Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2018

The Current Transcript for January 18, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

She supports her daughter. She loves her daughter. She wants her to come back but she also understands the reality of the decisions she made and what a horrible horrible mistake to make.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: She'd already left when she called her mother back in Montreal to tell her she was travelling to Syria to be with ISIS. A 19 year old who apparently realized pretty quickly that the so-called Khalifate in Raqqa was not the utopia she'd expected. But by then she could not leave. She married a German convert, a man whose work with ISIS was known to people on the outside and she had two children with him. Now she is in Kurdish custody and wants to come back to Canada and her mother is both angry with her choices and terrified for her future. It's a situation that raises all sorts of political, social and emotional questions. In half an hour, journalist Michelle Shephard brings us that story. Also today:

SOUNDCLIP

NEWSCASTER: This is one of the unforgettable moments in sports. Athletes from South Korea and The People's Democratic Republic of Korea, together as one.

AMT: News that athletes from North and South Korea one March and even compete together in certain Olympic sports next month is not that unusual. They've done it before in other host countries but the last time South Korea hosted the Olympics the North unleashed deadly attacks in a surreal plot that saw a plane bombed out of the sky. And a captured agent forgiven and married after her interrogator. With that kind of history what should we make of this latest agreement? We're talking about that in about an hour. But we're starting with concerns about the testing for contaminants in medical marijuana.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: If we're going to call this stop medicine, we have to treat it like medicine.

VOICE 2: All the testing for marijuana has basically been 'is it marijuana? And if so, we are going to destroy.

It.'

AMT: As marijuana moves from an elicit weed, to a legal prescription, to a legal recreational substance, does the Canadian government have enough controls to test for what is really in that cannabis? I am Anna Marie Tremonti. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

'Constant nausea': Halifax woman suing medical marijuana producer after becoming ill

Guests: Dawn Rae Downton, Rosy Mondin, Dan Clarke

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

VOICE 1: August 2014 Whistler Medical Marijuana Corporation in B.C. Voluntarily recalls a batch of its product. Health Canada's tests reveal mold and organically grown cannabis.

VOICE 2: December 2016 Organigram Incorporated in Moncton, New Brunswick announces a voluntary recall of five lots of medicinal marijuana. The batch has tested positive two prohibit pesticides.

VOICE 3: January 2017 Organigram issues another recall this time on 69 lots of medicinal marijuana again two banned pesticides.

VOICE 4: August 2017 Broken Coast Cannabis limited in Ladysmith, B.C. issues its own voluntary recall after tests find two banned pesticides.

AMT: Well you may not associate marijuana with health and safety recalls but those are just a few of the incidents Canada's medical marijuana sellers have dealt with, since their products became legal in 2014. And with the much larger market of recreational marijuana set to open for business later this year, there are concerns that those recalls could be the canaries in the coal mine. All eyes are on Health Canada to see how it will ensure all Canadian cannabis will be safe for consumption. The department released proposed regulations last month that are designed to do just that. Not everyone is convinced however. Meanwhile some marijuana, medicinal marijuana, users say their cannabis helped for a while and then actually made them sicker and they are so frustrated that they have turned to lawyers. There were at least two Canadian class action lawsuits in the works against medicinal marijuana companies. Dawn Rae Downton is a Halifax based writer who had a bad experience with medicinal marijuana and she joins me from Halifax. Hello.

DAWN RAE DOWNTON: Hi there Anna Maria.

AMT: Why were you interested in using medical marijuana

DAWN RAE DOWNTON: I have had for about 20 years now a rare form of inflammatory arthritis. When I turned to medical cannabis, about March of 2016, I did so after a discussion with my pain specialist about what was I going to do about pain that was waking me through the night. And he suggested that we try medical marijuana a strain that didn't have a lot of THC but more Cannabidiol CBD which is thought to be therapeutic. I tried to get through the license producer Organigram in Moncton. What happened was that within about a week or two I became very ill. I was nauseated around the clock. I developed anorexia and this went on for almost eight months before I could get to a gastro-radiologist who could help me with the symptoms and perhaps make a diagnosis. Nobody had any idea what was wrong with me.

AMT: So when you first were this ill you didn't know either.

DAWN RAE DOWNTON: I had no idea. I continued to use the product for most of 2016 and then I was told to stop it. The doctor wasn't at all sure that I had what most people with my symptoms and using marijuana and being diagnosed with, a condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. The important word there is 'emesis' - for people who don't know it - it means vomiting. So there is a syndrome that comes a time people who have smoked or ingested weed for a long time and occasionally they get this syndrome of hyperemesis syndrome. But then after he talked with me and tested me, he thought 'no' it wasn't. I didn't have the kind of profile that people have when they have this syndrome. Shortly after that Organigram came out with its recall. We found out what pesticides had been on. And then the picture became much clearer for me. However the gastro radiologist had told me whatever it might be - it was before he knew - he said whatever it may be you should really stop using a cannabis.

AMT: So did you go off?

DAWN RAE DOWNTON: I did go off. I got off for the second time and within a month I began to feel a lot better.

AMT: And now your class action lawsuit that's trying to be certified as a class action suit.

DAWN RAE DOWNTON: That's right at least two. One was against Organigram the Moncton's license producer that I got my stuff from.

AMT: Why do you feel it is serious enough to merit a class action lawsuit?

DAWN RAE DOWNTON: I don't think you would ask me that if you had spent 2016 with me. I lost almost all of 2016 to constant nausea around the clock and constant vomiting or retching is probably a better way of putting it, since I had nothing in my stomach. You know by that time I had lost a lot of weight. My husband that was about eight months out of his year taking care of me. I was just that sick. I was helpless on the couch.

AMT: We did reach out to Organigram, the company that supplied your medical marijuana and they sent us a statement. I read part of it for you and I'm quoting here: "Since the recall, our team has worked diligently to implement new processes and procedures designed to prevent any further issue. These processes include rigorous testing of all our product to ensure it is free of contamination. The results of this testing are also reviewed by Health Canada before any product is released for sale." What do you think of what they're saying?

DAWN RAE DOWNTON: Well I think that they were saying at the beginning before I got sick the same sort of thing, that they had clean product, not only clean but organic. It was constantly evaluated for being a good product. And Health Cananda was also evaluating it - I didn't find that to be very true as things turned out. So whatever undertakings it was to make now to customers, I think customers are going to be impressed with this statement. I certainly am not. I would never go back to organic. I wouldn't go back to any license producer. I am not even sure there is clean supply out there anyway.

AMT: What does this experience to tell you about how the industry is regulated?

