Why would North Korea people care if they have nukes or not? All

Host: The night wind blew over the riverbank, cold and sharp, cutting through the fog that drifted above the water like memory. Across the dark expanse, faint lights shimmered — a border between two worlds, one bright with excess, the other dim with survival. Jack stood near the edge, his hands in his coat pockets, his eyes fixed on the faint glimmer of the opposite shore.

Behind him, Jeeny approached slowly, footsteps soft on the gravel, a thermos steaming in her hands. She stopped beside him without speaking, both of them staring into the same black horizon, where silence had learned to live.

Host: The air smelled faintly of smoke and rust, of cold earth and distant despair.

Jeeny: (quietly) “Park Yeon-mi once said, ‘Why would North Korea people care if they have nukes or not? All they want is food. They want freedom.’”

(she hands him the thermos) “It’s strange, isn’t it? How politics makes monsters out of hunger.”

Jack: (taking it, his voice low) “Strange? No. Predictable. Every system needs an enemy — it gives the hungry something to hate besides the people who starve them.”

Jeeny: “But she’s right, Jack. People don’t dream of power. They dream of rice. Of warmth. Of speaking without fear.”

Jack: “You think freedom feeds you?”

Jeeny: (gently) “Eventually, yes. Freedom’s the soil; food grows from it.”

Jack: (snorting) “Try telling that to someone whose stomach’s empty. You can’t eat ideals. You can’t feed your child hope. You think the people over there are talking about democracy? No — they’re just trying to survive until sunrise.”

Host: The wind shifted, pulling at Jeeny’s hair, carrying the faint sound of a truck rumbling far away, maybe across the border, maybe in a world that had already stopped listening.

Jeeny: “That’s exactly her point. They don’t care about nukes or power — they just want to live. But the men at the top? They make hunger holy. They sell fear as patriotism. It’s easier to control people who are too weak to ask why.”

Jack: “And we buy it. The rest of the world. We point fingers, draw sanctions, play politics — as if ideology fills empty bowls. We call them enemies, when really they’re just prisoners of geography.”

Jeeny: “No. Prisoners of silence.”

Host: A long pause. The fog thickened, blurring the lines between river and sky — like truth dissolving in rhetoric.

Jack: “You ever wonder what you’d do, Jeeny, if you were born on that side? If you grew up believing the world beyond the river didn’t exist?”

Jeeny: “I wonder that every time I see the news. I imagine myself standing in line for food that never comes, bowing to portraits that never blink. And then I think of Yeon-mi — seventeen, crossing a frozen river in the dark. Not for politics. For a bowl of rice and the right to cry out loud.”

Jack: (nodding slowly) “That kind of courage doesn’t come from education. It comes from desperation.”

Jeeny: “Desperation is the mother of every revolution.”

Host: The lights across the water flickered faintly — one went out, another came on — the silent heartbeat of an invisible nation.

Jack: “And yet the rest of us… we scroll, we sigh, we move on. The world’s full of people who’d rather post about oppression than feel it.”

Jeeny: “Because comfort dulls empathy. It makes injustice feel optional.”

Jack: (bitterly) “We have too much to care about everything, and they have too little to care about anything else.”

Host: The river murmured, soft and endless, as though it had seen too much — the kind of witness that doesn’t speak, only remembers.

Jeeny: “Do you know what strikes me most about Yeon-mi’s words? It’s not anger. It’s clarity. She’s not shouting about politics or justice; she’s reminding us of the simplest truth — that survival isn’t ideology. It’s humanity.”

Jack: (quietly) “You think the powerful care about humanity? They trade it like currency.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe that’s why the rest of us have to guard it. Because if compassion dies in those who are free, what hope do the oppressed have left?”

Host: The fog parted briefly, and a moonbeam fell on the river surface, silvering it. Jack looked down, watching his reflection tremble, as if asking itself who it had become.

Jack: “You know what’s strange? We talk about nukes, treaties, and sanctions — but the real weapon there is hunger. It’s quieter. Slower. Deadlier.”

Jeeny: “And the world calls it politics.”

Jack: “Politics is just organized selfishness.”

Jeeny: “No. Politics is the illusion of choice built over the bones of people who never had one.”

Host: The wind picked up again, pulling their words into the night, carrying them toward the dark horizon where no one was listening — or maybe, where someone was.

Jeeny: “You think we could ever understand what it’s like to live without freedom?”

Jack: “No. Not really. We talk about freedom like it’s an idea, but for them, it’s oxygen. You only notice it when it’s gone.”

Jeeny: “And yet, we waste ours. We fill it with noise.”

Jack: (softly) “Maybe because silence scares us. Maybe we know that if we stop talking long enough, we’ll hear how small we’ve become.”

Host: The river’s sound deepened, carrying a rhythm — patient, ancient, unending. It sounded like grief turning slowly into defiance.

Jeeny: “You know what I admire most about Yeon-mi? She escaped, yes — but she still speaks for those who can’t. That’s what freedom really is: not escape, but voice.”

Jack: “And what does voice change?”

Jeeny: “Everything. Because silence is what dictatorships feed on. Every time someone speaks, even just one, the walls crack — a little.”

Host: A faint light blinked across the water, too far to name, too brief to understand — maybe a lantern, maybe a trick of hope.

Jack: (after a long pause) “You ever think the world’s just... numb? Like it’s watched too many horrors to feel anymore?”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But numbness isn’t death. It’s the body waiting to heal. Maybe what people like her do — what survivors do — is remind us how to feel again.”

Host: The fog began to thin, and the distant skyline came faintly into view — mountains, dark villages, a world unseen yet painfully near.

Jack: “You think freedom can reach across that river?”

Jeeny: “Freedom’s not a place, Jack. It’s a contagion. Once someone breathes it, it spreads. Maybe not fast. But it never dies.”

Host: They stood in silence, two small figures against the vast night — the river between them and another world, the moon their only witness.

Host: The camera pans upward, revealing the border lights fading into fog, the river flowing endlessly — dividing not only nations, but truths and fears, hunger and hope.

Host: And in the quiet, Jeeny’s voice lingers like a prayer spoken to no one and to everyone:

Jeeny: “They don’t want power. They just want to eat. They just want to live. And we — we’re the ones who must decide whether to keep watching… or start listening.”

Host: The wind shifts again, carrying her words across the dark water,
where somewhere unseen, a mother rocks her child to sleep — not dreaming of victory,
but of bread,
and the smallest taste of freedom.