 Earlier this month, North Korea unveiled a new uranium enrichment facility. November's CSIS Schieffer series takes a look at why and what this means. Experts on the region also discussed the Korea Free Trade Agreement and North Korea's accession. Hello, everybody. We're still waiting on one of our panelists, but in talking with Bob Schieffer, it's not fair to punish you who got here on time, so we need to start on time. So we will bring in one more person here in just a few minutes, and there are more people that are coming. Thank you all for coming. I'm delighted to have you here. This is probably the most exciting program that we have here, and we greatly treasure the partnership that we have with TCU and the Schieffer School of Journalism. It gives us a chance to be with Bob Schieffer, and of course he's certainly the dean of this community, and has done so much to ensure that we have quality journalism in Washington, and we're very grateful for that, and we're grateful that he's willing to share some of it with us. This is an exceptionally interesting topic. Over the weekend, we've had some important breaking news about the nuclear program in North Korea. It was unrelated to the scheduling of this event. We had this scheduled long before, but sometimes it's nice when the news catches up with our little agenda here, but I think it does give us a chance to explore some enormously important developments that are taking place right now, and fortunately we have just superb people to help us with that tonight. Let me just again say what a real honor it is to be able to work with Bob Schieffer. You guys have one of the best alumni in, I think, in the country. You're so fortunate to have a guy of his commitment to the school, and of course we're lucky to have him here in Washington. With no further delay, Bob, let me turn to you, and let's get this thing going. I must say, Dr. Hamry, I'd like to see if I can engage you to go around and introduce me everywhere. Very nice of you, and on behalf of TCU and the Schieffer's School of Journalism, welcome everybody. Our sponsor for these little sessions is United Technologies, and we always want to thank them for the support they've given to this series of lectures. Well, there's nothing like being right on top of the news, and I think we pretty much the timing for this one. We had planned to talk about North Korea for the last month or so, and then we all know what the news was recently. Let me just introduce our panelist. Ambassador Sung Kim became the special envoy to the Six-Party Talks in July of 2008. He was accorded the rank of ambassador following confirmation. He's a career foreign service officer. He headed the Office of Korean Affairs from 2006 to 2008. For that, he was a Chief of Political Military Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. He has a long record of diplomatic service, and before he became a diplomat, he was a prosecutor in the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, so a man of wide experience. Victor Cha, of course, was named as a newly created Korea Chair here at CSIS in May of 2009. He's also a professor of government, Director of Asian Studies at Georgetown. From 2004 to 2007, he was Director of Asian Affairs at the White House, where he was responsible for coordinating U.S. policy for Japan, also has a long record of foreign service. Jill Darity, who is just joining us here, is the Foreign Affairs Correspondent for CNN. She covered the White House. She has the long experience of covering diplomatic affairs. She's currently CNN's Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent. She was, for a time, based in CNN's headquarters in what Hong Kong, I guess. And Moscow. Yeah, and Moscow, where she was also the Chief Correspondent there. And then our old friend, of course, David Sanger over here, New York Times, part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team over there has a new book out called The Inheritance, which was a terrific primer for anybody coming into the administration. It was the story of what the Bush administration left behind for the Obama administration. And they're still on the shelf, and they're still selling, David, so... Barely. ...gracially to you on that. Well, let's just start, and, Ambassador, let me just start with you. Bring us up to date. What have we... What happened here? Just tell us what's happened, what we just discovered, and should we be worried about it? Thank you very much. And it's great to be here. Great to be with this distinguished panel and a great audience. What happened is that an old friend's invited, walking around, nuclear scientist, Sig Hecker, and showed him a facility that appears to be a uranium enrichment facility. We should be worried, but I should point out that this is not a new issue. This revelation of a facility in Youngburn may be new, but this is an issue that we have followed for some time and have been concerned about for quite some time. In fact, we've raised our concerns and suspicions directly with the North Koreans on a number of occasions, both bilaterally as well as in the context of the six-party talks. From our perspective, if the reports are true, then it's a clear violation of their commitments in the six-party process, but also obligations under the Security Council Resolution 1874 that was passed last year. At the moment, in fact, one of the reasons why I'm here and not Ambassador Bosworth is that he is traveling to the region to consult with our partners in the process To figure out the best way forward and how to deal with this challenge, and we'll continue the consultations. In fact, I should point out that this has been the pattern for the past year and a half as North Koreans have misbehaved missile launches, nuclear tests, and of course the tragic sinking of the South Korean vessel, we've coordinated very closely with other members of the six-party process, members of the Security Council to respond appropriately to North Korean publication, and that's what we would do with the states. What exactly did they show us? What did we find out here, discover here? They showed this, Sig Hecker, the scientist, they showed him basically 2,000 centrifuge tubes within a facility, which I think while I agree with Sung that this was clearly something that the United States has been worried