DAWN RAE DOWNTON: So far as Health Canada is concerned, I don't think it has a clue about what’s going on. I don't think it had a clue about what was going on in 2016. I'm not sure it has a clue about it now. As far as private goes, that you can buy on the street, it is probably at least as safe as a licensed producer now.

AMT: Dawn Rae Downton, thank you for speaking with me.

DAWN RAE DOWNTON: My pleasure Anna Maria.

AMT: Bye bye.

DAWN RAE DOWNTON: Bye.

AMT: Dawn Rae Downton Halifax writer who had a bad experience with medical marijuana. Well the Halifax law firm Wagners is working on that class action suit based on Dawn Rae Downton's experience. We spoke yesterday with Maddy Carter, a lawyer with Wagner's.

SOUNDCLIP

The recalls that have occurred in the last year or so, certainly raise questions about quality control. They raise questions about the effectiveness of the regulations that are in place and the steps that are being taken by the licensed producers themselves to comply with them. And of course Health Canada's steps to enforce them. We are talking about medical cannabis here and so these are essentially pharmaceutical products and they are being provided to patients who are ill and often would be compromised. So it is great concern when clients of licensed producers find out that there is an outright pesticide in products that they are consuming and may have long ago consumed by the time they find out what was actually in it.

AMT: Well quality control and public safety are major concerns for Dan Clarke as the executive vice president of business development at A&L laboratories which is licensed by Health Canada to do testing for licensed cannabis producers. We've reached Mr. Clarke at his home in Guelph, Ontario. Hello.

DAN CLARKE: Hello, good morning Anna Maria.

AMT: You just heard Dawn Rae Downton talking about her experience with what she believes was contaminated cannabis. How concerned should people be

DAN CLARKE: Well I think it is a concern. We are talking about medical cannabis. It is the pharmaceutical that needs to be regulated and make sure that the industry is providing a very safe product to the clients.

AMT: Health Canada just released proposed new testing regulations for cannabis produced just last month what do you think of them

DAN CLARKE: Health Canada has implemented even more stringent testing in particular with the pesticides and in identifying pesticide residues. I really believe that this whole process, as the industry comes to market, it's a process that will get to where we have a very safe product. With everything 100 percent correct today, that's where Health Canada is trying to get to provide that safe product to the industry.

AMT: And why do you think third party testing would be more robust than in-house testing by the actual producers

DAN CLARKE: I think third party testing when it does is it really brings an opportunity to really reduce eliminate anyone who is trying to benefit from not rigorous testing. With third party testing it brings another set of eyes to the testing procedure. Of course we're all regulated by health Canada as well.

AMT: Now the regulations would require testing for 94 different pesticides. How does that compare the testing requirements in other jurisdictions?

DAN CLARKE: It's very similar. No I cannot comment on all jurisdictions but if we compare it to some the jurisdictions in the US it's very similar. One of the things that we got to remember particularly was pesticide testing. The testing needs to be very targeted. People can say well we need to test for more pesticides. Reality is, you could ask for more pesticides. However there is a lot of pesticides that would be absolutely useless to test for because it simply wouldn't be using cannabis production. So asking for more isn't necessarily the answer.

AMT: Health Canada has a list of - what is it - something like 17 pesticides that are allowed

DAN CLARKE: That's correct. There is a list of some products that are allowed and then there's a new list that Health Canada has brought to the market that would be required testing.

AMT: And how concerned are you about these recalls with pesticides? One of the pesticides I do believe that was found in products with two companies - Organigram and Metrum - had low levels of pesticide which is actually allowed in food but prohibited it in marijuana and tobacco products.

DAN CLARKE: You know obviously when it comes to a pharmaceutical - or anything that a person is ingesting into their body whether it's through inhalation or oral or [unintelligible] or whatever the case may be - We want to make sure that bringing a very safe product to those people, especially some of them may have a compromised immune system that sort of thing. So yes it's very important that Health Canada gets it right and then as this industry develops that continue to develop along with it, and make sure the patient or the consumer is receiving a very safe pharmaceutical product.

AMT: Now when we’re talking about pesticides, are there other things that need to be tested for these products?

DAN CLARKE: Yes there are fairly lengthy list of things that are tested for. Heavy metals is part of that, it requires testing. There is a whole list of microbiology that is tested for it as well as the toxins. So it's a very long list which does also include pesticide. So I think we've been focused on the pesticides as a society but there is also another long list that is required testing that is just as important.

AMT: As a third party would you test for all of that or solely pesticides

DAN CLARKE: No. We test everything. So Health Canada requires the licensed polluters to use third party testing for pesticides. They don't have to use third party testing when they are testing for the THC and CBD content as well as other possible contaminants. Now we do, as a laboratory, test for everything but it is only required that the pesticides is done by third party.

AMT: Do you think that's good enough

DAN CLARKE: No I really think that we shouldn't be singling out just pesticides. I believe when you start looking at the actual toxins in microbiology they can pose as much risk to the individual when they consume them. So I believe that should also all be included in mandatory testing.

AMT: Do you feel cannabis users will be adequately protected under the proposed new regulations

DAN CLARKE: Yes I do. It's one of those things where I believe the industry has learned from the past and this is a process as Health Canada brings its market into the legal spectrum into society. We do have the best of the abilities today as we get better instrumentation and better detection limits that can improve. One of the concerns is how do we get to a point where you can guarantee that there is no contamination in the product that they're consuming. It is very difficult. As technology changes testing will get better and better. But we live in a chemical and pesticide laden world just in everything that we do. So it's very difficult to ensure that that patient has zero exposure. There will be some exposure risk in life. So how do we get to zero exposure. Especially when we are talking with some individuals that may be dealing with a compromised immune system.

AMT: Dan Clarke it's important to hear your perspective. Thank you.

DAN CLARKE: Thank you.

AMT: Dan Clark executive vice president of business development at A&L laboratories, it is licensed by Health Canada to do testing for licensed cannabis producers. Dan Clarke is in Guelph, Ontario. Well from an industry perspective I'm joined by Rosy Mondin. She is the executive director of the Cannabis Trade Alliance of Canada. She's with us from Vancouver. Hello.

ROSY MONDIN: Good morning Anna Maria.

AMT: As you listen, what do you think of Dawn Rae Downton's experiences with medical marijuana?

