 Welcome back to ThinkTek. This is ThinkTek Asia on ThinkTek. I'm your host, Jay Fiedel. It's the three o'clock block. Our show today is called North Korea Threat or Paper Tiger. And we're going to talk about North Korea as a legitimate threat or not. And we're going to address the question of whether actually DPRK—what is that? Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Is a threat. If you want to ask a question about participant discussion, you can. You can tweet us at ThinkTekHI or call us at 415-871-2474. So if you haven't noticed, our guest for the show, Smile, is Patrick W. Border, citizen diplomat who knows a lot about it. So the Secretaries of State and Defense both say the Democratic Party of Korea, DPRK, is a threat. So why is that? Are we entering dangerous territory where we have never been before? What is the North Korean game plan that keeps the Kims in power for so long? Are there sanctions with Trump could impose on China, which have not been undertaken before? Can DPRK really drop a nuke on U.S. Citizens? Pat Porter is going to address those questions and more on ThinkTek Asia today. So welcome to the show. Patrick W. Border, nice to have you here with us again. Jay. Talking about our favorite subject. Oh, it's nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah. Well, you have remained interested in North Korea. You've made six trips there. You're going to make another one. And I hope you don't get arrested and detained the way that guy did yesterday in North Korea. Every American is a possible detainee, isn't he? I think that's a possibility. And so I'm looking cautiously at when to return again. But I think they know me by now and they know that I follow the rules. I hope so, Patrick. There is enough interesting to see without breaking any of the rules. I'm not going to go in and tear up my passport. I'm not going to go in and bring a bunch of Bibles with me. I'm not going to try to proselytize to people. I'm just going to show up and have a good time there. The coming trip, I hope to see their iconic location, Mt. Paektu, which is a frozen crater lake that's way up by the Chinese border. And it is so significant in Korean lore that even the South Koreans have it mentioned in their national anthem. Amazing stuff. Interesting. Shades of years gone by when the Koreans were together. That's something you and I have talked about, but it just seems more remote these days. But let me go on our agenda here. So are we in a place more dangerous now? Should I be waking up in the morning and looking west for a blinding flash? Is North Korea got its gun sights on us, really? Wake up at your normal hour tomorrow morning and do not worry. A chicken little has been around for a long time. This guy is not falling. The thing that I would tell you that should be reassuring is this. The North Koreans are great at brinksmanship. And if you look back over history, we practiced some brinksmanship, too. Back in the day when Dwight Eisenhower was inaugurated as president in 1953, he was the seasoned World War II general, the reassuring presence on the scene. Behind him was his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, who had been instructed to let fly the notion that if things didn't go our way, we weren't afraid to use nuclear weapons as a form of coercion. And that was particularly applied to the Chinese. This was a period of time when people were scared to death, the China went communist, and the blame was flying left, right and center. A lot of the China hands got fired. Not because they were wrong. In fact, they were fired precisely because their predictions that Jiang Kai-shek would not survive as the leader of China. Their predictions were correct, so they all got fired. Well, you know, it's interesting that if you look for danger, increased danger, I'm not sure that you find that Kim Jong-un is more dangerous, say, than he was six months or a year ago. He's equally dangerous, maybe a little provoked. But then you have to look at our side of the equation. You have to look at Donald Trump. Donald Trump is more dangerous, I think. And so if you're looking for a formula to evaluate danger, Donald Trump is the more dangerous of the two in terms of escalating the discussion, don't you think? It's a fascinating hypothesis, but I would say no. We send flotillas through the Persian Gulf all the time much closer to land and much closer to conflict with a much more powerful Iran than we have with North Korea. If I had to interpret what Trump is doing right now and his heavy reliance upon his military advisors, I think by sending an aircraft carrier and that whole team of ships that go along with an aircraft carrier, what they call a task force, he wants to illustrate something, and that is precisely that he can hover in the waters off of North Korea without seriously risking attack. Everything about the North Korean nuclear program has demonstrated that they are practicing brinksmanship. If they fire another rocket, the world does react as though the sky was falling, even though it's clearly