21 bullet proof cars painted an olive drab lumber across the countryside,

then over the Chinese border.

Rumors begin throughout the international community.

This is the official train of the North Korea leadership.

Also used by Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il,

the grandfather and father of current leader, Kim Jong-Un.

No one outside of the notoriously secretive nation knows who is aboard.

Some speculate it is Kim Yo-Jong, Un's younger sister and most trusted advisor.

It is not until the train reaches its final destination, Beijing,

that it's revealed Kim Jong-Un, the 34-year-old dictator himself,

is the passenger.

In the months preceding this meeting...

What follows in Beijing...

And in the months to come...

Are the preliminary steps to what may be the most

important diplomatic event of our young century.

A path to peace on the Korean peninsula and a way to bring the North Koreans

into the international fold after 70 years of isolation.

But the path to peace will be one of twists and turns as allies and the US

jockey for position to protect their interests and maintain security.

By the time President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-Un meet face to face

in Singapore, it is still unclear what each party wants or will be willing to do.

This is the Great Game.

♪ ♪

North Korea remains an enigma.

-Good Morning, how are you, Mr. Vice President?

Very nice to see you.

NARRATOR: And only those who have sat across the table with

North Korean negotiators understand the challenges.

RICHARDSON: I do believe that they're very tough, they're very well prepared.

They read everything, especially media.

What makes them so tough, it's not just their culture,

but the fact that they've been isolated.

They've been sanctioned.

They hardly any of them, the citizens, leave North Korea.

They have television that's programmed every evening,

for three hours the government tells you what you're going to see.

And inevitably, they hate the United States.

HILL: At the end of the day, diplomacy is really trying

to get the other side to do something they don't really want to do.

in dealing with another country, make it clear that you make the hard choices

today and I'm not promising you the end of hard choices,

but I'm promising you that in the future you won't have to make them alone.

ALBRIGHT: Mostly, I don't see it as a gift.

You usually use diplomacy more with your adversaries than with your friends.

And so it is this matter of being prepared and putting yourself into the other

country's shoes and figuring out what you do in order to solve the problem,

and it's not a gift.

It is how you talk to those you disagree with.

NARRATOR: The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, DPRK,

is anything but democratic.

From the ashes of World War II,

loomed the first post-war spread of Soviet communism.

In August 1945, the Korean peninsula and her people were

effectively divided at the 38th parallel.

An arbitrary divide.

Using a National Geographic map, the future US Secretary of state,

Dean Rusk and fellow army staffer Col. Charles "Tic" Bonesteel

knew the decision of the 38th parallel made no economic or

geographic sense, but with the cold war about to cast a long shadow,

the United States wanted Seoul and the democratic leaning south, under their alliance.

Kim Il-Sung, the young charismatic rebel famous for his insurrection against the

brutal decades old Japanese occupation,

vied for power and shaped this new republic in

the Stalinist fashion adopting a totalitarian reign of terror.

Kim solidified his place in the soviet backed north, then sought to unify the peninsula

by invading the south and starting the Korean conflict on June 25th, 1950.

Reporter (over TV): In an era of renewed optimism.

NARRATOR: Three years later a cease-fire was reached.

North Korea, a nation established by warfare,

will be perpetuated by self-imposed isolation, bloodshed,

and humanitarian horrors.

TERRY: It's the most unique country in the world.

What other country in the world is Confucian, communist, hereditary, dynasty,

there's no country like this.

While it also commits human rights violations.

United Nations Commission of Inquiries said,

"there's no other parallel in contemporary history, except Nazi, Germany"

and this is North Korea.

I don't think there is another country that is more isolated than North Korea,

so truly a unique place.

NARRATOR: And they have been challenging American policy, for nearly 70 years.

HILL: I think any political question has to start with a map.

And if you look at a map of Northeast Asia, it's a pretty compact area.

You're seeing Russian far east interest right there.

You're seeing Japan right there.

China, enormous interest right there, South Korea.

And then, in the middle of this,

you have this funny little thing called North Korea.

How does it affect the countries around it and I would say,

it affects them all big time.

TERRY: North Korea has figured out how to work the United States.

There is usually a provocation of some sort, whether it is a missile test or a nuke test.

Then there is international condemnation that follows,

and then they sort of up the ante, like a poker game.

"Oh yeah? Here's more!"

Then, sort of a collective "Oh no!"

And then they step back and say, "OK. Here is what we can do."

They have some sort of charm offensive, peace offensive.

Then we meet with them, we negotiate, we give them aids, some rewards,

some time passes, then back to provocation.

It's a provoke and get paid cycle.

NARRATOR: For generations, the North Korean people have been controlled

by a police state that has perfected propaganda to an art.

Their belief in the Kim family dynasty,

is absolute devotion.

Information is tightly controlled by the Korean central news agency,

the KCNA, established in 1946.

KRISTOF: There've obviously been many other deeply repressive

Communist dictators, Stalin, Mao.

They didn't have the technology that the Kim family had.

They didn't have the degree of social control, so they didn't have speakers on every,

in every village, speakers in the wall of every home to control people.

They didn't have television in every home.

They didn't even have these portraits of the leaders

it's kind of a religious cult.

RICHARDSON: It's the deity,

it's the leaders, the grandfather, the father, and now Kim Jong-Un,

that are not just political figures, they're god like religious figures.

And what they say determines how North Koreans act.

GAUSE: Kim Jong-Un only had a very short amount of time to

build his legitimacy within the regime.

Kim Jong-Il by comparison had 30 years to create his legitimacy.