ROSY MONDIN: Yes. I mean it's horrible. It sounds like it's horrible that eight months that she went through. I think the good news is there really is no epidemic of health problems as more people are never actually consuming cannabis and there doesn't seem to be a higher risk of disease when taking it. As Dan mentioned too, those people with certain medical conditions should actually be avoiding smoking this product altogether. So he to I think cannabis have made people sick but it's actually quite rare. So those who are to be concerned are those, like Dan mentioned, the medical patients who have auto immune deficiency disorders. So the problem Anna Maria, I see is that there is no real doubt as to whether the pesticides that are safe that these are pesticides are safe to inhale. Myclobutanil - the pesticide that was found in the companies that you mentioned - that is safe or are listed as generally safe for use. It's actually used in a lot of food products. It's used on vines, other plants, it's used on grapes. The problem is as those are products that were simply consuming through ingestion, in cannabis what we've been doing is smoking.

AMT: Well and in fact Health Canada allows Myclobutanil, which is a fungicide on products that we eat.

ROSY MONDIN: Correct.

AMT: But not on tobacco or marijuana products. It has actually said you cannot use it on those because when you heat it creates hydrogen cyanide.

ROSY MONDIN: That's right. So what is happening though is that this pesticide is actually something that gets into the fluid of the plant. So once it gets into the plant it can then be passed on to any cuttings that come off of that plant and then can last within that plant for years. So when you have producers that say well actually 'we didn't use any pesticides, we didn't use that banned pesticide' that could very well be true.

AMT: How? I do not understand.

ROSY MONDIN: It ends up in the tissue of the planet and gets transferred. And so what a lot of people do when they're growing, in any nursery environment is that you work with mother plants. Mother plants will be made from tissue culture in cuttings and you get a mother and you continue to cut from that plant to get clones, your plantlets that you then grow from. So if now you have your plant where are the Myclobutanil has already been passed into the plant becomes absorbed. It can't just be simply washed out.

AMT: Okay. So they buy it, as they grow the little ones they haven't put it on but it came from the mother plant.

ROSY MONDIN: That's right. So it's has this pre-contamination.

AMT: Let me ask you though, most plants are grown in greenhouses, right, that controlled area?

ROSY MONDIN: Well, a controlled area. Most plants and cannabis are grown in underground these bunker style. So we're getting to greenhouse growing. We are getting into outdoor growing.

AMT: But it's a controlled area. So if there's a prohibitive pesticide in the mother plan, how would even get there? Is it because people don't know? It's not supposed to be used on that kind of plant.

ROSY MONDIN: Depends where originally those cuttings came from. So when we first started into this program a lot of these cuttings were coming in from other medical marijuana producers.

AMT: Outside the country?

ROSY MONDIN: No in Canada but at that time, I don't believe it necessarily was being tested for those specific pesticides. The testing regime has been growing and getting better but this is the problem is when they're getting in to these starting material and then if those are - those were originally being bought from growers that were originally under them and they are when the program was first starting out.

AMT: If it's never been allowed on even tobacco products which have been around longer than medicinal marijuana. How would it even get in there if it's totally banned and do you have producers who just don't know the rules?

ROSY MONDIN: Well I think that before the MMPR came into effect there was a little bit of a Wild West for sure.

AMT: So how do you how do you move forward then? What can you do?

ROSY MONDIN: Oh there's definitely a solution so of course the rigorous third party testing. Absolutely. What we really need to is cannabis monograph and pharmacopeia to create standardization and can that we don’t have. We also need to allow for more alternatives. So non-toxic alternatives such as the use of bio or pesticides or aromatic molecules that act as antimicrobials and antifungals such as garlic oil, cinnamon oil, natural Turpin's. There is beneficials which are naturally produced enzymes and fungal pesticides which can attract insects which die upon eating the fungi.

AMT: Okay so can I ask you because we're almost out of time. Are you that your producers can get this right fast enough?

ROSY MONDIN: Oh absolutely. Like I said well we need to do to move away from people in the public health interest from smoking in this product. So this is the issue that you mentioned too, it is smoking that creates this toxicity. The heating it

AMT: But you can also heat it in brownies so you get the same problem.

ROSY MONDIN: But you're not burning. It's at a different level. Even vaporisation it just heats the oil up to a certain level but you're not creating the carcinogens.

AMT: Rosy Mondin we have to leave it there or end of time but thank you for your help on this one.

ROSY MONDIN: Thanks Anna Maria.

AMT: Rosy Mondin executive director of the Cannabis Trade Alliance of Canada. She joined us from Vancouver. Stay with us. The news is next and then:

SOUNDCLIP

ISIS would kill anybody who tried to defect, especially for women who didn't leave the home very often. They had so little freedom. To actually try and leave the group would be almost a death sentence.

AMT: Reporter Michelle Shephard joins me with the story of a 19 year old who goes to join ISIS and now wants to come back to Canada. This is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

One mother's mission to save her daughter from life as an ISIS bride

Guest: Michelle Shephard

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come. It's sure to be a great Olympic moment next month when North Korean athletes march alongside their South Korean counterparts in Pyongyang. It may offer hope that the events won't be rocked by a nuclear test. But would it be too optimistic to read even more into the Olympics power to spark a dialogue between the two countries? That story in half an hour. But first the way out.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Gunshots and indistinct shouting]

AMT: The sounds of a war that has been spilling into its seventh year now having already claimed some 400,000 lives and helped give rise to the terror group ISIS. And year after year the Syrian war has been beamed onto our screens, our phones, our laptops, tablets, televisions. That has made a war that may be halfway around the world seem immediate for many, such as a Canadian teen who watched Syria's upheaval obsessively from her Montreal bedroom. And in 2014 when ISIS issued its call for Muslims around the world to join their ranks and fight alongside them in Syria. It seems she answered. Almost exactly three years ago that Montreal teen became one of the hundred or so Canadians who left behind everything she knew, her home, her school, her mother to travel to Syria to join ISIS. But then one day her mother received a frantic phone call. Toronto Star national security correspondent Michelle Shephard documents what happens next in a new CBC POV documentary called The Way Out. It airs Sunday night at 9 p.m. on CBC Television. You can find more about it on our website at cbc..ca/thecurrent. Right now Michelle Shephard is with me in our Toronto studio. Hi Michelle.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Hi.

AMT: What do we know about what prompted a Montreal teen to fly across the world to join ISIS?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Her mother isn't sure. She doesn't know if there are outside influences that helped her get there or perhaps recruited her when she was in Montreal. What she does know is that she was struggling at the time to fit in. She was 19 years old, when she left she had just turned 19. She had as you mentioned been watching footage over and over of the crimes of the Assad regime. She may have been watching this propaganda too. We don't know. And she shocked her mother by leaving one day. She said she was going to a friend's house for a birthday party and staying overnight. Her mum said 'Don't I'll come pick you up no matter how late the party is'. She's 19 years old. Eventually convinced her mom she could stay for the night and then called about 48 hours later to say she was gone.