not. The last two or three rockets that the North Koreans fired all blew up on the pad. So perhaps the strongest hypothesis is that the place you don't want to be after a missile firing by the North Koreans is on the pad, okay? Well, you know, a number of people have suggested that these failures on the pad and the failures in the air and all the almost funny, you know, the slapstick things that happen where these rockets fall out of the air and they don't work and they blow up on the pad and all this. Or they end up getting misdirected to the Philippines? Yeah, whatever. I mean, it's funny, but you keep hearing that the U.S. military is hacking into their system and creating this kind of mischief. Well, you hear about hacking in both directions and that is a very serious topic that is a little bit separate right now. I think all of the countries of the world are worried about hacking and the ability of a third world power to hack into U.S. financial resources and tear the country apart. We, because we're the most technologically advanced country, are the most susceptible to hacking. So I don't think that's a dynamic that's going on here. What's happening is whether wise or not, and I'm not suggesting that I'm a fan of Trump because I'm not. But I would say to you that by bringing up the issue with the Koreans, he wants to illustrate a point that I think his military advisors know. And that is there's two things that are necessary to launch a nuclear attack against another country that's any distance away like the United States. The first thing you need is a rocket which can propel its own weight up to the edge of the atmosphere so that it can follow the curve of the atmosphere and then descend in a ballistic, it's not an orbit, but it's a ballistic path which would put it into Hawaii or Seattle or San Francisco, Chicago, New York or Washington. These are all cities that Kim Jong-un has threatened at one time or another. Can they do it? The record clearly shows they cannot and that the real risk is not the boys toys that they have, but it's our reaction to them. Well, yeah. So there's a couple of thoughts that come to mind. I mean, so, you know, Rex Tillerson has made some very provocative comments about North Korea. And he's really pushed the rhetoric perhaps more than you would expect. And there must be a point, there must be a point, I like your advice on this, there must be a point where Kim Jong-un will crack. He'll say, I'm not going to tolerate this anymore. I'm going to push the button. What is that point? What is that scenario? I think it won't happen and I'll tell you why. In order to believe that Kim Jong-un is truly, as some people would say, a nut, you have to believe in effect that three generations of North Korean leaders were all crazy, either that or they had a method to their madness. And the more likely explanation is that they're playing brinksmanship and they have succeeded over the years at doing that and gaining concessions from the United States and South Korea. Beginning about 2000, you had two presidents in a row who followed the sunshine policy in Korea. And that was Engage. Kim Dae-jung was the first of them, Noh Mu-hyun who replaced him was the second. And each of those presidents wanted badly to meet with the North Korean leaders. And they paid dearly for it. And they wanted to have a show. And what they got is exactly that, a show and nothing more. For hundreds of millions of dollars in South Korean won, they got the privilege of driving from the DMZ all the way that hour and a half drive on the bumpy roads all the way up to the great city of Pyongyang, where they had a big show and met with either Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-il for both of them. And they had a big show. And then after that, what happened? Absolutely nothing. There was a waste of time. But it was something that the South Koreans had to try. They had faced toe to toe with the North Koreans. And belligerence had been the order of the day. And so they gave peace of chance. And I give them credit for that. But it got them nowhere. And so it's certainly not inappropriate to consider a different approach. What's the plan, though? He's just been provocative, seems to me, for the sake of being provocative. And all three generations of them have been provocative for the sake of being provocative. What does he get out of this? In a way, it's like the mouse that roared with Peter Sellers way back when. What does he want? Attention? Does he want foreign aid? What does he want? He wants concessions. And they have all been operating off of the same script. Whenever the incumbent, dear leader, or great leader, or young general, whatever you want to call them in any given era, takes over, they're the designated brinksmen. And they take their opponents to the very edge of what appears to be war. And they gain concessions from it. And then for a while, there's an easy period where they talk of friendship and all. And then it reverts back to they'll make Seoul a lake of fire, those sorts of things. Can they do