I had a big conversation with a Japanese government official about this, where we were talking about, oh, I don't know, some missile test. I actually had a big argument with- I shouldn't call it an argument. And then earlier this year, North Korea released an even more remarkable photo- Kim Jong Un posing with this shiny thing. The photo is well-known in analyst circles. If you zoomed in, you could see these lines that terminate at cities in the US, presumably the ones North Korea would like to be able to strike with nuclear missiles. And in the background, on the wall, was this map. It was taken inside some military facility. A few years ago, North Korea released this propaganda photo. North Korea has been pretty clear about what it wants to be able to do with its bombs. But they've gotten better and done more tests since then. Jeffrey says his reaction at the time was, they are the worst ever at this. When North Korea did its first nuclear test in 2006, it was basically a dud. Jeffrey says Kim Jong Un believes that, as long as he has nukes and missiles to launch them, no one will mess with him. North Korea, understandably, has said no. There have been attempts at negotiation over the years, but usually the US has insisted that North Korea give up its nukes, basically wanting to go back to those days before North Korea had a bomb. They took him to this huge building as long as a football field. The North Koreans actually had him over a bunch. They certainly had them by 2010, when a US weapons scientist, Sig Hecker, was invited over for a visit. In 2002, the CIA said North Korea was building centrifuges, big spinning tubes that could enrich uranium. On the North Korea side, it looked like they might still be working on a bomb. There were also delays building the new reactors, which were to be paid for mostly by South Korea and Japan. We were slow in fulfilling our part of the deal. But some Republican members of Congress felt like we were appeasing what was a brutal regime, so ending sanctions was a nonstarter. And we'd try to resume normal economic and diplomatic relations. North Korea would also get fuel oil to tide them over until the new reactors could be built. In exchange, they would get two new nuclear power plants, a different type that would make electricity and would be harder to get plutonium out of for bombs. North Korea would shut down its nuclear reactor that could produce plutonium for bombs. The US- this was the Clinton administration- and North Korea had negotiated something called the Agreed Framework. Jeffrey points out it's always easier to get someone to give up something that they don't have yet. This was before North Korea had nuclear bombs. Jeffrey says our best chance to stop this was probably in the late '90s. How did we get here? This was a half hour discussion, but I'll distill it down for you. We'd reach some agreement with North Korea, or we'd do something before things got this bad. And I was definitely afraid of her.I had always imagined we'd figure something out. Which really screwed me up because my mom's black. She was like, are you afraid of black people because I primarily had a lot of white friends. But, yeah, there was always that separation but not the way my mom had experienced. That was the first time I encountered a thing where someone was like, you can't hang out with a certain group of people, even if it's your own group of people. And then they were like, she has no right to say that. And they're like, what's wrong? And I was like, Star made me cry. And they were like, what's wrong? And I was like, get away from me. I went to the curb by myself, just cried. And this one girl turned around, boxed me out of the circle, and was like, "why don't you go back and play with your little white friends?"Īnd I cried instantly. And then I went over to the circle of black girls. There was like a field day or something outside. The friend warned her, they'll find a way around you. One mom I talked to got a call from a friend while this was going on at her house. They don't want their kids to be humiliated, but it can get overwhelming. This is so common in my town that parents are calling it parasiting. And once they get in, they tell the younger kids, this is our party now. Parents can be yelling at them to get off their lawn, and the kids will pretend to go, but really they are sneaking in around back. The older kids, though, they are not deterred by parents. And at these parties, the parents are home. Upperclassman conspire to target freshman parties, freshman like Ben. But what was happening here is different from those movies in one key way, a way that seems to be specific to my town and towns nearby. His little birthday celebration was crashed. This thing that was happening to Ben, it's straight out of every memorable teen party movie.
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