Fire and Fury in the Hermit Kingdom: North Korea’s Nuclear Program

At the Brink

The history of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions has see-sawed between crisis and hope. Bill Perry tells how close we came to war in 1994, and he and Philip Yun tell their story of negotiating directly with North Korea in the 1999 crisis. But their hopes were dashed as the deal they crafted was rejected by the new Bush administration. Dr. Siegfried Hecker describes his historic trips during the early 2000s to view the North Korean nuclear program up close, and Dr. Jeffrey Lewis describes what we know about today’s North Korean arsenal and ballistic missile program. Our guests offer their analysis of where we’re at now, and what is possible to accomplish going forward in dealing with a nuclear “Hermit Kingdom.”