AMT: She was already out of the country.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: She was already there and she had left with another Montreal teenager whom her mother had never met. She knew a lot of her friends.

AMT: Now you call her mother Saeeda, that's not her name, and called the daughter Amina. Before all of this what was Amina's life like?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: The way her mother described it was fairly typical. She was in her second year of college. She had a lot of friends. She was popular and had been quite into fashion and sort of teenage girl things really.

AMT: And did she see any signs in her in her daughter before she left?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: In hindsight there had been some signs and when I spoke of trying to fit in there was there is a little bit of that and some difficulty. One night she actually had what she describes sort of as a panic attack and this was right before she left. And so in hindsight her mum thought maybe she was just so worried about her decision to go and that was part of it. Probably the most significant incident came almost a year before she left. Saeeda was leaving work and she came upon her daughter just by chance. When she was at the bus station and her daughter was completely covered. She was wearing a shador that covered her head and her body and she'd never dressed like that before. And her mother was shocked. They are Muslim family but not overly religious. So she said 'what are you doing? What are you doing?' And she said 'go back home and change.

AMT: And she was even wearing - she was wearing face covering, was she not? Only her eyes showing?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: She recognized her by her eyes but I don't think she was actually wearing a niqab, but she had gloves on as well shielding her hands. Her mom was just shocked because this was something she had never seen before. And you know when we were talking about it we were saying this is what parents go through this all the time with teenagers that you worry that there's a life they have outside. And the typical story is you know someone leaving in a full dress and then you see them on the street and there were some tube top or something like this. And this was the exact opposite experience for her that she was wearing something very traditional to her religion and she'd never talked about this. So she tried to talk about that with her afterwards and her daughter sort of shut down a bit and said 'you know I don't see why I can't'. But she wondered of course what is going on.

AMT: She goes over there. What does Saeeda learn about the kind of life her daughter starts to live?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Almost as soon as she went over she called and said she regretted it. That she had no idea what it was going to be like. She was panicking and that was the time when Saeeda realized 'Okay I have to work to get her out. This is now going to be my mission to get my daughter home'. But she said in that first call when she her daughter was panicking, 'where are you? I'll come get you'. And her daughter just said 'no no no it's so dangerous. I had no idea it would be like this. We are under surveillance' and really gave her the sense that she was trapped at that point.

AMT: I should point out, just to clarify, you were not in communication with Amina, the daughter. All of this is coming from Saeeds, what know about Amina's life.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: That's right. So the film is actually about the mother and her struggle to get her daughter back. I've never spoken with Amina. We know a little bit of her backstory from the mother but not much. I assume that will come out later. But we've never spoken with her and in fact she doesn't know that there's this documentary that's been made even.

AMT: She does not know what her mother is telling others.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: She doesn't know.

AMT: Okay. So she's in Syria. They figure out she's in Raqqa, I am right?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: That's right. She goes to Syria first and she's put in one of these houses which is quite common when women would go over there, known as widow houses, and there would be unwed women and women who had been recently widowed which happened a lot over there.

AMT: And so what happens to Amina?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: She quickly marries and we don't know if this was somebody that she had met perhaps online before she went. We suspect it was someone that she met while there, while in this house or this house for women. So she married a German convert to Islam who went by the name or the 'Konya' of Abu Salaheddin.

AMT: And do we know much about him

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Well the mother found out more about him. Her daughter told her very little. But in her journey to try and get her daughter out she discovered more about him, including the fact that he had an injury that predated him going over to Syria. So he wasn't a fighter. He was described as an administrator within the group and has been described as being quite cruel by others, although Saeeda says that her daughter had never expressed that. She felt that her daughter was perhaps under the control of the husband. But she didn't say anything explicitly that she had been cruel to her.

AMT: She learned that Amina has a child.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: That's right. So as soon as she found out that she had married she begged her 'please please don't get pregnant' and very soon after she was pregnant.

AMT: How old is that child today

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: She would be about two years and two months.

AMT: Now have Canadian authorities been aware of of her life and serially? What are they now?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: They have definitely been aware of the case since the beginning and Saeeda the mother has talked with them since the beginning as well. I don't think our parents do. But she has always cooperated with the RCMP and CSIS and we're not sure exactly what they know. They definitely have her online communications. They would have all that but we don't have a presence in Syria. Canadian security services don't have a great, from what I understand, a great network. So we don't know what they know.

AMT: So what was communication like between Saeeda and her daughter Amina as time goes on?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: It was very sporadic. It was usually only by text and sometimes weeks would go and she'd hear nothing. She wouldn't know if she was dead or alive. It was very difficult from what her daughter would tower to get internet service. They talked by Skype only once in the three years that she was gone. So that was the only time she could actually see her. And Saeeda said they both just cried pretty much the entire time. Her husband was also there, Amina's husband, so she didn't feel that she was completely free to speak out.

AMT: And did she know anything about how she was living, like the conditions in Raqqa at the time for Amina

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: She had a little bit. Basically her daughter would write and complain and say that it was horrible. They moved between Syria and Iraq. So she did spend some time in Mosul. When she was in Mosul, that's when she gave birth to her first daughter, and she called or texted her mother saying that it was horrible, that she had to deliver the girl by c section but they didn't have any drugs for her or proper drugs. And she was worried that she couldn't cry out or show any emotion because you weren't allowed to do that in ISIS territory.

AMT: So again this is this is a 19 year old who grew up in Monreal.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: She was born and raised in Montreal and from what her mom had said was quite naive I think. And, yes, you can imagine the cultural shock of what happened.

AMT: How is Saeeda dealing with her daughter being over there. Did she have any support for the idea of being there? What is she thinking?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: It's so difficult. And I think my heart really goes out to parents who have gone through this because you can't imagine a more difficult problem for a parent. You don't have support because as soon as this news comes out in the public you're immediately stigmatized, obviously in the greater public. But even within Muslim communities where there is a lot of fear and nobody wants to associate with you. So she felt incredibly alone.

AMT: And was she angry at her daughter for doing this? What did she think of Amina actually doing this?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Of course yes she was. She was very angry. But she's still her Ma'am and she wanted her back. And she you know vowed to - when she does come back - she vows to you know look after and stand up for her. But she of course she was angry. What a mistake to make.

AMT: So Saeeda decides she wants to get her out. How dangerous is it for someone to leave ISIS after joining

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: It's incredibly dangerous. Right now the group is on the run and they've lost most of their territory. But at the time that Amina was there - so in 2015-2016 last year, ISIS would kill anybody who tried to defect. And they had quite a good intelligence network within the group. So especially for women, who didn't leave the home very often, if they did they had to be completely covered. They had so little freedom. To actually try and leave the group would be almost a death sentence.

