No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the well-being of their own people
than the depraved regime in North Korea.
The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself for its
allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.
Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.
We have many men of the Korean rule brought to star in the dream.
This is Nicholas Kristoff,
reporting from North Korea.
The risk of a war with North Korea is much greater than you may believe.
Some experts put the chances as high as 50 percent.
To be clear, this could be a nuclear war, far worse than the Iraq or Vietnam wars,
or perhaps a million dead on the very first day.
We came to North Korea to seek possible exit ramps, possible peace solutions.
But this country is already mobilizing for war.
A lot of anti-US rallies were engulfing the nation when we arrived in late September.
People expressed outrage at President Trump's words, rocket man, fire and fury.
I feared that this war of words could become a real war.
North Korea claims it has successfully tested a hydrogen bomber device which can be loaded
onto a long-range ballistic missile.
I was with three New York Times colleagues.
When we landed in Pyongyang, we were quickly escorted out to this remote, guarded guesthouse.
It was here that we interviewed Mr. Che, a senior diplomat from the Foreign Ministry.
We appreciate your time.
In 2003, I thought the United States made a terrible mistake in invading Iraq.
But I remember visiting Saddam Hussein's Iraq in a run-up to that period, and it seemed
to me that they underestimated the danger to their country of what they were doing and
their reluctance to try to work out deals.
And I agree that President Trump is escalating.
But isn't North Korea also escalating in ways?
That vitriol is striking because Che and his Foreign Ministry colleagues are supposed
to be the reasonable ones, the conciliatory softies.
Now, imagine the bad guys.
On previous trips, I stayed downtown, but this time we were sequestered in the guesthouse.
We quickly learned that the Foreign Ministry was actually protecting us, keeping us away
from hardliners who might not be on board with our presence.
The road into Pyongyang has few cars, but is dotted with checkpoints.
Eighty-five percent of the people live outside the capital, and no one can enter without
permission.
Only the most elite and devoted followers of Kim Jong-un live in the capital.
When I was last in North Korea in 2005, the city was bleak.
Now despite sanctions, there has been economic progress, smartphones, beer halls, and food
kiosks.
There is even an amusement park.
But the prospect of war is everywhere, even at this dolphin show, even at kindergarten
playgrounds.
It's all part of an aggressive preparation for war.
Some of it is new, like these anti-American billboards you see everywhere.
One banner boasts of missiles able to hit the U.S. mainland.
Another celebrates the demolition of the U.S. capital.
Nothing is subtle.
We pass students marching against America, but we weren't allowed to stop and talk with
them.
You see, at every moment we were monitored by two chaperones from the Foreign Ministry
who ran our schedules and translated.
They even slept at our guesthouse.
They were our minders.
One of them, an elite woman in her 20s, had never before even ventured outside of Pyongyang.
We couldn't approach ordinary people like these farmers without our minders' permission.
And even if we could, no one here would speak freely.
Remember, this is the most tightly controlled country in that history of the world.
What do you want to do when you grow up?
Well, I'm going to become a national defense scientist who will make each bomb for our
country.
This is North Korea's most exclusive school.
Not much has changed since I first visited this school in 1989, except the kids speak
better English and they despise America even more.
Can I ask what you think of America?
Well, I think America causes all the evils on Earth, where they cause the wars and also
the arguments between the nations.
They have killed so many Korean people in many parts of our country and I'm so angry
about them.
Those killings he's referring to happened in the Korean War.
That's more than 50 years before he was even born.
But it's a point of view that North Koreans are steeped in.
Places like the War Museum set it into historical record.
Thousands of daily visitors are falsely taught that the Americans started the Korean War,
only to be defeated by the North.
The museum's prized possessions are old US military vehicles and the USS Pueblo, a Navy
spy ship captured in 1968.
This commander, who helped seize the Pueblo, is revered as a national hero.
The narrative here is that North Korea has repeatedly defeated and humiliated the US.
My big worry is the dictators often end up fooled by their own propaganda, so they end
up engaging in wars that they mistakenly think they can win.
I was speaking to Lieutenant Colonel Hwang at the DMZ, one of the world's most dangerous
borders, where soldiers from the North and South stare each other down, day and night.
If war breaks out again on the Korean Peninsula, this will be ground zero.
You're living in the middle of it.
Is that true?
Does it feel like it's a hair trigger on both sides?
South Korea is just on the other side.
The 20 million people in greater Seoul live 35 miles away.
Compared to when I first came here in 1983, South Korea is a different country.
It was a military dictatorship, now it's a democracy.
China is a different country.
It is kind of the same as North Korea.
Well, I guess one thing has changed.
Experts say that North Korea may have as many as 60 of the nuclear warheads that Lieutenant
Colonel Hwang refers to.
Another sign of the preparation for war.
During our trip, Kim Jong-un announced that all North Koreans, every single ordinary worker,
had signed up for the military as a response to President Trump's taunts.