about for some time, and the North Koreans were confronted directly by the United States about this in October of 2002. What I think was surprising, it was surprising to Sig Hecker and surprising to me personally as someone who follows this was that the facility they showed him appeared to be much further advanced and much farther along than anything that any expert who had been following North Korea had suspected they were capable of doing. So I agree that it's something that we've known about for quite some time and it confirms our worst suspicions about North Korean desires to pursue enriched uranium as a path in terms of their nuclear capabilities, but at the same time it does create a bit of alarm because this is much farther along than anybody had anticipated they would be. Well Ambassador, let me ask you, did the United States was this a surprise? I mean, did we know about this or should we have known about it? Well, obviously I'm not going to comment on intelligence matters, but I can assure you that this is something that we've been monitoring very closely for some time. In fact, we had some information that was construction going on in this particular area, so it's something that we've monitored very closely. But part of this would be in a building where it wouldn't necessarily, satellites wouldn't necessarily tell us what might be there, right? I mean, you can keep this like some of this stuff. That's right. I mean, that's why we didn't know what was actually inside the building, but this is the Youngburn Nuclear Complex. So we were concerned when we started to see construction that it might be a nuclear-related facility. Jill, what's your thought about all this? You were out in that part of the world for a long time. Yeah, and you know, we just did a story. The reason I'm late is because we did a live report on this very issue on CNN tonight. So I think there are a lot of questions. You know, I hear what people are saying, the level of concern, and certainly there would be, but why, and I don't think this is answered, why do they all of a sudden say, hey, come and look at this facility? I mean, if they were doing something that they wanted to keep secret, you would say logically, you wouldn't want to have a professor walking through there. He couldn't take photographs, but so some people believe that North Korea wants it to be known, wants the rest of the world to believe that they do have this capability. Now, if you listen to the briefing by P.J. Crowley today over at the State Department, he's saying it only shows a brief glimpse into a capability, but we have to define whether they actually have the capability. So there could be, as usual, you know, certainly a lack of clarity, but there might be, and the Ambassador would know this better than I do, but some type of gamesmanship still at play in this. Well, here's what the Wall Street Journal said today in the editorials. Said this is what North Korea always does when it's looking to extort more cash from South Korea, the United States, and other countries that still want to believe that Hwang Yang will end its nuclear program. And they do say that this is a civilian project. We've heard that from, of course, a couple of countries, but a civilian project to create energy. But the problem, as I understand, of course, from experts and technical experts, is that this is the type of technology that you can just continue to enrich and actually make weapons grade uranium, and that's one of the dangers. David, what do you make of it? Well, I think there are a couple of interesting issues that we've touched on today. Let me just back up to the question of whether or not there was an intelligence failure here, or whether or not, in fact, it's a continuation of what we're concerned about. And I think Mr. Kim was absolutely right that this is a subject the United States has been following since, I guess, 1998, I think, is one of the first reports of the purchase of uranium enrichment equipment from ACUCon in Pakistan came through. And then, of course, in 2002 was the great confrontation between Jim Kelly and the North Koreans on this subject, which ended up starting those events that ended the 1994 agreement that President Clinton had signed. So people have seen the transactions. What's interesting here in this case is we didn't see the facility or have an understanding that they could build such a sophisticated facility. And that's happened to us before in North Korea. I mean, consider the reactor that was built in Syria. The first, the US really got a sense of the North Korean involvement and what was involved, came when the head of the Mossad came and dropped the file on Steve Adley's coffee table. And a few months later, the Israelis destroyed the facility. So it's still a very difficult intelligence target. To Jill's point about what the motivations were here, I can think of three or four and many of them are contradictory. The obvious one is that they're doing this to trade it away. Bob Gates has famously said we're not buying the same horse again, so they're coming up with a different horse. That's one good possibility. A second possibility is they may want to show that their nuclear program is irreversible and that the United States should begin to deal with North Korea the way it deals with Pakistan, which is to say, to accept that they have nuclear weapons or now India or Israel. A third possibility I could imagine is that now that they can no longer produce additional plutonium, one of the things Sighecker told us when he came back was they have not started up that reactor, that very decrepit reactor that produced plutonium for them. They want to have a constant run of fuel. This is enough to make maybe one or two weapons a year. And that, of course, raises the question that they could sell that fuel as well as add to their arsenal. So they could have any number of motives and they may think that any of those three outcomes would be fine. Well, a master of what your reaction to these three possibilities that David raises here, your sense of what they're doing. I think it's a little dangerous to try to speculate on North Korean intentions and motivations. I mean, I've been working on this issue for a while and frankly, I would start to worry about myself if I were predicting accurately North Korean