 The U.S. Naval War College is a Navy's home of thought. Established in 1884, NWC has become the center of Naval seapower, both strategically and intellectually. The following issues in national security lecture is specifically designed to offer scholarly lectures to all participants. We hope you enjoy this upcoming discussion and future lectures. Good afternoon and welcome to our ninth INS lecture for this academic year. Excuse me. I'm John Jackson and I will serve as the coordinator for today. Admiral Chatfield is on leave and can't join us, but I'd like to welcome you on her behalf. We've enjoyed bringing you this series as a way to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. It has been expanded to include participation by the entire Naval War College extended family, including members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees, colleagues throughout Naval Station Newport, and participants from around the nation. Looking ahead, please join us on 22 February 2022 when Rare Admiral Peg Klein will speak about ethical leadership. Okay, on with the main event. During the presentation that follows, please feel free to ask questions using the chat feature of Zoom, and we will get to as many of these as we can at the conclusion of the presentation. December 2021 marked 10 years of Kim Jong-un's rule after his father's death. During the past decade, Kim has consolidated his political power and ruled with an iron hand while growing North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. The North's economy continues to struggle, and Kim has offered unusually candid assessments of the country's economic troubles. This very timely presentation will examine the current and future prospects of North Korean politics and economics, along with its nuclear program and possible U.S. policy directions going forward. Terence Rorrig is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and a non-resident expert with the Center for Korean Legal Studies at Columbia University. He was a research fellow at the Kennedy School at Harvard University and a past president of the Association of Korean Political Studies. Rorrig has published numerous books, articles, and book chapters on Korea and East Asian security issues, North Korea's nuclear weapons program, Korean maritime security, deterrence theory, and the U.S.-South Korean alliance. He received his PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Terry, the podium is yours. Well, thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here and to have a chance to talk with you about these very important issues and ones that have become much more in focus over the last month thanks to a whole series of missile tests. Let me also offer the usual caveat that these are my own personal views only. So the United States has been rightly focused on strategic competition, great power rivalry, watching China and Russia. But this past month, North Korea reminded us all that North Korea remains an issue that we need to be concerned about and we need to be watching. It has also been a decade since Kim Jong-un has been in power and he has continued to grow his political position but also grow the nuclear and missile capabilities of North Korea. And so while we continue our careful watch of China and Russia, North Korea remains a central element to continue to monitor in the years ahead. So today what I would like to do is start first with a few thoughts about where North Korea's economy is at, some about their politics, and then we'll turn to the nuclear weapons issues, and then also to talk about what are some of the potential policy directions going forward. So it has been 10 years now since Kim Jong-un has been in power since he took over for his father after he passed in December of 2011 and this picture that we saw as the first glimpse, if you will, of Kim Jong-un leading his father's funeral procession as his first sort of official duty, if you will. Over these next 10 years, Kim Jong-un who started this journey as a 27-28-year-old kid, a relatively young kid in the North Korean political hierarchy, purged a lot of the high ranking military and party officials on his way to cementing his power, including his uncle who is right behind him in this procession. So even if you were a family member, it did not mean if you were a threat to his power that that could mean dire consequences for you. Later, he also is going to have his half-brother killed in an airport in the airport in Kuala Lumpur. He will also take on all of the important positions and duties that will be part of his consolidation of power. He's also going to revive the Communist Party in the political hierarchy in North Korea. And so you will see over the last couple of years, some of their important meetings taking place and policy decisions taking place during party meetings, as you see down below. And of course, he is going to make some major strides in these 10 years in North Korea's nuclear capabilities, as well as its ballistic missile capabilities as well. And if you look at the picture at the very top, he also succeeded in losing about 40 to 45 pounds, which raised some interesting questions about his potential health situation, but he seems to be alive and well. So over the decade, he has been very clear in cementing his political position. And there are no obvious sources of opposition to his rule. Of course, that's not necessarily good for your health if you decide to go that route. But his rule seems to be very stable and very secure at this particular point in time. So it looks like we are going to have a North Korean under Kim Jong-un for the foreseeable future. However, there are a couple of things that are in particular of concern that the regime is worried about and tops on their agenda list. And the first is the North Korean economy. The economy had already been struggling for a number of reasons, but the past two years have been particularly difficult for North Korea as three factors have come together at the same time to really slam the North Korean economy. And the first is the impact of the ratcheting up of economic sanctions after some of the later missile tests. And you see that reflected in this table