On Monday, every employee signed some kind of a form committing to join the military.
Mr. Kim manages this silk factory.
It's one of North Korea's crown jewels.
It's a fully outfitted communist live-work factory kept spotless for visitors.
Manager Kim showed off with great pride, where Kim Jong-un once sat and ate.
He was also proud of the claim that all his workers had signed up for war.
What is that?
I don't really understand what that means, because you're not a young man, I was going
to say.
In other words, you're a factory manager, I don't know, it's been a while since you
were in the military.
I'm not sure what you would do on the front line, I'm not sure what this woman would do
on the front line.
So, what does it mean to join the military?
Yes, she said basically 25 million people basically signed for the war.
No one around here misses a chance to disparage Trump.
Workers at the factory have political study for two hours a day and six hours on Saturdays,
or so we were told.
This woman was reading the speeches of Kim Il-sung when we entered.
Have you met Americans before?
She's obviously a comedian.
Mr. Kim, one of the cases that greatly affected American public opinion about your country
is the case of a young man called Otto Warmbier.
Do you know that case?
Have you heard of him?
I say Otto Warmbier is the American student who stole a poster and was sent home in a coma
shortly before his death.
Most North Koreans don't know about him.
It's not in their government's interest to talk about a tragedy that happened on their
watch.
But every single person here knows about Trump's threats.
He's playing right into the government narrative that Americans are always the aggressors.
Behold the SciTech complex, a gigantic, atom-shaped edifice finished in 2015 to showcase North
Korea's achievements in science, that is, nuclear science.
An amphitheater at the nucleus of the building plays an animation celebrating North Korea's
ability to strike the U.S.
There are a total of two exhibitions a year here.
The next event on the calendar, furniture, the complex boasts of its, quote, e-library,
and what our tour guide today carefully calls our intranet, a massive storehouse of articles
vetted and brought in from the outside world.
There is no internet in North Korea.
No outlet for free expression.
In practice, the SciTech complex may be just a large study hall, but buffed and shined
to be yet another monument, another cathedral for the reverence of the Kim dynasty.
Do you think that there will be a war?
The last time there was a war in Korea, millions of people died.
Do you worry about that?
And is this the first time you've met Americans?
Is it a little strange, a little scary, or not?
Oh, I see.
And what do you think about Americans, or what should Americans know about Korea?
Thank you for saying that out loud.
That amusement park, it's built as a mini-America, right down to the hot dog
and hamburger stands. Somehow our minders were gamed to let us speak to strangers here,
so we randomly approached people in line.
We heard the same thing over and over again. Of course we wondered if people truly believe
the propaganda they spit out, or just self-censor to survive.
That voice in the background is our minder offering encouragement.
When we asked about America, she got on point.
Or our entire trip we'd heard this relentlessly, even off-camera. Perhaps it wouldn't matter
if the minders controlled who we approached, because not a word of doubt about North Korea
was ever uttered that evening. Not a word of doubt. No second thoughts about the cataclysm of war.
They will survive. They will win.
Much later we looked at the video footage from this evening and saw something strange.
A man in the background, Greston Brown. He walks by, crossing the frame.
Again. And again. Again. And again.
Oddly, he speaks to this woman. He's not wearing a microphone because we didn't interview him.
But he whispered a sentence, only the start of which could be understood.
Of course, we don't know who he was or if he was influencing our subjects. We'll never know.
In North Korea, some things are seen and heard, and others are just mysteries.
In this world, the law of jungle prevails. The smaller one country, the stronger and bigger its pride and then sovereignty should be.
That is what our people's minds said.
Are we truly on the edge of some sort of cataclysm?
We should do something in order to survive. In order to save God the peace and save God the right to existence of our nation. We need to do something.
What do you mean, do something?
I don't know.
We went to North Korea hoping to find exit ramps for peace. But the diplomats we met said they weren't interested in talks.
You may be wondering why North Koreans would barrel toward annihilation. It's because they don't see it as annihilation, but rather as self-preservation.
They're determined to be able to strike the U.S. so they don't go down the way Saddam Hussein did.
To be fair, President Trump didn't create this conflict, and it has been decades in the making. But he has made peace less likely. Kim Jong-un exploits his rhetoric to prime his people for war.
The U.S. strategy is broken. North Korea will not give up its nukes. No matter how many sanctions we roll out, and war is a terrible backup plan.
There are no easy solutions, but Trump should pursue talks, even talks about talks. One option for a deal. They freeze their nuclear program, and we reduce nearby military drills.
Oh, and by the way, it wouldn't hurt to smuggle in more alternate information to undermine the regime in the long run.
But above all, let's wake up and stop glibly talking about military options. Let's stop blithely drifting toward the first exchange of nuclear missiles in the history of humanity.
One of our great failings, media included, is that we didn't blow the whistle during the buildup to war with Iraq. And now I'm afraid it's happening again, only with an outcome that could be a thousand times worse.
War is preventable, but I fear it won't be prevented.