it? Should we treat them as a joke? No. But should we treat them as though the sky is falling and that we will, in fact, go to a nuclear war? Not by a long shot. We should not be doing that. There are available financial pressure points which couldn't be put on North Korea and also China to stop. Trump tried that, didn't he? He tried that. No, he hasn't been in office long enough. If you think he's going to fail, maybe he will, but not in three months. Basically, when Trump met with Xi Jinping there at Mar-a-Lago about a month ago, the message to President Xi was this. He said, in an earlier time, we were able to shut off money to North Korea because back in the 90s, they were counterfeiting U.S. $100 bills and floating them in the system. And it was a major source of profit to North Korea until the Treasury Department for the United States stepped in and put all of the banks in Macau off limits. They said, you will not deal in the American financial system at all. And so they shut that off. That was a very effective form of sanction, and it didn't risk war at all. Let me tell you what I believe Trump told Xi Jinping. He said, look, the U.N. has banned coal shipments from North Korea saying that the Koreans cannot make money by selling coal to the Chinese, which is a major source of revenue for the North Koreans. So what happens to make that sale occur anyway? Now the Chinese banks get involved with it. And for the past four previous administrations, the Bushes, Clinton and Obama, all four of them, have basically said, look, we've got enough problems with Iraq and the Middle East and the Israelis and Palestinians and all the rest of it. Let's keep this on the back burner. And they have succeeded in doing just that. All of them have, to a point they considered it to be a containable problem, and they dealt with it as such, and they succeeded to that extent. What you can expect from Trump, which is different, is that Trump will go after the financial resources of North Korea. And if necessary, he will boycott and the Treasury Department will boycott the Chinese banks. Not all of China, and is it enough to start a trade war? I think not. But now Trump is practicing a little brinksmanship of his own. He's telling Xi that if your banks facilitate these agreements where the North Koreans can sell coal to the Chinese, then we will take steps against the banks that do that so that they are banned from any deals with the United States banking system. We have enough clout in our banking system so that we can cripple any bank which we put off limits to American business. And I think that's what's happening now. And it happens in a very congenial situation. They're all in South Florida and they've got arms around one another and all. But Trump is, he's upping the ante, but not in a military sense. He's not going to send a carrier task force into an area where the Koreans can blow it out of the water. That is not the method of his madness, but you're seeing reverse brinksmanship on our part now through him. The art of the negotiation, like it, don't like it, I really don't care, but that's what's being practiced right now. And we'll see with the passage of the months whether it works or not. I will see more about this conversation after this break. That's Patrick W. Border, an informed citizen and in fact a citizen diplomat all around North Korea. We're discussing exactly what's happening there, whether they are a paper tiger or a serious one. We'll be right back. Raising public awareness on tech, energy, diversification and globalism. Great content for Hawaii from ThinkTech. Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. Here we are in ThinkTech Asia with Patrick W. Border, who is a citizen diplomat who believes, I think, I get this right, that North Korea is not as much of a threat as we think. North Korea should be taken seriously. It is not the nuclear threat that the talking heads on both conservative and liberal sides project. The sky is not falling and it won't be anytime soon. I think there's a scenario where they would drop a bomb somewhere. For example, if the United States did put a carrier group offshore or if the United States attacked some kind of shipping from North Korea or some North Korean outpost and Kim Jong-un decided this would justify his reaction, wouldn't he do that? Wouldn't he push the button? Wouldn't he sail a bunch of rockets into Seoul nuclear or otherwise to show how big a guy he is? That's several questions. The risk to Seoul has to be taken separately because his heavy cannon fire and even some incursion into South Korea can cause damage and loss of life and injury in Seoul. But remember back to the Gulf War, what stays his hand? Why would he not do that? If you remember back to the time when we were stationed in Saudi Arabia and we had our cruise missiles and we had 30 days of shock and awe and what was that? 30 days of shock and awe meant that without putting a single soldier into Iraq we would cripple their system, we would make them blind militarily, we would knock out all of the tanks