intentions and motivations. That said, I think we need to focus on what they have said and what they have committed to. And what they've committed to is complete denuclearization. And that's in the joint statement and other documents. And what they have said is that they would like to improve relations with the US. Well, thank you. You cannot achieve full denuclearization or improve relations with us if they continue to pursue nuclear programs such as the enrichment capability. Victor Chow, do you think there's a possibility that they got outside help to construct a program of this size and sophistication? Again, I'm not a technical expert, but I would imagine given the observations of the facility itself. It's hard for me to imagine that they could have done this without any outside help, whether that was from Pakistan or somebody else. It's really difficult to imagine. I mean, you compare, again, reports of this facility versus the plutonium reactor, the facility that we have all been negotiating over in the previous administration and this administration for some 20 years now, we've been negotiating over this reactor. That's an old reactor, old technology. And you can imagine that. Yeah, the North Koreans have been working on this for quite some time. But this facility, at least the reports are, this is brand spanking, new, shiny, quite sophisticated. It's hard to imagine that they had somehow indigenously produced this without help from the outside. But what do you think? Well, Dr. Hecker is doing a public event tomorrow. And I would defer to him on some of his assessment of the facility. Because I mean, obviously, we're in the process of analyzing the information, assessing the information. I would defer to Dr. Hecker. Jill Daugherty, give me your thoughts after all the years you've spent out in that part of the world. Do you think North Korea, the great danger is that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability or that they might be a proliferator, that they're trying to acquire this technology to sell it to others? I think it's both. And you could almost add a fourth scenario to what David was saying, which is, as it was put to me by one expert today, this is a big PR event right now. We're talking about it. There's a lot of news. And it's a walking advertisement for North Korea for the fact that they may have this ability. And so that message is meant for consumers. And those consumers could be other countries. Now, I guess the ambassador again would know the exact countries that we're talking about. But it could be places in Syria. It could be Latin America. There are a number of people who would like to get their hands on that. So this may be just like Detroit rolling out the new model. Well, they do need money. I mean, the North really does need money. So anything that they can sell, they'll sell. But also, having nuclear weapons is a very serious threat. And they are so close to South Korea. And that's one of the dangers. Some people have said, well, why not just take out their facilities or take out everything? Obviously, that doesn't seem to be a realistic possibility. I'm sure we'll come back to this and we'll have questions, obviously, as we always do from the audience. But let's just talk about a couple of other things that we were going to talk about until all of this news broke. And that is the free trade agreement. And I guess the worst way to put it is the failure to get the free trade agreement. What does the, what are the implications of that, Mr. Ambassador? I mean, if we wind up not getting that trade agreement. And maybe this is a little outside your area. But talk about it. Would you rather just talk about nuclear stuff or? I can give you a brief response. I mean, from our perspective, this is an agreement that would be greatly beneficial to both countries. I mean, we were disappointed that the negotiators were not. They would take a good agreement by the time of the G20. But we haven't given up. And I think we hope to expect to continue negotiations. Becker, what do you think happened on that? Well, I mean, this was an agreement that has been around for quite some time. Negotiated in the previous administration, President Obama at the G20 summit in Toronto last summer said he wanted this agreement done by the time he got to Seoul for the G20 last month, or I should say this month. And I think in the end, they just pushed up to the very final minutes and were just not able to get a deal in spite of the fact that both presidents had put their names on this and said they wanted to get it done. Now, does that mean that the agreement is that difficult? I think certain aspects of it are, in particular, the question of the auto clauses of the agreement, as well as the beef clauses of the agreement. But although I think many of us who are watching Obama's visit to the region and the G20, well, many of us were disappointed that they were not able to use this visit as an action forcing event to get closure on the FDA. I think all of us remain hopeful that the negotiators will still push and that there will still be an opportunity because, as Ambassador Kim said, this agreement benefits both countries tremendously. And it's good for the overall relationship and for the US position in Asia more broadly. I just can't remember. And maybe there are some. But I can't remember a time when a US president went and sat out at the table like that and was just totally blindsided, as apparently this president was. I mean, you have to wonder where the people were, where his support staff was. It seems to me that you should never put the president in that position. Do you remember anything like that? Well, I don't. And this is a constant theme now about the Obama administration, making these overtures and then getting slapped down or not having things work out the way they want. And you can interpret it as a constant theme or not. But that was pretty noticeable. What do you remember anything like that? I don't. I've done more summits and trade agreements than I'd probably like to admit. And usually, most administrations going into a summit make sure that just about everything is signed up. When you're on the plane on the way in, they hold some briefing saying, oh, we don't know whether it's going to get there because they have something extraordinarily