AMT: So how did she get help, to try to get help to her daughter? What did she do?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: So Saeeda met members of militia known as Thuwwar Raqqa. They are one of the groups that's fighting in Syria allied with coalition forces. They have various departments within their group. There are people who are on the frontlines fighting. They have sort of a political wing. But one of their wings specializes in defecting people, getting people out. Those who want to leave they will help escort them out into territory that is controlled by Kurdish forces or other forces and help them surrender to the countries from where they're from. So Saeeda met two members of this group who go by the name of Abu Shuja and Mahmoud and they started a plan to get her out.

AMT: And we meet these people. You show us their faces. It's quite extraordinary because you follow her over there. I was really struck by the fact that you have these - mostly - young men of Syrian descent, they're trying to fight ISIS one person at a time. It's incredibly dangerous.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: It's really dangerous and we kept asking that because we want to know 'what are your motivations? Why are you doing this?' And I think she's articulated it best one time where he said 'we fight ISIS on the ground. We fight in various ways. But every person we get away from them, every defector, is one less person. It's a win for us.' And they also call themselves the intelligence branch of their group. So everybody who comes out they get a little bit more information. And it's a very slow process but they feel by making the group weaker, they can do that by getting people.

AMT: And so they're in Germany but they're also in Turkey, am I right?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Thuwwar Raqqa is basically in Syria and in Turkey but there is another group that Saeeda actually reached out to as well. They are a group of human rights activists known as Sound and Picture. And I think you've had on the show before Raqqa being Slaughtered Silently, they are a similar group to that. And these are really really brave activists and citizen journalists. And what they do is they have spies within ISIS territory and they get footage and information out. So pretty much any footage you've seen on the news or in documentaries over the years has been smuggled out by these brave activists. So Saeeda also went to Germany where she met two brothers from one of these groups, from Sound and Picture, and that mission was to try and get more information about the German husband and they helped her. They actually were able to identify Amina's husband. And that little bit of information was critical to then bring to Turkey when she went there and met with members of the group, Thuwwar Raqqa.

AMT: In fact she shows them the picture and right away they say 'oh him'. They knew.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: It was a [unintelligible] of we are lucky we were filming at that time. It was Kind of a dramatic scene where exactly they said 'we know who this is. This is...' And they knew actually from the time he was in Mosul. But I guess he had quite a reputation as being cruel at that time, not only to those within ISIS but also the citizens that were in Mosul. I think they had said he was helping distribute food or something like that. But in his role as administrator he was quite cruel.

AMT: What was the plan to get her our then? What did they want to do?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: The way that they work is they they get information about the defector and then they do their own investigation to see if that person really wants to get out. Because as you said if they don't it could be a trap and would be incredibly dangerous for them.

AMT: So because right now all they have is the mother of this woman in Canada saying 'My daughter wants this' but they don't even know. Even if she shows them texts, they don't know who wrote those texts.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Exactly. And there were times when Saeeda wasn't sure if it was the husband that was writing her or if it was her daughter. Sometimes it just didn't sound like her daughter and she's never trusted the husband. So there was one period where we were in Turkey with her and her daughter wrote and said that her husband had been killed and had that she said 'Please get me out. I really want out. I need help.' Unfortunately, what happened later was just not long after she wrote back saying 'no it was a mistake. It was somebody else who was killed it wasn't my husband', which is not uncommon. Often you would hear those fog of war. And also just within ISIS actually there's many that go by the same name, same nationality. So it was confusing at that point but she was certain that her daughter wanted out. So she gave the group information about the husband so they could locate where Amina lived because is very difficult to try and find women in the group because they never leave their home and when they do they covered up. So Thuwwar Raqqa did their own investigation to try and find where she lived and then they would get a message to the daughter, that the mother had recorded, a video message, and it would say 'you can trust these people. Please go with them.' This was all happening when we were in Turkey. The plane was under way at the same time the war in Syria continued.

AMT: I was just going to ask you what's going on actually in Raqqa and the rest of Syria while this was going on.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: The timing was that at that point their fight to liberate Raqqa was intensifying and it was getting bombed daily. And just before they were able to get information. She was gone. She was out of Raqqa.

AMT: So what happens?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: So then we come back to Canada and Saeeda waits and she gets no message. So there are no messages from her daughter so she doesn't know if she's been killed. She doesn't know what's happened. The plan is on hold because Thuwwar Raqqa doesn't know where she's gone. And it was a few weeks later finally a message came from Amina's husband to say they had fled and they were in a town called Abu Kamal and it was one of the last strongholds that ISIS had.

AMT: I have a clip I want to play because Saeeda, back in Canada, has a lawyer by the name of Nader Hasan and he's talking to her in this clip about the future Amina might face if and when she gets back to Canada.

SOUNDCLIP

There's not a doubt in my mind that she's a victim. And will continue to make that point to the Canadian authorities. But at this point I can't tell you with any certainty how the Canadian Crown prosecutor and Canadian RCMP will ultimately regard. We have to be alive to the possibility that they will charge her criminally.

AMT: He sees her no doubt in his mind as a victim. That's not a given, is it, Michelle Shephard?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: The lawyer sees her as a victim. Saeeda obviously sees her as a victim. I can guarantee that there will be a good chunk of the Canadian public that won't.

AMT: And we don't know. We don't know what she may or may not have been doing there.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: We don't. So everything we know from the text that we've looked at or what Saeeda has said or what the police have told her seemed to indicate that she went over, regretted her decision, became a mother and a wife and eventually surrendered and came out. But we don't know if there's other texts or anything else. Certainly nothing that we've seen indicated she is anything more than that. But that's what the RCMP will be looking at now and we'll see whether or not she gets charged when she returns.

AMT: Do you know where she is now?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: We do. So what ended up happening was, in Abu Kamal, Thuwwar Raqqa managed to get a message to her and the husband allowed to let her leave. And they went through this harrowing journey to get her out of ISIS territory. During the way they hit a sandstorm, contact was lost and eventually they ended up in an area controlled by the Kurds and she surrendered. So she's in Kurdish custody now. Soon after she got into custody she gave birth to her second daughter. And from what we understand Canadian officials are talking to the Kurds and trying to go back to Canada.

AMT: How is her mother reacting to all of this? She's got these two grandchildren now in this very very complicated story for her daughter.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Saeeda is really remarkable. She's incredibly strong and she's not naive. She knew from the beginning that her daughter had made this terrible mistake and she'd have to live with the consequences. But her mission was to get her home. And she knows she might go to jail. She hopes not, she hopes that she'll be seen as a victim of the group. But she understands that maybe that's going to be the outcome and she felt that being in jail in Canada is going to be better than being a prisoner of ISIS. And her focus has also now shifted to as you say these two grandmothers that she's never met. So she's already prepared a room for them in her Montreal apartment. She's ready to look after them when they come back, all three of them and she just hopes that will be soon.