in the desert and then after they were seriously weakened then at a time of our choosing we would invade with people and that's exactly what we did. We have the cruise missiles that can travel 50 feet off the ground and make I hope to God this does not happen so please don't take it as advocacy but if they want to damage Seoul we can make powdered sand out of Pyongyang because you can fire those missiles, they're deadly accurate and if Kim Jong-un wants to stay 100 feet underground and try to rule this country three months after he's been deposed and that regime no longer exists, well he can do whatever he wants, Saddam Hussein tried that and when they finally caught up with him it didn't work very well but Jay we have the capacity despite the fact that we're 100 miles away from Pyongyang and they're 25 miles away from Seoul we have the capacity the South Koreans and the United States to do far more damage with non-nuclear assault weapons like the ones we used on Saddam Hussein over 20 years ago so that's why their hand has stayed from invading Seoul but this is all uncomfortable I mean just as he intends it to be uncomfortable it is uncomfortable because you know that when you have provocation and when you have a buildup and when you have all these threats and machinations it increases the chances that somebody will make a mistake, a mistake in judgment, a mistake in equipment, a mistake in delegation of authority would have you and that's how wars so often start that's how World War I started it was actually silly at the beginning and all of a sudden everybody in Europe was involved in a conflagration the same here I mean if somebody makes a mistake on this some somebody even without authority makes a mistake all of a sudden the other guys are going to respond and then you have an escalation and these days with these weapons an escalation would take minutes and all of a sudden you have too clear you're well all of a sudden you have conflict you asked would Kim Jong-un push the button yeah I don't think he has a button to push okay you heard it here I think yeah you heard it here first but I believe it I believe it strongly he needs two things in order to deliver a bomb to a target the first is he needs a bomb and he hasn't demonstrated you know he blows off huge huge amounts of TNT underground and most of the experts said when he recently blew up TNT underground that it was meant to simulate a hydrogen bomb which is even more powerful than an atomic bomb but it was still fake okay so the first okay I heard it here on think tank it's fake the first we thought he was blowing up nuclear weapons underground it was not yeah well we haven't seen any fallout from the nuclear weapons and there's always some yeah and that's another answer to why you'd never see a nuclear attack on soul because it's mutually assured destruction which means that the fallout from the bomb launched in North Korea would drift back into North Korea destroy the whole peninsula and it would strike the whole peninsula and it would kill millions of innocent North Koreans all of whom are related some way well okay I mean it's we can all laugh about it but let me let me say to you all of whom for my many visits there are genuine human beings that I've come to like it's it's a it's a dictatorship which means that the average citizen has no voice in what's going on and I believe very fervently that North Koreans are waiting to be rescued from what they have now learned through all this tourism yeah and all from what they have learned is a world in which they are not participating yeah they now we got to cover that in the remaining time pat yeah you know is what he is doing sustainable vis-a-vis his own citizens his own country is somebody going to take a run at him or his military going to stick around remain loyal other people you know going to be docile while he beats him up and spends all the money on nuclear weapons um how how is this going to play out forgetting about arguments with Rex Tillerson and Donald Trump forgetting about escalation just him and his people how long can that last because it's not going well well if you look back to other similar situations in Asia the thing that that is a problem in North Korea is that there really isn't a tipping point if you look at Marcos back in the Philippines for instance there were options and that fatal election where um he whether he beat Corazon Aquino or lost to her really doesn't make any difference because the world said Corazon is president and the tank operators would not fire on their own people so where is the tipping point for North Korea is there an alternative to Kim Jong-un I would say no I don't think there is and that's what makes it a more difficult problem and that's the reason why financial starvation is the answer to how to deal with North Korea so we have to tighten up on the Chinese banks that are funding for instance the shipments of coal that keep the North Korean regime in power I think those people are ready at an instance notice if things turn against them to go live the