of the North Korean GDP. 2016, many surprised that there actually was some positive growth. But after 2016, the sanctions are really going to ratchet up in those next two years, in 2016 and 2017. And then you see that the North Korean economy is really going to start to slide. In addition to that, you also have the COVID lockdown. January of 2020, North Korea is going to be one of the first countries to completely lock down its country in response to the COVID outbreak. That's going to have particular economic circumstances because of the shutdown of trade across the Chinese border, both legal trade as well as illegal trade. And that is going to have a significant economic impact on China. Now, with the sanctions, there has always been a question about whether these sanctions have been enthusiastically enforced, particularly by China and Russia, but by others as well. The COVID lockdown has probably done more to enforce the sanctions than any of the actual sanctions measures. And so COVID has been probably one of the best sanctions enforcement mechanisms on the North Korean economy, but has had a significant impact. Then on top of that, North Korea has had two summers in a row of bad weather that has really nailed the harvest during that time period to the point where on top of that, in 2019, a UN report had declared that about 40% of the North Korean population was food insecure. Now you add to that the bad harvest from these past two summers. And these three things together have really caused havoc on the North Korean economy. And what has been interesting is Kim Jong-un's relatively unusual candor in acknowledging these facts. And as one example, this statement in a workers' party meeting notes that the economy and particularly agricultural production was getting tense. And he had made similar admissions at other points and at other meetings and unusually frank admissions about the difficulty of the economy. This is something that he is concerned about, but yet that has not prevented North Korea from devoting a good deal of its resources to military developments and such, but the economy is a concern. Another issue that has been an interesting element of concern to the regime and has clearly gotten the regime's attention. And that has been the inflow of information into North Korea over on the last number of years. One of the secrets of North Korea's stability has been its ability to be able to control the information flow that comes into the country, to be able to lock that down so that it doesn't have any competition for the government narrative, for government ideology that helps to support and legitimate the Kim family regime. But over the years, that has increasingly been challenged by information that has been able to get into the country through thumb drives, DVDs, SD cards that have been smuggled in, the ability to alter state manufactured radios and the stations that those are set to, and to be able to get some of those different competing sources of information in. The COVID lockdown has been an interesting element of this. As I've mentioned that this has been largely a health response as North Korea has been concerned that its health system, the nutritional system and immune systems of its people because of the economic difficulties, if the pandemic ever got a hold in North Korea, there would be really severe difficulties to that. So a lockdown for those reasons, but there also seems to clearly be a political motive to the lockdown. And that is that this lockdown has been able to shut down the flow of information into North Korea. The illegal trade networks between China that brought in some of these different media sources has been able to be shut down by the regime. There is also with the lockdown people are not able to travel and confined to their villages that allows for greater monitoring of the authorities as well. And so those kinds of things have been able to constrain that information flow. Also as an economic side to this, there have also been over the years an increasing sort of marketization of the North Korean economy. And you have a number of savvy North Koreans who have been able to be fairly successful entrepreneurs in this kind of market activity that was going across the border to China legally or illegally. This was becoming a threat to the regime. And the COVID lockdown was able, we think was a gesture to be able to constrain some of that economic activity and control this group that may have been increasingly a concern to the regime's power and authority. So interesting elements there. But as another piece to this, the regime has also targeted this notion of ideological purity of cultural pollution that this trade and information flow has been a part of towards the youth of the country. And in particular, some of the inflows of South Korean music and dramas and such that have been part of that. And so in December of 2020, the regime also passed a new law that increased the punishments of the possession and trade of these kinds of information and media sources. These things were always illegal, but this law ratcheted up the punishments. It also increased the surveillance of authorities and police on the border as well as internally. But it also cracked down on some of the corruption, because if you got caught selling or possessing some of this media in the past, a bribe usually took care of it. That is also part of the crackdown associated with this law as well. And so the target is in particular South Korea, but also Japan and the US, because authorities were increasingly seeing South Korean music, South Korean dress, even South Korean slang in what the young people were saying, texting. And so yes, there are cell phones in North Korea, about 3 million cell phone subscribers, and great way to monitor what the population is saying and doing. And so very concerned about this inflow in particular of South Korean culture and language and such. And so a particular focus on the young. And so just yesterday there was an article that appeared in the Workers' Party publication in North Korea that noted in particular that the new generation has not experienced war, i.e. the Korean War, and revolution, and that their