Jonathan Cheng
speaker
201 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 1 Jun
Jonathan Cheng’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I think in some senses, there may just be a feeling that, well, life is hard.
But life is hard everywhere.
And I'm going to make do with what I have, despite the fact that it is true that there are compatriots on the southern half of the Korean Peninsula, even on the margins of society in South Korea, are doing far better.
But if they don't know, I suppose that there's some bliss in that ignorance, perhaps.
I think the biggest mistakes are to treat them as if they are willing to give up their system or to give up key planks in their system, whether it be their nuclear program, whether it be their control over their populace.
I don't think the Kim family is interested in that at all.
I don't know that there is a more clever way to get North Korea to engage.
And certainly their way of life and their system, the system of rule that they have, why would they give that up?
It's worked for so long.
So I definitely think that that is one area where the misunderstanding is very deep.
Well, I think this commitment to not ever liberalizing is quite a bold one.
If you look again at China, you look again at the USSR, when pressures built up in their system, even these autocratic authoritarian systems felt like there was a need to let off some steam, to have a safety valve so that people who were dissatisfied could express that.
That's never happened in North Korea.
And that's a bold gamble because one could see these frustrations perhaps being bottled up and boiling over at some point.
And yet perhaps it's because of the size of the country.
It's smaller than the USSR.
It's smaller than China, has far fewer people.
Perhaps it's simply that repression works and they've learned that and aren't about to deviate from it.
Why change the blueprint if the blueprint is working?
And I think the commitment to this cult of personality is total.
Showing 141–160 of 201 · page 8 of 11
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