rest of their lives in Switzerland and they could do it Kim Jong-un Kim Jong-un already lived a part of his life in Switzerland and they they could live happy lives outside the country see part of the reason that the Chinese don't want to cooperate with us is because ever since Mao's time but continuing throughout they have always wanted a weak buffer state so that they don't have US soldiers and US sympathetic regime on their own very border and what's the border with North Korea to the north mostly it's China and so the Chinese have a they have a desire to keep the status quo for them that works and in a sense if you as long as you're talking about a weak Korea there's some comfort in that putting up with the nonsense and all as long as it's deemed by the Chinese not to be harmful to the world situation if the Chinese ever came to the point where they thought it wasn't worth it to prop up the North regime then stuff would start happening very quickly but just just clamping down on a few Chinese banks is a conservative approach and I think that's Trump's approach symbolic no it's more than symbolic it hurts them in the pocketbook it in fact they don't want it to be symbolic because they don't want it to be seen as a direct confrontation with the Chinese they don't want that at all but they want it to stop the coal shipments because that's a form of income for the North Koreans so they have to rely more on pat border visiting to make money take money well I guess I would like to ask you finally you know how do you think this is going to play out in the real world you have some unpredictable possibilities with the US with Trump and of course you have that that slides a fox unpredictability with Kim Jong-un and you have certain unpredictability with with China which operates in its own self-interest so how is it going to play out is are we going to be in a kind of an uncomfortable stability here or is this going to move in one direction or another I guess you've said it's not going to move dramatically into war and violence that's not going to happen but but where which ways are going to go with all these three players all looking for you know advance their own interests maintain stability but also maintain a threat against the others ironically it may boil down to financial issues there are people in the economy right now who are predicting that things aren't rosy if you turn on the financial shows in the morning they all say the economy is growing like gangbusters and they're cheerleaders for the existing system if if the system breaks down in the same way that it did in 2009 that could present the Chinese with real problems I have read predictions that some of the buildings of the tall buildings the office buildings in Beijing won't be occupied for 25 years now the government has been pulling in people from the provinces people from rural existence in order to serve as workers to build the economy but the Chinese have an artificial economy it's it's an artificial prosperity that's the government tells people build tall buildings and so they're deemed to be needed even though they aren't in America if we build a tall building it means that we need office space in China if they build a tall building it means that it's it's five-year planning and the five-year planning is always wrong yeah so well the last the last point Pat is this and we were really out of time here but the last point is you know we've talked and I've asked you before to predict about reunification about the you know the forces that favor it and the forces that that detract from it and I mean it's a hope we've had many discussions about this about the possibility right now today after this you know this last few months under Trump and so is it I guess it's much less likely it seems to me to be a receding possibility that the North Koreans and the South Koreans will ever get together you have a delight in asking me questions which you know I can't answer and you're right I can't answer it what's the tipping point how can it arrive there are external events which could make it happen and economic disaster could be one of them a change in the military position now I think that Trump is just enough of a cowboy that he might be interested in demonstrating to the world that he can float his uh to carry a task force close to North Korea and they can't do anything about it and that brings us to the end of our show Pat all right we've enjoyed bringing it to you I'm Jay Fidel our guest has been Pat Border we've been talking about North Korea threat or paper tiger and we found that maybe DPRK is not so much a start as we thought thanks to our production engineer Ray Sangalanga our flow manager Robert McLean and all the people who care and contribute to our think tech productions if you want to see the show again go to thinktecawaii.com or youtube.com think tecawaii where there'll be a link to more shows just like this one thanks for watching we'll see you next time and we'll see Pat Border again to follow up on this story absolutely thank you thank you Aloha