ideological consciousness is not something that's hereditary and passed down. We have to make sure that that baton of ideology is passed down to the next generation. When you put all of this together, it is interesting that these actions demonstrate that this has gotten the regime's attention. And they are concerned about this and what the long range impact may be of some of this change and influx of outside information and something that bears watching. So with that, let us turn to the nuclear weapons piece to this. It had been relatively quiet for a year or so, some testing, etc., but of course that changed in January when North Korea tested a whole lot of different missiles and such. North Korea had been showing off a lot of its different systems. As you see in some of the pictures here through parades, they included a number of different new missile systems, but some of these have not necessarily been tested yet. So South Korea continues to improve and work on the growth of these capabilities. On the nuclear weapons side, North Korea has conducted six nuclear tests, the latest or the last one in September of 2017. That test had a relatively large yield, which there was some speculation that North Korea claimed that they had tested a hydrogen bomb, but many experts don't think it was quite that that it may have been a boosted fission device. Estimates on what the size of the North Korean nuclear arsenal is range widely, but I think some of the better estimates are the numbers that I have up here, that there is a guess that they may have 10 to 20 assembled warheads with fissile material for another 40 to 50 warheads and projections that they are continuing to produce fissile material, perhaps at a rate of enough for six to 18 warheads per year going forward. But again, a lot of these are estimates as we really don't know for sure the size and capability of the North Korean arsenal. Their delivery system of choice are missile systems and they have a lot of them and a number of different varieties of short, medium, intermediate range ballistic missiles, ICBMs, cruise missiles, and they are also working on a submarine launched ballistic missile as well. Most of these missiles, the land based missiles are mobile missiles as you see in some of the pictures here below. They are largely liquid fuel missiles, but the North Koreans are working to transition those to solid fuel missiles because there's an important technological advantage to having solid fuel missiles. But this is another interesting demonstration or indication of what North Korea's future ambitions may be of some of these systems. In the eighth party Congress about a year ago, Kim Jong-un laid out in one of his statements a pretty extensive wish list of what he is directing the scientific community to continue working on. And that list included tactical rockets, intermediate range cruise missiles, different types of warheads, which raised an interesting question about whether he was going to develop a lot of different size warheads in particular smaller tactical nuclear weapons and did that point to a direction that North Korea's nuclear strategy and doctrine may be much more of a war fighting doctrine as well as assured retaliation. Kim also talked about hypersonic glide vehicles, guidance technology for multiple warhead rockets. So does that mean North Korea is also going to move towards multiple independently launched reentry warheads so that those missiles that you see there, the large nose cones may actually have multiple warheads on them as opposed to just a single warhead on them. And lastly talked about a nuclear powered submarine picture in the lower right. There is one of the pictures that North Korea has released for some of their submarine development. They're working on a submarine launch ballistic missile we know less about any nuclear powered submarine. But this was an interesting and an ambitious wish list for North Korean capabilities, perhaps largely aspirational. But on the other hand North Korea has been able to achieve a lot of progress in areas that we didn't think they were going to get to quite as quickly as they have. So again, these things deserve to be watched closely. Well, and then of course we have January. Kim Jong-un a while back had talked about giving or one of his officials had talked about well the United States depending on its policy would determine what sort of Christmas President might get. Well this is about two years late but perhaps this is what was in mind a while back. I won't go through all of this but you can see an array of different missile systems that were tested from the hypersonic glide vehicles to short range ballistic missiles to the eye catcher was the intermediate range missile that was the last one that was launched seven missile tests in one month. This broke a record even for Kim Jong-un who is who has a strong record for testing a lot of stuff. But he got it all in before the Olympic games because there was a great deal of speculation that he would not want to launch anything that upstaged the Olympics in Beijing and got Chinese anger but we shall see. What is interesting to note in the middle of all of this Kim Jong-un had another party meeting where he dropped this line and that was that he gave orders to his his officials to reconsider restarting all temporarily suspended activities. A reference to a voluntary moratorium he had given during the Trump years to not test a nuclear weapon or a long range ballistic missile. This is the interesting sort of shoe that we watched to see if this is going to drop perhaps after the Olympics and is an ominous warning that that we will be paying very close attention to to see if this is the next event that may happen in the testing regime. So why did Kim do all of this testing in January and what was the motive for this? There has been a lot of speculation about what that may have have entailed and a lot of different reasons. These are some of them that are up here and I'll talk about them in just a minute. They aren't necessarily mutually exclusive and I think certainly there is a degree of it's not certain which of these necessarily is the explanation. But a number of these I