TODAY   |  December 20, 2011

Bill Clinton weighs in on North Korea, diplomacy

The former president defends the Obama administration’s handling of the event and tells TODAY’s Ann Curry, “we ought to let ‘em sort it out.”

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>> before we actually get to the list of books , let me quickly get your take on how concerned we should be about the stabilization in north korea given the events of kim jong -il's passing?

>> well, i think we should be concerned, but i think the president did the right thing. he called the president of south korea , hillary met with the foreign minister of japan and the foreign minister of south korea and they basically want to do nothing now so that there's no provocation and they have time to sort it out. kim jong -il's son is quite young. when i went there a couple of years ago to bring the two american journalists home, i didn't meet him. so they were grooming him. what you don't want is for the military, which has overwhelming influence, to feel that they have to do something radical to reassert their control. and i just think we ought to let them sort it out and make the argument we've been making now for a long time, which is they ought to give up their nuclear power and selling military technology and let us work with them to grow food and create factories and create broadly shared prosperity.

>> we appreciate your perspective on