North Korea

[On U.S.-North Korea denuclearization negotiations] Kim is not just about security guarantees... He requires a hostile outside world to justify his reign.

[On Kim Jong Un] He's a master at running the country but he’s also trapped by the country and the mythology. He inherited the nukes, the repressive bureaucracy, the gulags and the fear and there’s no way to escape it. If he wants to survive he has to continue the brutality. There’s no other way for him... I wouldn’t say he’s a sociopath. But he has a high tolerance for other people’s pain. It was extremely brutal how he killed his uncle and brother. It was public, gruesome and humiliating. And make no mistake. He did that for people outside the regime but mainly for people inside the regime. He wanted to let them know in no uncertain terms who was the boss.

Kim Jong Un’s health status is difficult to report on and corroborate because of the regime’s information environment and the sensitivity of such close-hold information about the top leader... Reliability of the info depends on access, while corroboration would boost confidence level of an assessment. So having one source doesn’t mean that we should ignore it but it should be weighed with what we know and appropriately caveated.

[South Korea and China’s] downplaying of the reports does not mean that they have more access to Kim... Often they too are scrambling for info.