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CNN SUNDAY MORNING
Inside North Korea
Aired May 11, 2003 - 08:41 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ARTHEL NEVILLE, CNN ANCHOR: President Bush has proclaimed the regime, a change in Iraq to be completed, but the administration remains weary of another regime still in power in North Korea.
Our Mike Chinoy looks at the problems and the government behind them.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIKE CHINOY, CNN SR. ASIA CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): North Korea is a country run like a religious cult. The landscape dotted with monuments to its godlike founder, the late Kim Il Song, the man who started the Korean War. The airwaves filled with hymns to his son and heir Kim Jong Il, who is described by North Korea propaganda as the Great General and the Son of the Twenty-First Century.
It is a society which routinely mobilizes hundred of thousands of people from marches hailing the Great General, while human rights activists and refugees report that Kim's all pervasive security apparatus divides the population into three categories: core, waiverers and hostile. With imprisonment or execution, the fate of those deemed disloyal.
So tight is the control that on my many trips to North Korea, I've never been able to do unsupervised interviews or wander around on my own. Instead, like most visitors, I've been taken to showpiece events and kept far away from the reality beyond the political theater. A reality of poverty, stagnation and famine produced by communist economics, natural disasters and international isolation.
KATHI ZELLWEGER, CARITAS: The average North Korean life is a struggle for survival and that's priority one. How can I get food? How can I feed my family.
CHINOY: Aid agencies estimate that up to 2 million North Koreans have starved to death in the past decade. Hundreds of thousands have fled.
Many family had to eat grass and corn cobs to survive, says Park Son He who worked in a North Korean army band before escaping to China 18 months ago. I saw this with my own eyes.
Already labeled part of the axis of evil by the Bush administration that would not be unhappy to see regime change in Pyongyang, the North Korean media is now voicing new concerns following the American victory in Iraq. "The Iraqi crisis teaches a serious lesson," wrote the official Korean central news agency recently, "the DPRK," that is North Korea, "has no option, but to strengthen its own means of just self-defense in every way."
ZELLWEGER: The officials I spoke to were all more than just concerned. They were deeply worried or they feel that after Iraq, they are next in the firing line.
CHINOY: Avoiding to fate of Saddam Hussein, North Korea watchers say, appears to be the driving force behind Kim Jong Il's nuclear ambitions.
STEVEN LINTON, NORTH KOREA EXPERT: North Koreans believe that the only way a small nation can guarantee its security and survival, its sovereignty, is to have an option. Is to be able to inflict enough pain on a large country or a country that might invade it to make it not worth the trouble.
CHINOY: Effectively, traditional Cold War style, nuclear deterrents. But the damage a nuclear North Korea might inflict on U.S. interests has been purchased by further depriving a long- suffering population of scarce resources and even scarcer food.
Still, a half-century of relentless indoctrination in the Kim cult, many analysts say, means that Kim Jong Il remains firmly in control. Famine, isolation and nuclear tensions not withstanding, they are not likely to be toppling staff us in Pyongyang any time soon.
Mike Chinoy, CNN, Bangkok.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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