minor to solve. Well, Henry Tessinger always. I mean, my god, we'll have to move half the world to get this done. And he already had the agreement in his pocket to find out. So why that didn't happen here, I don't know. And I wouldn't be shocked if the same question's being asked from the White House staff to the Trade Representative's office and others. And they may well, in the end, get this. But like start, this is one of those agreements where the upside is there, but it's modest. And the downside of not getting it seems greater because of the damage it could do to a relationship. And the main import of a free trade agreement with South Korea, just as it would be with Columbia or the other ones we have out there, is that it shows that you cement a broader alliance and relationship. And so it creates a strain at a moment when, as we've seen from the events of this past weekend, you want to keep everybody pretty well knitted up. Now, I think on North Korea issues, South Korea and the US will be very knitted up. The big issue here is how the Chinese respond. Was it been a very rough year with the Chinese? Well, let me go back to you, Ambassador. And speaking of the Chinese, let me just go, it has been a rough year with the Chinese. I don't think there's any question about that. Do we have any indication yet how they feel about this most recent thing on the nuclear business? No, we don't. In fact, Ambassador Vosworth will be arriving in Beijing tomorrow and he'll have intensive consultations with his counterparts in Beijing. We'll have a bunch better sense in the day or so, Beijing's views on this. What I can say is that, I mean, clearly, Beijing has a special relationship with North Korea. They also have the chairmanship of the Six-Party process. I think they do have a special responsibility to deal with challenges posed by North Korea. What is the status of the Six-Party talks right now? Well, we haven't had a meeting for a while. I think the last round of the Six-Party talks was in December of 2008. Now, I think all of the parties, including North Koreans, have reaffirmed their commitment to the process. But I think at this juncture, I should just say that we're gonna be consulting with our partners the way forward. What about the North Korean succession? And how's that, what's happening there? Bring it, give it a little status report on it. Well, it seems pretty apparent about that the youngest son, Kim Jong-un, is likely to be the next successor. He was promoted to four-star general, though he's never served a day in the military a couple of months ago, and also put in a key position in the party as well. And everybody knows the North Korean leader is sick. Kim Jong-il is sick. And that sooner or later, this transition will eventually become the third dynastic succession in North Korea. People are concerned that this fellow, Kim Jong-un is young, he's only maybe 25, 26 years old. I was in Singapore the last week and the Chinese confirmed he was born in 1985, so that makes him 25 years old. And do you want a 25-year-old running a country that has nuclear weapons and now is moving in the direction of uranium enrichment? I think we have to remember that for the North Koreans, this is perfectly normal, because they expect their leaders to rule for 50 years and 60 years. And so therefore they've got to appoint him young. Kim Il-sung, the first leader of North Korea was appointed when he was 33 years old. So, I mean, another possible explanation for why the North is revealing these new facilities is it's all part of this broader narrative of establishing a new and strong state under this young leader. And a big and very important part of this is about the only thing that Kim Jong-il has contributed to North Korea since he's been in power since 1994, which is turning them into a new nuclear weapons state. So I think, you know, Jill's point is that, you know, all of these incremental steps are designed to sort of acclimate us to the fact that their weapons are perhaps irreversible, their capabilities are irreversible, and that we all have to deal with the newest nuclear weapons state. How is the North Korean economy right now, David? Let me just add one quick thing while I'm still on the same subject. I asked Dr. Hecker when I spoke with him last whether or not in touring the facility, they mentioned Kim Jong-un, because I was thinking, you know, it would be very like the North Korean regime to explain that he personally installed the centrifuges and put them all up together, and that this was sort of his personal project. But he said- Wait, no, he's a military expert. That's- He's a nuclear expert as well. But it was interesting. He said, no, they were very professional. They did not mention his name. He said, when they were in Pyongyang, others referred to him. His title now is The Young General. The Young General, right. So I wouldn't be surprised at all if, in the near future, we hear of this as a Kim Jong-un-inspired way to cement North Korea's power to confront the United States. But so far, they haven't done that, which I think is interesting. To your question on the economy, last year, they went through this currency revaluation that was a complete disaster. And correct me if I'm wrong on the facts here, but I think I just write that the finance official who was most responsible for it was taken out and shot in the course of this. It was probably a precedent that finance ministries around the world these days would not want to have to sort of take on. But it gives you a sense of how much trouble this got them into. And it is fascinating that at a time that they're probably in more financially difficult straits than ever, that they have invested so heavily in what was clearly not an inexpensive project at Young General. How is South Korea? I mean, I'll bring this up just simply because we're talking about their proliferation. Jill, how is South Korea doing these things? Economically or, you know, I wouldn't say that I'm a great economic expert on South Korea, but I would say, you know, there's always, it strikes me, as you mentioned South Korea, we've mentioned China, that in the equation about North Korea, there is always the question, what would happen if the worst case scenario comes? And in the way China deals with North Korea, the way South Korea deals