Kim Jong-Un had none of this, but a lot of things, very interesting things began to

happen when Kim Jong-Un came to power.

The first thing that happened is they had the missile test,

which was a failure.

But what does North Korea do?

They admit it was a failure, unprecedented.

Why did they do that?

It gave people pause to think that maybe this was something different.

Kim Jong-Un laid down the Rosetta Stone of where he wanted to take this regime.

People would no longer have to tighten their belts,

this was an important statement by Kim Jong-Un.

There was no mention whatsoever of the nuclear program in that speech because

that's not where Kim Jong-Un wanted his legacy.

That was Kim Jong-Il's legacy was the nuclear program.

His legacy was to create the strong and prosperous nation.

HILL: He then created a kind of chaotic situation within the worker's party,

the North Korean Workers' Party and actually had his uncle Jang Song-Thaek

perp-walked out of a party meeting and killed the next day.

So, Kim Jong-Un began a series of executions of senior North Korean figures

such that it was hard to find a common denominator of why these people had been executed.

But certainly, one can speculate that he didn't feel

they were sufficiently loyal to him.

NARRATOR: He purges over 400 senior military and ministry leaders publicly.

And allegedly has his older half-brother murdered in a Malaysian airport,

poisoned by unwitting assassins.

But he needs something else to secure the Kim dynasty, nuclear weapons that could

pose a real and present danger to America and her Asian allies.

GAUSE: This would be the launching of the the Kim Jong-Un era.

He had to show legitimacy.

And if he couldn't show legitimacy on the economic realm,

he had to show legitimacy in the security realm.

And so he began to move very quickly towards developing the nuclear program so that he

would have something to hang his hat on.

So, it will give him a much stronger position in which

to negotiate with the United States.

NARRATOR: Kim Jong-Il moved the nuclear program forward in spite of

international outcry and on again off again treaties.

Now it is his son who may finish the job,

having a strong hand to negotiate a way for his

impoverished nation to have an economic revival.

ALBRIGHT: I think that he does have a good hand to play.

I mean, he has in fact, from his perspective, developed a nuclear potential and missiles

to do the delivery on it, and he's managed to scare

the whole region into doing something.

NARRATOR: Through 2016 to mid-September, 2017, Kim Jong-Un

conducts three nuclear tests, including a hydrogen bomb,

and 30 short and long-range missile launches;

including Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.

Kim claims that they have nuclear warheads

small enough to fit on each ICBM.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: In 70 years, in times of war and peace...

NARRATOR: In September 2017 president Donald Trump

addresses the UN General Assembly.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No one has shown more contempt for other nations,

and for the well-being of their people than the depraved regime in North Korea.

NARRATOR: He delivers a fiery speech attacking Kim Jong-Un

and threatening the destruction of his country.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself, and for his regime...

NARRATOR: Trump's rhetoric feeds directly into the north's propaganda machine,

that America wants to annihilate North Korea.

TERRY: I think that was definitely off script, I can't impossibly imagine

the administration officials like Mattis or Secretary Tillerson,

advocating totally destroying North Korea,

I just can't possibly fathom that,

so I think that was President Trump speaking.

KRISTOF: I think North Korean officials have played a weak hand just brilliantly.

While I think the US approach has to some degree backfired.

Essentially the US was trying to intimidate North Korea

with some of this rhetoric about fire and fury, about complete destruction.

And I think what we actually accomplished was that we terrified South Korea into

engaging in diplomacy with North Korea.

ALBRIGHT: I think that it's very hard to really assess what effect President Trump's

language had on Kim Jong-Un.

I don't know whether it scared the Japanese, too.

NARRATOR: The United Nations Security Council votes for maximum pressure through

economic sanctions against the north.

HALEY: We have kicked the can down the road long enough.

There is no more road left.

NARRATOR: A war of words between Pyongyang and President Trump begins.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: North Korea bess not make any more threats to the United States.

NARRATOR: Kim refers to Trump as a "mentally deranged dotard."

Trump insists his red button is bigger than Kim's.

Still the DPRK tests another ICBM, this one experts agree,

has a range that could hit the continental United States.

The US Talked openly about a "bloody nose"

military strike that would cripple nuclear testing sites.

Only a handful of experts believed this was a viable solution.

KRISTOF: Diplomacy is a hugely inefficient toolbox.

It doesn't work very well.

But in cases like North Korea, it's all we have to resolve this crisis.

Ever since 1969, when North Korea shot down a US aircraft

and killed a bunch of Americans,

the US has looked for ways to shape North Korean behavior.

So repeatedly you have very smart officials who, when they're out of power,

they talk about military options.

And then once in power, and they look at the predictions of perhaps a million-people

dying on the very first day of a war with North Korea, then they think well,

okay maybe this isn't the best option.

And they look at what's left.

And what's left is diplomacy.

NARRATOR: Adding to the growing anxiety on the peninsula,

south Korea was preparing the 2018 Olympic games.

And there was precedent to feel insecure; thirty years earlier in 1988,

South Korea's first Olympics were being planned.

The supreme leader, Kim Il-Sung set out to create a chaotic

atmosphere to keep people away from the games.

JENNINGS (over TV): Investigators now believe that a bomb,

possibly planted by 2 passengers may have caused Sunday's crash

of a Korean Airliner.

TERRY: They downed a civilian airliner, killed 115 people on board,

it was a major terror attack.

That was the reason why the United States put North Korea

on the states sponsor of terror list,

and it also shows you just the brutality and just the insanity because they

downed a civilian airliner killing 115 people on board just to disrupt

the Olympics that was going to be held in South Korea.