North Korea's nuclear gamble pays off, with the WSJ's Jonathan Cheng

episode

GZERO World with Ian Bremmer not yet transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet Upvotes decide what gets transcribed next — 0 so far. Sign in to upvote

More from GZERO World with Ian Bremmer

War and Peace in 2025, with Clarissa Ward and Comfort Ero 51 min · 20 Dec 2025

All episodes from GZERO World with Ian Bremmer →

Report any issue

Source

Recorded18 Apr 2026

Publisherfeeds.simplecast.com ↗

Handlerec:18016930

Show notes

North Korea has nuclear weapons, a succession plan hiding in plain sight, and a personality cult that has outlasted Stalin's and Mao's combined. Wall Street Journal's Beijing bureau chief Jonathan Cheng argues the world keeps misreading Pyongyang because it insists on reducing it to an authoritarian state. North Korea is also a religious society, built on a divine rule centered on a "god-king", Cheng argues. Kim Jong Un, third generation leader of the Kim dynasty was able to consolidate his power while developping the nuclear arsenal his father had succesfully created. Now, with the Iran war reshaping global order, Kim's long bet on nuclear weapons looks like the smartest foreign policy call of the century. North Korea, long treated as a pariah nuclear nation on the international stage, seems to be taken seriously by top China has quietly dropped "denuclearization" from its own documents. Trump calls Kim Jong Un a friend. And Kim is already preparing a successor, his daughter, reportedly 12 years old, in plain sight. Subscribe to the GZERO World with Ian Bremmer Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.