with North Korea, especially China right now, the feeling is that they have become closer to the North because of this succession, the concern that the instability that might be caused by going through that period of succession could create real problems. And the real problem would be some type of collapse or internal chaos with people leaving and running over the borders of North Korea into adjoining countries, which, of course, means China. And so even in all of this, it feels to me that there is a real dilemma in how far you push them with a lack of transparency, a lack of understanding of what's going on. One expert said, in fact, about this program, it is the least understandable, least transparent nuclear program in the world. It's very, very difficult to find out what's going on. Well, there's one other that might compete for that in Iran. Well, Iran, yes. But even that, they said that even there, it's harder. There are inspectors who go into Iran, frequently with their none in North Korea. And no more in North Korea. Hey, Victor, do you think the danger level has just gone up because of what we just discovered, the fact that the North Koreans decided to reveal this at this time, is it a more dangerous world? I think it is. Yeah, I think it is. I mean, the facility that they showed they claim is for peaceful use. It's, they claim low-enriched uranium, not high-enriched uranium, which the latter would be used for nuclear weapons. But at the same time, one, I don't think we can always trust North Koreans in terms of what they say. We've learned that over the years. And two, I mean, just the fact that the facility appeared so finished and so complete and so sophisticated leads one to suspect that there must be other facilities in the country that we don't know about. And some of those may be low-enriched, but some of those may be highly enriched uranium facilities. So that's to me dangerous. And also, again, the fact that they've looked, as though they've come a long way in terms of this technology and might not be willing or wanting to sell it to others, makes this a very concerning issue. And that's why I think that the Chinese position on this becomes very important. Because I think what we would want is we want the Chinese to come out very clearly and early to say that this is a violation of the Six-Party Joint Statement that we were all involved in negotiating. And it's a violation of the standing UN Security Council resolutions. That's where we need the Chinese to start rather than trying to make excuses for them. More dangerous world. I think so. That's why in any resumed negotiation effort, this has to be addressed fully. And I'm talking about then declaring all of the information regarding the enrichment activities and us having an opportunity to verify that information. I think even though we have just started consultations with our partners, fairly confident that there will be strong consensus that when we resume negotiations or a Six-Party effort, whatever, that this will have to be dealt with very seriously, fully. Ambassador, what do we want the Chinese to do here? Well, I think in the Six-Party context, we want them to be a proactive chairman of the process. That instead of just mediating, we want them to be talking to the North Koreans using their considerable influence to moderate North Korean behavior. And that obviously starts with the equalization. David, what's your evaluation of what's just happened here? Well, the effort since the first Bush administration in the early 90s, when Yonggyeong first sort of flowered as a major nuclear site, although it had been under construction for many years before that, has been now four administrations in a row saying that we could not tolerate a nuclear North Korea. And four administrations in a row engaging in some kind of discussions and periodic crises to try to enforce first a containment and then a dismantlement of all their nuclear facilities. When you talk to people in both the Bush administration, some people, not all, who were in the Bush administration dealing with this issue and some, but not all, who were in the Obama administration dealing with this issue, they will tell you that they honestly don't believe that they can imagine the situation right now under which North Korea could be bribed, enticed, encouraged or threatened into giving up its nuclear facilities or at least giving up all of them. Because this is, as Jill pointed out, the only claim that they have, the only negotiating card that they have. Without this, they're another broke country and one that we would probably ignore. And so what I have not seen so far in this process that I think the administration has referred to is strategic patience and sort of waiting out for things to settle out and waiting for the North Koreans to discover they would not be paid off for the same thing yet again. I haven't yet seen a strategy that I think can make a convincing case that they would actually denuclearize. All right, well, let's have some questions who has, there's one right there. You wanna come up to the mic? Jeff McCausum, Dickinson College. I wanna pick up right where you left off. Specifically, what should the United States do? I mean, we have a given case where you say it's a much more dangerous world. We have a very uncertain situation with the succession crisis, which may make it very difficult to negotiate. So besides trying to get the Chinese to do something, what specifically can the United States do beyond what we've already done in terms of UN Security Council resolutions and showing how terribly upset we are? We'd like to answer. Oh, Laura, well, I'll take a shot at that. I mean, I think, I mean, and some of you, I mean, on the stage in this room have worked on negotiations with North Korea, and this is just, it's what one person was described to me as the land of lousy options. I mean, you're never choosing between good and bad options. You're choosing between bad, worse, and the worst. Those are your choices. And this is a quintessential example of that, which clearly, I think it's more dangerous now than it was a few days ago. And we have a negotiation process right now that's broken. And we, quite frankly, I don't think having new ideas about how to approach this problem and there's no good military option. So