his use of color

has become ever more rapturous. his persona has always been colorful. back in the '60s, dyed blond hair and owlish specks. ba then, and we sometimes forget this, he was also roically painter of gay desire. openly celebrating his sexuality in his work when gay sex was illegal in england. >> what was the reaction at the time? >> um, i think they thought they were naughty. >> britain's greatest living painter, the irrepressible david hockney in his studio in the hollywood hills. interviews are rare and getting rarer. the yorkshireman who went to california in the 1960s and quickly became an art star. hockney has always looked at the world and at us unblinkingly in his own singular artistic way.

he's recorded his own intensity of gays ever since he was a boy. >> this is you at 16? >> 17 years old. >> i have always loved looking. i've always loved looking. when i could go on the bradford buses on my own, i used to run right upstairs, run to the front of the buses so you could see more. you could see more. ♪ >> he sees the world in more detail and with more analysis an most other people. >> the dialogue now is without history. it always was. but now it's in the foreground. >> i don't know that he would call himself an old master yet. i don't think he'd want to be

known as old, but he certainly is a master, in my book. >> i don't suppose you have a favorite painting, do you? >> no. the last one. >> the last one? >> the last one i'm doing, yeah. >> this has been a momentous 18 months or so for david hockney. he turned 80 last july. huge cause for celebration and a traveling international retrospective, shuttling from one great gallery to another. in great britain, the most popular show there ever and onto the pompidou and the met. an event of equal if not greater importance was the launch of a giant picture book, "david hockney, a bigger book." otherwise known, given its weight and size, as the sumo. >> that's my house. that's my house again. >> here was his artistic life spread out before him, page by

page. >> it's going to take me nearly an hour to go through this book. >> the sumo book made him reflect in a way perhaps he never had before. >> that made me look back at a lot of things because i hadn't really looked back. i tend to think, well, i live in the now. you paint in the now. and it's always now anyway. >> these are my dogs. my dear little friends they were for 14 years. >> this is your autobiography in effect? >> yes, it is. there's hardly any words. just pictures. >> and that's it. well, i realize this book would last 100 years probably. most people will see my work in this book. >> that's my house in

california, and that's a glass ash tray in case you have forgotten. >> even before setting foot in california, he imagined his life there. >> this is a painting i did before i went to los angeles. it's called domestic scene in los angeles, and i painted it in 1963 before i went there. and i found it absolutely like that anyway. >> i came to california in 1964 when nobody knew me. and i preferred that. i've always been running away a bit from london anyway. too many distractions. and i don't want that. i want just to work, to do my work.

>> his best known work is perhaps from the '60s and '70s. a bigger splash was painted in '67. >> painted with small brushes. all little lines which i thought was rather amusing because a splash, of course, i could have just done it like that. but i thought, no, i won't. i'll do it painstakingly. and it's more amusing that way. swimming pools i always loved. i mean, all the wiggly lines they make. if you photograph them, it freezes them, whereas if you use paint, you can have wiggly lines of wiggle. >> there's another big one. this is the largest painting i

ever made. >> it's over four meters high and 12 meters across. a mesh of 50 different canvases completed in 2007 with a little technical help. >> and i realized i could do a great big painting without a ladder by using the computer. and i have worked this out, and so we did it. >> making colorful marks with an ipad. in 2010, hockney was one of the first artists to start using one. he's always happily embraced new technology. >> it could be a video journey, a polaroid journey. it could be. but at the end of the day, it's informing his painting. that is what he is. he's a painter. >> i think in painting you can do things that you can't do in photography. i'll tell you what edvard munch

said about photography. photography can't compete with painting because it can't deal with heaven or hell. which i think is rather profound, yeah. >> at 80 1/2, hockney still loves looking and looking again. still obsessively, joyously making art. mostly it seems in the old-fashioned way with tubes of paint and brushes. >> i say i feel 30 when i'm in the studio. well, you want to be 30, don't you, if you're 80? so i come in the studio every day and work because then i feel 30. >> my parents, beverly hills house wife. i'm just going through this as quick as possible. >> yes, i made a few memorable

pictures. yes, i know that now. i know it now. >> only now? >> well, i'm more confident now. >> belatedly, happy birthday. >> okay. very good. >> a beautiful way to end our program tonight. thank you for watching "amanpour" on pbs and join us again next time. "amanpour" on pbs was made possible by the generous support of rosalind p. walter.

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