There is a different future that is available to North Korea, if they choose differently.
My real concern is what happens if China becomes the next Cambridge Analytica, what happens if North Korea becomes the next Cambridge Analytica?
If we are to assume that North Korea becomes a nuclear-power state, of course the danger of having an all-out nuclear war, that possibility is very slim.
Like every country, North Korea has some very smart people. They could be contributing a lot more to science and other areas, but North Koreans are forced to spend so much time memorising the fake history of our dictators and other propaganda, so are at a huge disadvantage.
The hope of Internet anarchists was that repressive governments would have only two options: accept the Internet with its limitless possibilities of spreading information, or restrict Internet access to the ruling elite and turn your back on the 21st century, as North Korea has done.
My last passport, I had North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Liberia, Guinea… I had, like, every war-torn country in there.
I thought America was different, but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.
When you’re just a breath away from North Korea, it boggles your mind that that exists, or that something like the Khmer Rouge ever existed. You wonder how we allow that to happen as human beings; how we allow the human condition to get so depraved and desperate.
In a totalitarian state like North Korea, a group of neighbors gathering once a week to watch the latest episode of a forbidden soap opera is committing a political act, and forming, with the market traders who deliver them this treasure, a rudimentary civil society.
Well, that is very imperative to let North Korea open door to outside.
In the past, I’ve visited remote places – North Korea, Ethiopia, Easter Island – partly as a way to visit remote states of mind: remote parts of myself that I wouldn’t ordinarily explore.
North Korea is not even close to being a near peer to South Korea or, much less, the United States.
North Korea is really just the kid who decided he’d be ‘all out crazy,’ hoping people would be scared off by the tirades and avoid stepping up to the plate.
One of the things we need to do with North Korea, which is a rogue nation, is to get the international community in support of further sanctions, of keeping pressure on the North Korean regime.
North Korea publicly denounced me as an enemy of my people and punished all my relatives. They have this guilty by association policy and they go after three generations of your family or up to eight generations of your family.
North Korea spends billions of dollars to make this nuke test system. If they would spend just 20 percent of what they spent on making nuclear weapons, nobody would have to die in North Korea from hunger but the regime chose to make us hungry.
I can’t be sure of exactly when and how North Korea will change. But I do believe it will happen, hopefully in my mother’s lifetime.
North Korea is the errant teenage child, aren’t they? Or toddler – they’re holding their breath until they get their way.
To survive, China had to open up to the West. It could not survive otherwise. This was after many millions have died of hunger in a country that was like North Korea is today. Once we became part of global competition, we had to agree to some rules. It’s painful, but we had to. Otherwise there was no way to survive.
I’ll remind you that the West signed a deal with North Korea, said it would make the world a safer place, and, of course, all the words evaporated, and North Korea acquired nuclear weapons.
I brought Muhammad Ali to North Korea in 1995. I tried that once. It didn’t work out quite that well for me as it did for Dennis Rodman, but I brought Muhammad Ali to Pyongyang, North Korea, as part of a big wrestling event called the World Peace Festival. It was a two-day event that drew over 350,000 people.
Japan is prepared to break the shell of mutual distrust with North Korea and get off to a new start.
North Korea faded to black in the early 1990s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had propped up its old Communist ally with cheap fuel oil, North Korea’s creakily inefficient economy collapsed. Power stations rusted into ruin.
We are categorically against any new military nuclear power, be it Iran, be it North Korea, be it anyone.
We must work to make the South-North Korea dialogue lead to talks between the United States and North Korea. Only then can we peacefully resolve the North Korean nuclear issue.