unfortunately, what that means is that you go back, you hold your nose, and you try to get back into a negotiation. I mean, I hate to say that because it's so dissatisfying. But you try to get back into a negotiation with them with the Chinese on your side, really trying to push the North to put this facility and these new capabilities on the table for negotiation. I should just say for this audience, and many of you know this, I mean, we were involved in the last administration in a long laborious negotiation process that many people thought would be unsuccessful. But at the end of that, we had Ambassador Kim, I mean, walking out of North Korea with thousands of pages of documents of operating records from the nuclear facility in Yeonggyeong. So these negotiations are painful, they're about the most painful thing that you can imagine. And you never see a clear end, but you just keep working at getting it pieces and pieces of their program and try to get international inspectors back in there so that they can freeze the programs and try to find out more about them. You were right. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, this is a multilateral process. So we're not gonna dictate the whole process. We do have to talk to our partners on the way forward. The other general point is that I think strong consensus based on lessons we learned from the past that when the negotiations resume, we have to take a much more comprehensive approach, things that go deeper, broader and wider than the approach we've been taking. Now, I have no illusion that it's gonna be easy, but I think we're working with the Chinese, we have to take a much deeper approach. Something that includes this latest revelation. Let me just ask you this. I mean, just what is it like inside these talks? I mean, what is the atmosphere like? Do people, are they relaxed? Are they tense? Is it extremely normal? Does anybody ever come off the talking point? I mean, just give us a sense of what it's like. See, I think Victor can speak both freely since he's out of the government. I just like to know that. Well, I think one thing is that the North Korean, you know, we, the United States have people, we had administrations that rotate through, we have negotiators that rotate through. The North Koreans have basically the same people at the table for the past 20, 25 years. So they see a new American team come in there and they're like, okay, we gotta work on this team. Thankfully, Sung, Sung, you know, as a professional foreign service diplomat has, you know, he bridged both the previous administration and the current administration. So they're not as capable of pulling the wool over our eyes if we ever were to get back to negotiations. I mean, but on the, I mean, it's a very professional and negotiation, they, their stories of them being hotheaded and banging the table, but they really didn't do that at least since the Six Party Talk started in 2003. And, you know, like any negotiating team, they have their talking points. And I would say that probably they have much less flexibility. Whereas I think the American team has direct access to our top leaders here in Washington and they can get instructions, get new instructions. I think for the North Koreans, it's very difficult. They're told to do one thing and it's not like they can go back and question those instructions. There was a question over here, yes. TJ Han from Seoul National University. My question goes to Professor Cha. It seems like the United States subcontracted its negotiation to China or its leadership in terms of the Six Party Talk and the denuclearization of North Korea. And China, it seems, has much more influence in North Korea nowadays and to the South Korea as the China is in the shows. So is there any way that United States get back into its leadership from the past in this region in terms of the denuclearization or the regional stability? Well, I think it's a good question. I would probably differ a little bit with the characterization. It's true that China is the chair of the Six Party Talks and that there's been a lot of emphasis, I would say over the last seven years to focus on China playing a role, a productive and constructive role in these talks. But I wouldn't say that the United States has acceded leadership with China. I think in the end it was a very pragmatic choice to include China in a much more central role because they are the only country in the world today that is providing any assistance to North Korea. And whether you wanna provide incentives to the North or you wanna use a little bit of sort of coercive statecraft, the Chinese have all the tools, they have all the leverage. So in that sense working closely with the Chinese to push the North Koreans to make the right decision, I think is a pragmatic choice. The other thing I would say is, I mean we see right now when these revelations have come forward, the first thing that we are doing, the United States is doing is sending people like Sun Kim and Steve Boswell to the region basically to try to lead what will be a multilateral response to these initiatives. So I think in that sense, the United States still is playing a central role. But there's no denying that we need to work closely with China since they have a lot of levers on North Korea, more than any other country in the world today. Thank you. We're going to see my colleagues at the White House. The question is that originally like David said, the originally AQ Khan was behind providing the nuclear technology to North Korea and Iran. Now AQ Khan is a free man. He was free by the Pakistani courts with no conditions. And do you think now that again he's consulting with the North and with the Iran because after he got freedom from the courts, now we see live entertainment at the North Korean nuclear facility as well as at the Iranians. And finally, you think without the Chinese blessings or their support, North can move anywhere and regional nations are now worried and like Japan, South Korea and other nations, not only from North, but also from China. Where do we go from here now? David, do you want to take a shot? Well, it's very hard to know what, if anything AQ Khan is doing, I would suspect probably not much because I can't imagine that the incentives for both the Pakistanis to watch over what he's saying, who