AMT: And do we know what kind of backlash she might face if she gets to Canada?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: We do not. We don't know yet if they'll be charges. If not, will she be identified? It's pretty difficult history to have and try and resume a normal life here.

AMT: She wouldn't be the first person who joined us from Canada to come back to the country now.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: It's been described to me as sort of the first big test case. It's an important one because people do know about it. Her case is very complicated. I'm sure politically it's been discussed at length. I think for the Canadian government it would be easier if the first returnee was an open and shut case, somebody who is a known propagandist who they had evidence of their crimes and they could put him on trial. This is a tricky case and will be interesting to see what happens.

AMT: What kinds of questions does her story raise for you?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: To me this is a very intimate story about one mom's struggle and what she went through and it really humanizes a problem that we talk about so often in such black and white terms. But I think how Canada reacts to this case also speaks volumes. And a lot of the work I've done over the years on doing terrorism stories and national security issues is about stopping the next generation. How do you stop the next ISIS from forming? And so often how we react politically or in policy to the current problem often makes the problem worse. So I hope that whatever the outcome in this case, it'll be a reasoned discussion, it will be a smart one and one that eventually brings security.

AMT: And how hopeful is Saeeda that Amina and the two granddaughters now will be able to be back in Montreal with her?

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: She has faith in her daughter still. She feels that she's got enough support that she can help them recover. She knows she's going to need help on various fronts. But as I said she's a very very strong woman and I have faith in her giving her daughter a chance at life and certainly the grandchildren.

AMT: It's a fascinating story and you see in this film you see the mother who's torn. Right? Because I didn't get that she was like right on side with her daughter. I got the tension about what has this kid done 'what has my kid done?' and then 'I miss my daughter.' I got all of that, that she knows that it's tough.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: I'm glad that came through in the film because that's definitely where her head is at and that's what I mean by saying she's not naive. You know she supports her daughter. She loves her daughter. She wants her to come back but she also understands the reality of the decision she made and what a horrible horrible mistake to make.

AMT: Fascinating story thank you for bringing it to us.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Thanks for having me.

AMT: Michelle Shephard is the Toronto Star as national security correspondent. She co-produced the new CBC POV documentary. It's called The Way Out. You can find more about it on our Web site at cbc.ca/thecurrent. You can watch The Way Out. It airs Sunday at 9:00 all times zones, at 9:30 in New Foundland and parts of Labrador on CBC Television nine o'clock Sunday night for The Way Out. Let us know what you're thinking as you listen to this. You can tweet us we are @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. Complicated story raising complicated issues. Coming up in our next half hour South Korea is already calling its upcoming Olympics 'The Peace Games'. But will the presence of a North Korean delegation make any lasting impact after the closing ceremony. We're asking. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, and Online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcast and on your radio app.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

North Korea's 'real motives': Olympic unity may mask hostile plan, experts warn

Guests: Susan Chira, Bradley K. Martin

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: Hand in Hand]

AMT: Hand in Hand. The theme song for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. And with the Winter Olympics set to open in that country next month, 'hand in hand' or at least side by side will once again be the theme. Athletes from North and South Korea will merge together under a United flag at the opening ceremonies in Pyongyang. The two Koreas will also come together on the ice fielding a joint women's hockey team. Yesterday's historic Olympic announcements come after high level talks this week at the two countries shared border. And against the backdrop of escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, the Olympic camaraderie seems to be a powerful gesture of reconciliation but it has not stopped some from asking whether this coming together is anything more than a purely symbolic move. Susan Chira is currently the senior correspondent for gender issues for The New York Times. In the 1980s she was the New York Times correspondent in Asia, based partly in Seoul, where she covered those 1988 Seoul Olympics. Susan Chirajoins us from New York City, hello.

SUSAN CHIRA: Hi. Nice to be here.

AMT: Nice to have you with us. What are you thinking about this news that there will be a joint hockey team?

SUSAN CHIRA: Well it really is fascinating. Just as in the 80s, there is always a question of how to make the Olympics a kind of a field for sports diplomacy. And certainly compared to the past, they've made a lot more progress in in North Korea was not present for the games and they didn't field any joint teams. But I do think we have to be hard-headed and cautious. This is a moment that will have great emotional resonance for North and South Koreans. I have no doubt. It's meaningful to them, dreams of unification are very potent but I think we need to be very careful not to over interpret. North Korea is set on aggressively stepping up its nuclear program to serve its interest and I would be very shocked if the feel-good nature of this deters it from it that path.

AMT: Susan Shaw before we talk more about this Olympics and the politics around it, take me back to the time around the 1980 Olympics in Seoul. What did it mean to South Korea to be awarded those Olympics?

SUSAN CHIRA: Well the South was awarded the Olympics in the early 80s and it was extremely meaningful because South Korea, as both sides of the border, had emerged from this devastating Korean War in the 50s. They were in an active state of war if you will with North Korea because they'd never signed a peace treaty. So it were all kinds of fears of terrorism and hostility. And it was seen widely as a way for South Korea to make its debut on the world stage to prove that it was capable of the complex logistical kind of nation building exercise of holding the Olympics. So it was seen as a propaganda coup as a way to prove to the world that South Korea was a modern state. And honestly I did get North Korea.

AMT: And as you point out of course the Olympics for 88 were actually chosen, since 1981 they made the decision that that South Korea would get them. How did North Korea respond to the news that South Korea was given the Olympics?

SUSAN CHIRA: North Korea had its nose formally out of joint, and more seriously than they were attempts for a few years to try to see if the North and the south could somehow negotiate some participation. The North had demanded that it co-hosts which the South rejected out of hand. Those negotiations broke down and you saw a pattern of terrorism and hostility mount. In 1983 while the president of South Korea and much of the South Korean cabinet were in what was then Burma in Rangoon, a North Korean bomb obliterated large portion a little less than half of the South Korean cabinet. And of course there was the culminating wild act of terrorism in which North Korean agents blew up a plane Flight 858 in 1987. This was quite a tale and inflicted terrible loss. A 115 people died overwhelmingly South Koreans, many of them young people who were coming home from the Middle East. The plane had originated in Baghdad.

AMT: Tell us more about that plot and what they did.

