World War 3: North Korea wants to survive by ‘learning from Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi’

North KoreaGETTY • Twitter @tomsteinfort

North Korea plans to survive by ‘learning fro Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi’, a journalist has claimed

Journalist Tom Steinfort believes that despot leader Kim Jong-un has learned from other dictators’ mistakes and is building up a horrifying military arsenal to hold on to his position of power.

He stated: “Kim Jong-un has seen in the past what’s happened to ill-equipped dictators like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi — and he’s determined to make sure that the last remaining hard line socialist strong hold in the world survives.

“His solution: missiles that can now reach Washington, and accordingly, mainland Australia.

“And so the reality right now as we teeter on the edge of a potential nuclear war is that we are faced with a Mexican stand-off of sorts.”

Mr Steinfort detailed his experience in the hermit kingdom during filming for the latest edition of Australia’s 60 Minutes news show.

He said: “There was a moment in North Korea that it hit home we were considered the enemy, and our hostile hosts had us in their sights.

“‘My zips are different’”. That statement is probably as confusing for you right now as it was for me when my colleague first whispered it in my ear in the lobby of our hotel in Pyongyang.

“But it turns out he’s a pretty wily character — that morning, he’d memorised the exact position of where the zips were on his suitcase, and when we returned that night they were in a completely different place.

“They’d raided our rooms while we were out filming, and gone through our belongings.

“In some respects it wasn’t surprising — government officials had been all over us like a cheap suit from the second we got off the plane in North Korea.

“They went through my phone, asking who some of the people in my photos were, and humorously even flicked through the book I was reading at the time to see if it contained any pro-western propaganda

“After some deliberation by soldiers, it was determined that John Ibrahim isn’t a threat to the regime, so I was allowed to hang on to his biography.”

Mr Steinfort detailed that his passport was taken by the rogue state and that he was warned that unless he received the country’s blessing, he would not be getting it back.

He added: “One thing I couldn’t keep though was my passport — this was confiscated by the government on arrival, ensuring that the only way you will ever leave the rogue nation is with its blessing – a menacing insurance policy for our minders, making sure we don’t step out of line.

“Those few moments are just a taste of the paranoid and at times intimidating nature of the team that stalked our every move while we were in North Korea.

Tom SteinfortTwitter @tomsteinfort

Tom Steinfort recently detailed his experience in the hermit kingdom

The reporter revealed that North Korea promotes its accelerating military programmes on seemingly every billboard and window, surpassing advertisements for massive brands in western nations in an attempt to brainwash its people.

He went on: “Pretty much every shop window and billboard in town has posters promoting the country’s weapons program.

“Where every other nation in the world might have an advertisement for McDonalds or Nike, they have advertisements for missiles and nukes.

PyongyangGETTY

North Korea promotes its accelerating military programmes on seemingly every billboard and window

“With slogans like ‘the whole of the USA is in shooting range of our country’ being fed through a never ending stream of propaganda, citizens boasted to us that their country are now a ‘world power’.

“While that may be a bit of a stretch, there’s still no doubt it’s a game changer.”

World tensions have been upped significantly after Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un have consistently engaged in war of words that has led to both threatening the destruction of each’s respected nation.