he's calling and so forth. And certainly the incentives for the United States and other powers to monitor that are pretty high now. But what's notable about the AQ Khan network is that while Mr. Khan himself was under house arrest for some time, there've only been one or two fairly minor convictions of anybody associated with what was a vast network that included making centrifuge parts in Malaysia, shipping them to Dubai, shipping them out from Dubai to many places, nodes of this in South Africa and many other countries, Thailand. And so almost nobody has gone to jail for this. And my suspicion is that the network in various forms is probably still there, maybe reconfigured, maybe not. And I wouldn't be surprised if we learned a little bit about that as people begin to trace back the question of how the North Koreans got such a shiny new facility. I was talking to one expert in fact today who was saying, you know, a lot of granted AQ Khan was the person who started it. And yet in the ensuing years, they are getting dual use technology from a lot of different places, including this expert was mentioning China where there are some North Korean businessmen who buy goods produced in Western Europe, ostensibly sold to China, but then actually bought by North Koreans for North Korea. Perhaps the ambassador would be able to enlighten us whether that's correct. But in other words, there's a lot of this dual use technology that is moving around in surprising ways and ending up in North Korea. And quite a bit of it is coming through China, these experts say. Would you want to comment on that? Well, I mean, I can't get into Intel matters, but I can't tell you that. I mean, we obviously monitor shipments very closely to make sure that items in contravention of US good conservation are not passing in North Korea. All right, back here. Sam Kim from Voice of America, my question goes to Ambassador Kim. Recently, North Korea government mentioned 2,000 communique between US and North Korea to the US experts who visited Pyongyang recently and they demanded that US should reaffirm this 2,000 communique. So I just want to ask US government, current government's position on this 2,000 communique. And thank you. Yeah, I find it interesting that a country that violates many, most of their agreements are demanding that we reaffirm our commitment to all the agreements. Like whether it's the joint statement or the 2,000 document, we are willing to live up to our obligations and commitments with those documents. I've seen the reports that you mentioned, but frankly, I puzzled us to why they're demanding that we reaffirm this 2,000 declaration. Because that included peace process between two countries and also more cooperation in economy and other aspects between US and North Korea. But those are also dealt with in the joint statement of the 6.5 process. And we have repeatedly assured them that when we make progress on denuclearization, other aspects of the joint statement, including negotiating a peace treaty, will be addressed. They know that. So US government's position now is US can reaffirm that US 2,000 communique after North Korea shows some serious step on denuclearization? Well, I mean, it's... Finally, because we're willing to live up to our obligations, it's not difficult to reaffirm our commitments. I have to question the sincerity in seeking reaffirmation of that particular agreement because they have, with the latest provocative action, again, violated their pledges and commitments. Another question? Nobody's disleaning. I could, while we're, could I just say on top of what Ambassador Kim said, I mean, it is kind of ironic that, you know, they have taken and they've revealed something that shows they are in violation of at least the most, two most recent agreements, one of them a multilateral negotiated document that they signed on to. And the other being a UN Security Council resolution. But then they are requesting that this administration reaffirms something that happened 10 years ago. But as Ambassador Kim said, I mean, over this 20 plus years of negotiation, the formula that has been presented to the North Queen is basically the same formula, which is, you denuclearize, and, you know, countries will give you energy assistance and food and recognition and security and peace and all these things. So again, I would agree that they know what's on the table and they've known it for the past 20 plus years. So where does all this go? I just wanted to ask this question and maybe try to provide a little bit of an answer, but I think the question is, what do they really want? I mean, what you describe, food, well, people starve in North Korea, except for the leadership. Do they want peace? Why peace? I mean, in a way, they get more attention when there's no peace. And a lot of the incentives that we think are rational incentives, I think, are not really effective. And you're dealing with a very small country with a very small personal leadership. So the factors that might come into play with other countries that have different power centers, to my mind, don't come into play as much in North Korea. So you have to get into the mind of the people who are running the country. And the odd thing, I've only been to North Korea once, but I think what I felt that was very, very odd was you could definitely see that the leadership and the people who control things live pretty well. I mean, in Pyongyang, you can get pretty much whatever you want, if you have the money and the connections. But the people have very little. And so I would question whether the US government or anybody else, when they sit down at the table, do they think about non-Western, linear, rational approaches to what they want? Well, I mean, all the things you said, Jill, there's nothing there that I disagree with. I mean, and I think the thing that they really want was the thing that David talked about about 40 minutes ago in his first intervention, which is, in the end, it's becoming clearer and clearer that while they are willing to negotiate in different periods of time portions of their programs, they're willing to rent pieces of their program for a freeze for a few years. In the end, they're trying to get us all to accept that they're gonna be a nuclear weapons state. They see that probably as their ultimate security