SUSAN CHIRA: Well it was an extraordinary tale of espionage. There were two North Korean agents who had been trained for a year to carry out this exercise, a man and a woman. They were issued forged Japanese passports posing as Japanese tourist. And what happened was they made their way covertly to Belgrade. They were handed these forged Japanese passports. Then later on two other North Korean agents gave them a transistor radio. Inside this Panasonic transistor radio was a bomb. The flight from Baghdad had an interim stop in Abu Dhabi. So these two agents, a man and a woman, boarded the plane. They go on the flight; they go to their feet 7B and 7C. They put the transistor radio in the overhead bin. They depart the plane in Abu Dhabi and then the plane blows up before it arrives in Seoul killing everyone on board. And what was really extraordinary was the reason they knew that North Korea was responsible is that the agents, of course were trying to escape. But when they were apprehended in Bahrain because their passport forgery became clear and they had their escape plan which was cyanide laced cigarettes. So they bit ampules of cyanide in these cigarettes. The man died but the woman survived and through interrogation, she revealed the plot. Her name was Kim Hyun-Hui and she told how they were trained for this. She implicated Kim Jong Il who was then the heir apparent. His father Kim Il-Sung was still running North Korea. He was known as the Dear Leader. And you know she said she was told that if they did this that would lead to the great dream of unification of the Korean peninsula.

AMT: So extraordinary. I am going to stop you right there because you just mentioned Kim Hyun-Hui who was the agent who survived. You can't make that story up. It's incredible what they did. We have a clip of her from a rare interview with the BBC in 2013. This Kim Hyun-Hui, in translation.

SOUNDCLIP

KIM HYUN-HUI: [Through translator] I was told by senior officer that before the Seoul Olympics we would take down a South Korean airliner. He said it would create chaos and confusion in South Korea. The mission would strike a severe blow for the revolution.

INTERVIEWER: And where did the orders come from, Kim

KIM HYUN-HUI: [Through translator] In North Korea. Everything is about the Kingdom of Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il. Without their sanction nothing can happen. Kim Il Sung was a godlike figure. Anything that has been ordered by him could be justified. Any order would be carried out with extreme loyalty. You are ready to sacrifice your life. We were told we were contributing to bringing about the unification of Korea.

AMT: Susan Chira, what do you make of what she says there?

SUSAN CHIRA: Well it's absolutely accurate as far as we understand life inside North Korea. The cult continues to this day. The grandson of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un is now the leader of North Korea. And so Kim Hyung-Hui outlined you know what they were told. And in a remarkable twist you know she's alive today because - initially she was condemned to death for her role - but she was spared because the South Koreans told people that they had concluded she'd been brainwashed. Of course she was a great propaganda tool for them. She ends up marrying one of the intelligence officers who interrogate her. And she is you know publicly repents and talks about the cultlike totalitarian atmosphere in North Korea and wrote a book about her training and donated the profits to the victims of the families, I should say of the victims of Flight 858.

AMT: And so she lives openly in South Korea now? Have the North Koreans targeted her?

SUSAN CHIRA: Afraid of North Korean retaliation. So she never says where she lives but she does live in South Korea.

AMT: Why did North Korea choose that kind of attack it. This was before the actual games a year before.

SUSAN CHIRA: Yes. I mean our surmise is that the idea was to frighten people away from attending the Olympics, to try to create instability in South Korea. But you know right up to the Olympics there were great fears that there would be a terrorist attack on the Seoul games. They were extraordinary security precautions taken. United States was on stand-by with aircraft carriers and paratroopers. There is a great photo and I remember having covered the time where paratroopers were like repelling down ropes into the Olympic Stadium just in case there were some kind of attack. People were really on edge.

AMT: And while this security preparation was going on, South Korea and the United States how did they react? What did they start talking to North Korea about?

SUSAN CHIRA: Well it was fascinating because just as we see now, there were some overtures made. Even though then that South Korea had a conservative leaning government and the United States at the time of the Reagan administration obviously was a Conservative government. They did try to reach out to North Korea and say if you practice restraint and don't attack the Seoul Olympics you know let's see if we can make some overtures to modest steps. And there was some modest progress. You know in the subsequent years there were a couple of joint participations in various games that followed and there was some modest attempts at family reunification, meetings. Nothing, however that fundamentally altered the geopolitical state. But there were some steps that lessen tension.

AMT: What message does that send to North Korea?

SUSAN CHIRA: You know well I feel that most people who watch North Korea have seen is that North Korea, I think, even though no one wants to reward bad behavior, it is bad behavior is it the only bargaining chip. You know all we've got right now is the nuclear program are of to make the world pay attention. It doesn't have you know a great economy. It's a very isolated place. The only ally it really has as China to some degree. So I think North Korea has used these threats then, terrorism, now, nuclear annihilation as a way to try to extract concessions from the world.

AMT: And so what do you think the lessons are as we watch this?

SUSAN CHIRA: I think what is really interesting this time around is we are seeing under a left wing government that has very much appeal to South Korean voters, with this dream of somehow lessening tensions on the peninsula, is very actively engaged in making overtures to North Korea. And North, I think these attempts as one way to drive a wedge between South Korea and its traditional ally, the state. I think South Korea's is trying not to let a wedge driven but I think what we have to remember is it is important to try to lessen tensions. Right now, everyone is on a razor's edge. Remember last weekend this idea that Hawaii was under attack which turned out to be an error and people were scrambling to go to shelters.

AMT: People were terrified.

SUSAN CHIRA: Absolutely terrifying. And North Korea's also cultivated a reputation as an unpredictable place that knows no restraint that has served its interest well because people are off balance. You know I don't want to say that there is no good in sports diplomacy. I think it produce some modest benefits and anything that lessens the tensions will be a great relief to South Koreans who were in the first line of attack. But I think we have to understand that North Korea's pursuing its ballistic missile and nuclear development because it serves its strategic end. And you know we have to remember that - I certainly - and I think most North Korea watchers that I know would be quite surprised if this brought any demunition in its nuclear ambitions.

AMT: Susan Chira, it's good to hear your perspective. Thanks for your time today.

SUSAN CHIRA: Thank you so much.

AMT: Susan Chira, senior correspondent for gender issues for the New York Times. In the 1980s she was the New York Times correspondent for Asia. She joined us from New York City. My next guest is a long time North Korea watcher. Bradley K. Martin has covered Korea and other parts of Asia for decades. He's been the bureau chief of - among others - the Baltimore Sun, The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek in the region. He's also the author of a new novel set in North Korea called Nuclear Blues. Bradley K. Martin joins us from New Orleans. Hi.

