How is north korea

Mr Kim even said to the president: "I never expected to meet you at this place. The two men walked together into North Korean territory where they shook hands. After this, they walked back onto South Korean soil. Mr Kim said their meeting was a symbol of their "excellent" friendship. Mr Trump said it was a "great day for the world".

The two leaders were only due to meet for a short time, but they ended up speaking with each other for about an hour and agreed to restart talks about denuclearisation , which had stalled. In a news conference, Mr Trump confirmed that he had invited Mr Kim to the White House, but nothing has been formally arranged. North Korea has continued to test missiles since then, and the two countries still sometimes use unfriendly language and insults to each other.

However in , Mr Trump has said the two leaders have a "good relationship" and in March he sent a letter to Mr Kim offering US help in tackling coronavirus. Escaped from North Korea: 'I love telling my story'.

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Who's in charge? Kim Jong-un is the current leader of North Korea. What is life like in North Korea? North Koreans watch a huge screen broadcasting an official announcement by a TV news presenter. The office also safeguards communication between North Korean spy agents. Kim Jong-un has recently announced the country is once again facing a "crisis" and in April he called on his people to prepare for another "arduous march" - a phrase that has come to describe a disastrous famine in the s, under Kim Jong-il.

Back then, Mr Kim was in the Operations Department and was ordered to raise "revolutionary funds" for the Supreme Leader. That, he says, meant dealing in illegal drugs. Then we could cash it to dollars to present to Kim Jong-il. His account of drug dealing at this time is plausible. North Korea has a long history of drug production - mostly heroin and opium.

A former North Korean diplomat to the UK, Thae Yong-ho, who also defected, told the Oslo Freedom Forum in that the country had engaged in state-sponsored drug trafficking and was trying to fix a widespread domestic drug addiction epidemic. I ask Mr Kim where the drug money went.

Was it converted into cash for the people? Estimates of the death toll from North Korea's prolonged food shortages in the s range from hundreds of thousands to up to a million people. Another source of income, according to Mr Kim, came from illegal weapons sales to Iran, managed by the Operations Department. North Korea was very good at building cutting edge equipment like this," he says. This may be a bit of North Korean propaganda as the country's submarines have noisy, diesel engines.

But Mr Kim claims that the deals were so successful that North Korea's deputy director in Iran would boast about summoning the Iranians to his swimming pool to do business. North Korean weapons deals with Iran have been an open secret since the s and even included ballistic missiles, according to Professor Andrei Lankov, one of the world's leading authorities on North Korea. North Korea has continued to advance the development of weapons of mass destruction, despite being subject to strict international sanctions.

In September, the country tested four new weapons systems including a new long-range cruise missile, a train-launch system for a ballistic missile, a hypersonic missile, and an anti-aircraft missile. According to Mr Kim, Pyongyang also sold weapons and technology to countries fighting long civil wars. The UN warns that weapons developed in Pyongyang could end up in many troubled corners of the world.

Mr Kim led a privileged life in North Korea. He claims he was given use of a Mercedes-Benz car by Kim Jong-un's aunt, and allowed to travel abroad freely to raise money for the North Korean leader. He says he sold rare metals and coal to raise millions in cash, which would be brought back into the country in a suitcase. In an impoverished country where millions of people are struggling with food shortages, this is a life few can imagine, let alone live.

Mr Kim's powerful political connections through marriage allowed him to move between different intelligence agencies, he says. But those same connections also put him and his family in danger. Not long after ascending to the political throne in , Kim Jong-un decided to purge those he perceived as a threat, including his own uncle, Jang Song-thaek. I felt he would be banished to the countryside," he says.

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