blanket. And they also see it as a way to gain acceptance in the world. I mean, we have to remember, you know, the leader, the first leader of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, was a gorilla fighting in the mountains of China while the Japanese were colonizing Korea. And he saw the Americans drop two atomic bombs and basically end the Japanese occupation in Korea. I mean, they're historical lessons in terms of China becoming a nuclear weapons state that I think the North Koreans have learned. Unfortunately, they have learned these in the wrong way. So I think it's incumbent upon all the parties at the Six-Part Talks, including the United States, to let them know through negotiations and otherwise that this is not the path for them. And that even the leadership, not just the people, but in particular, the leadership will suffer international isolation. And I think that's what the Security Council resolutions have been trying to tell the North Korea. I think that's right. And we will continue to enforce sanctions, work with key countries in the region to make sure that their enforcement is strong. You know, when the Obama administration came in, from the very beginning, both the President and Secretary Clinton made very clear publicly, as well as privately diplomatic communication with the North Koreans, that if they're willing to work with us on denuclearization, that there really was a different path for North Korea, North Korean people, I think the North Korean regime. And I think that stands. The question is whether they're willing to negotiate sincerely with us in the Six-Party context to achieve the goals that they have already committed to. David, I mean, it seems to me that what the North Korean leadership wants is to stay as the North Korean leadership. I mean, it doesn't seem to be like- Survival seems to be the key national issue here. And you'd have to sort of give these folks the Survivors of the Decade or Decades Award. When I was in Tokyo, Times Correspondent and first writing about North Korea was right during the fall of the Berlin Wall and everybody in Japan and the rest of Asia were giving the North Koreans two, three years at the outside to continue. And then Kim Il-sung, the country's founder, passed away and Kim Jong-il took over and everybody said what we're all saying now, even though Kim Jong-il had had longer to sort of prepare for leadership, they all said, well, only a couple of years before there's internal coup, the military goes after them, whatever. Well, here we are 16 years later and we're talking about the succession to the next level here. So I think there are a few lessons that I draw personally from this. First of all, I think that Victor is absolutely right that every administration has gone through a small variant of fundamentally the same strategy. The second thing is that after 20 years, we're all coming to the conclusion that this strategy might not be working out quite as we planned. And the result is that everybody's looking for a new idea and the unspoken part of this is that the real strategy is sort of sitting back and waiting for a collapse that might or might not happen. Every president since Harry Truman has been waiting for a collapse of North Korea on their watch and they've all been disappointed so far. And one day it'll happen, but I'm not sure it will happen necessarily because of any of the things that we're discussing here about the six-party process. I don't think that one day they're going to wake up and say, you know, these guys were right, we really should denuclearize for all of the rest. I just don't think there's enough trust in the system right now for that to happen. Any more questions out there? All right, right here. I'm Kim with the Korea Economic Daily. My question goes to Ambassador Sun Kim. I have two questions. The first one is you have mentioned that China should be playing a key role, not as a mediator, but you know, facilitate to put more pressure on North Korea to create a nuclear program. And then in that context, what would be the US government's leverage on China to put more pressure on North Korea? And secondly, my question is, and do you think the US government's sanctions have been effective on North Korea? The US government has announced that the Labor Party 39 room should be imposed by stronger sanctions. Do you think that that would be effective and you have been very effective? You're the man. Unfortunately. I think our leverage on China is that it's clearly against China's interest that North Koreans continue to take provocative actions and continue to develop their nuclear capabilities. It's destabilizing to a region and the Chinese know that. And I think that's our business leverage is that we do actually share a common goal, a common goal with Beijing, the need to denuclearize and avoid provocative behavior by the North Koreans. Effective of sanctions has been an ongoing debate for a very long time. My personal view is that the sanctions have served a useful purpose, both unilateral US sanctions and of course, Security Council resolutions 1874 and 1718. But the extent of that accessibility depends on cooperation from key countries in the region. And that's where we have a sanctions coordinator, Bob Einhorn, who devotes a great deal of time and effort to coordinating with key countries in the region to make sure that enforcement of those sanctions are done right. Do you want to follow up? You're okay. Yeah. Go ahead. No, if you have a follow-up, go ahead, because I think it's sort of... But while at the, you know, in the course of sanctions, North Korea had, I think I had succeeded in establishing, you know, radio facility now. That means your sanctions are not so effective. Well, it's, I'm not going to get into details of this particular facility. And as I said, Dr. Hecker is going to do a full presentation tomorrow. But I would point to what Victor suggested earlier, which is that maybe the actual construction started in April or nine. But I suspect the activities, related activities, have been going on for some time. So I think it's a little inaccurate to sort of judge the effectiveness of our sanctions from last year what has happened on the ground. All right. Well, thank you all very much for coming to the Shipper School of Journalism CSIS Symposium.