BRADLEY K. MARTIN: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: She is warning us that we should be a little wary of where this agreement can lead. What's your view

BRADLEY K. MARTIN: I agree with Susan. We covered those events in the 80s together. We should be very wary because North Korea never falters from its basic strategy which is to do to persuade the United States to get its troops out, or persuade the South Koreans to push our troops out. And then reunite either peacefully or forcefully so that North Korea will then control the southern part of the country. That is their long term strategy.

AMT: So if that's the long term strategy why take part in these talks and some of these just gestures around the Olympics? What are they thinking?

BRADLEY K. MARTIN: Yes they're trying to break down the alliance and the determination of the South Korea and the United States to work together on defending South Korea. This has been a steady alliance all these decades. But whenever they can, the North Koreans inject anti Americanism in the south. They inject nationalistic feelings among the South Koreans, so that they will identify more with the North than with their allies which is natural enough. So this is what they up to try. They're trying to work through to their desired outcome. And if they can persuade the South Koreans to welcome them in this sentimental fashion, then gets them of the way where they hope to go.

AMT: What role does the North Korean nuclear program play in all of this?

BRADLEY K. MARTIN: The nuclear program. It has various uses. I mean it could be used to deter the states from a decapitation strike, or for a strike on either its leader or its nuclear - its own weapon. But I believe the basic reason it to say to the United States 'Get out. Get out of South Korea or we will bomb Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles.' And gradually they hope that the United States will say 'Wait a minute. We risk our own territory to protect South Korea, so we'd better start thinking of other ways'. And this is happening and you have a great many Americans to not understand the process who believe 'Oh let's give peace a chance.' That's all the North Koreans would want.

AMT: We've talked about reunification. The splitting of Korea into North and South was painful for all sides. How popular is the idea of some kind of reunification amongst the people on both sides

SUSAN CHIRA: Okay both sides give it total lip service. I mean they've always dreamed of it in their hearts. It's still a part of their national policies, their formal national policies. South Korea, for example, it's constitution says that the government in Seoul is in charge of all of the Korean Peninsula. And they have got all offices were people are the sort of figurehead governors of provinces that are in the North. So it is on both sides. 'Yes we must reunify. We're a special race. We Koreans we're different from Chinese. We are different from Japanese. We need to be united. We're a small race. We need to have our own country'. There's a lot of that feeling on both sides.

AMT: But practically does South Korea really want North Korea

BRADLEY K. MARTIN: I think not at this moment because North Korea is is so incredibly poor. The ratio of the North Korean economy to the South Korean economy is so tiny. It's not like Germany where East Germany was behind West Germany but not by so many geometric factories. So at the moment it would be so terribly costly to take over and try to try to merge North Korea in to the same country. Of course the burden of this would fall on the South Korean economy. So if you suddenly saw that there was going to be reunification tomorrow, the South Korean stock market would crash, in my humble opinion. Of course nobody can predict these things precisely but...

AMT: You make the point that North Korea wants reunification and then they want to control it. Do you see it as a legitimate possibility that the North could do something to invade the South?

BRADLEY K. MARTIN: Yes they did. Of course they would prefer to manipulate South Korean opinion and use their own intensity. The North never wavers, never changes in its strategy. They have been doing the same things all these years. Their goals are the same. The first time I went to North Korea in 1979, thier foreign policy chief set me down for five hours and explained to me why the United States should leave - should remove its troops from South Korea. So this is not going to change.

AMT: So if we look at what's going on now, and we look at Donald Trump the president United States, how is he affected? What's happening all around with this crisis thing?

AMT: I think the South Korean president even has given President Trump a a little bit of credit for getting them to the stage of talks again. Because Trump is basically doing the same sort of bombastic threatening negotiation that North Korea has been doing for all these years. So you know now you have people on both sides engaging in provocative verbal encounters and we shall see. Trump has threatened actual military action. So yes this has an effect in terms of producing an atmosphere in which everybody in the world may say 'wait a minute can we hold our breath here for a second and maybe talk a little bit'. Well then the question is where are the talks going to go?

AMT: And so what are you going to watch for as this unfolds with this Olympics? You've written something recently just saying 'be very afraid'.

BRADLEY K. MARTIN: [Laughs] That was a headline writer's title. But I do think we have a lot to worry about, because if we don't play this right then the North could indeed take over the South, either peacefully or in some warlike fashion while the United States is busy elsewhere. I think we really have to make sure that the South Koreans understand their situation. I'm not saying the United States needs to stay there forever. We could leave and South Korea could develop its own much more much stronger military response to North Korea. Maybe South Korea would even think of going nuclear and [unintelligible] what North Korea has.

AMT: Bradley K. Martin, we have to leave it there but thank you for your insights.

BRADLEY K. MARTIN: Thank you Anna Maria.

AMT: Bradley Martin he's covered Korea and other parts of Asia for decades. He's been the bureau chief of The Baltimore Sun, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek in the region as well as others. The author of a new novel set in North Korea called Nuclear Blues. And he joined us from New Orleans. I want to give you a little word about the team that made the show this week.

[Music: Credit's Theme]

ROSA KIM: Hi. I'm Rosa Kim one of the producers here at The Current. This week the show was produced by: Idella Sturino, Lara O'Brien, Howard Goldenthal, Ines Colabrese, Pacinthe Mattar, Willow Smith, Amra Pasic, Samira Mohyeddin, Kristin Nelson, Karin Marley, John Chipman, Kori Sidaway, and Liz Hoath, who's filling in as Senior Producer this week. The Current's writer is Peter Mitton. Our web producers are Lisa Ayuso and Sarah Claydon. Our digital producer is Padraig Moran. Transcriptions are provided by Rasha Shehata and Nikhil Sharma. Our technical producers are Gary Francis and Jennifer Rowley. Our presentation producer is Josh Bloch. And our documentary editor is Joan Webber. And thanks to our network producers across the country Anne Penman, Michael O'Halloran, Suzanne Dufresne, Susan McKenzie, and Mary-Catherine McIntosh. Our senior producers are Richard Goddard in Toronto and Cathy Simon in Vancouver. The executive producer of The Current is Kathleen Goldhar.

AMT: That's our program for today. Stay with Radio 1 for Q. Tom Powers joined by Andre Leon Talley the former editor-at-large at American Vogue, subject of a new documentary. Well we were just discussing the upcoming Winter Games and North Korea's participation in them with South Korea. It seems the North may be sending musicians as well as athletes to South Korea next month. This week a South Korean politician told Reuters that he expected the North Korea's state Symphony Orchestra to perform a concert with its southern counterpart as part of the games. We are going to leave you today with the North Korean orchestra performing Arirang, a traditional folk song that is sometimes described as the unofficial Korean national anthem, on both sides of the border. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

Thursday January 18, 2018 Full Episode Transcript

More Stories Like This