think point to some different elements of what you may see going on and some of them may apply to some of the different tests but not others. And so first of all some of the testing may have simply been technical. If you're developing new capabilities if you want to know if it works you've got to test it and then see what went wrong test it again and that may be part of it. Some have also suggested that this was an effort to get the United States attention that it was a reminder that it was North Korea's effort to remind the United States and South Korea to demonstrate North Korean strength that perhaps in the future if negotiations happen North Korea will will be approaching this from a position of strength. There's also speculation that North Korea is trying to craft a sort of a position globally that it's a nuclear power it's got defense capabilities like any other missile state. Well of course we have to test this and this is normal activity for us. Also there is some element that this may be largely directed at a domestic audience that given the economic struggles that North Korea has that this is a sign to those in the military as well as to the general public in North Korea we are still strong despite some of the other difficulties we are going through and lastly it may just simply be a statement to the United States and South Korea that we aren't interested in dialogue and I'll talk about some of that in just a minute. Again there could be any number of these that are part of the explanations for this it's not entirely certain I think there is some element of all of these in many respects that is at play and again these aren't necessarily exclusive. So with all of that on the table and looking forward what do we do next what comes in the future and so you may recall 2018-2019 we had all the summits that had happened between the United States and North Korea United South Korea and North Korea and others and there was some degree of hope that perhaps there could be some progress but the last two two and a half years there has been very very little contact at all between the different parties and so when the Biden administration came in they announced that they were going to do a top-to-bottom review of U.S. policy towards North Korea and in April of 2021 they announced that they had concluded that review there was no sort of formal rollout of the policy and no formal document that was issued but through press conference press conference and and other events the Biden policy essentially seems to have these general characteristics to it and let me walk through a couple of these first of all they remain committed to the goal of denuclearization now that's interesting in its own right because you ask most North Korea analysts they will tell you denuclearization is not going to happen if it does happen it is a long long process but yet for political reasons for non-proliferation policy reasons that still remains the stated goal of the United States of South Korea Japan and others the policy also talks about not focusing on a grand bargain or strategic patience a grand bargain is a nod that they are not going to go at it like the Trump administration in the summit meetings and try to get some you know major conclusion to this that that's not feasible but strategic patience is a reference to the Obama administration and that we're not going to sort of put this on the shelf and so they're trying to craft something in between those two positions and argued that they're going to take a calibrated practical approach and diplomacy is going to be the centerpiece of their policy but until there is any progress sanctions are going to remain in place and we're also going to confer very closely with our allies particularly South Korea and Japan among others the Biden administration has also been a bit tougher on North Korea in regards to human rights and so the State Department issued a report that offered a pretty blunt and blistering criticism of North Korea's human rights record and there of course is often debate when you look at policy about you've got the denuclearization issue on one hand and you've got human rights on the other if you call out North Korea in a very loud manner on human rights you're probably not going to get much progress on denuclearization but on the other hand the human rights community says how can you continue to ignore human rights when dealing with North Korea and their their atrocious human rights record the Biden the Biden administration is trying to sort of split that difference if you will the U.S. still remains committed to Dino excuse me to diplomacy and the line that you often see in in the press and one that was first uttered by the special representatives Sung Kim who is the lead on North Korean negotiations and that is that we are willing to sit down with the DPRK anywhere anytime without preconditions and that preconditions piece is an important caveat because in the past the U.S. position had always been yes we are always willing to talk to North Korea but the starting point is denuclearization this position is a bit of a concession if you will to that but again clearly denuclearization is the goal the Biden administration has reached out to North Korea on a number of occasions over the last number of months but North Korea has not been very responsive to that and so the missile tests often put in that context or viewed in that context is North Korea interested in any sort of dialogue how do the tests demonstrate what that may mean but the Biden administration continues to try with all of that laid on the table what might be some possible policy alternatives to proceed in regards to North Korean policy and first of all let me say the denuclearization goal I think is the central one are you going to continue to hold any future policy to denuclearization and if not what is your goal then and there are some important ramifications on that particular decision also some of the proposals that are out there will will almost all have a starting point that the alliance has to be maintained and is an important element of security on the peninsula and making sure that there is a robust deterrence posture there is generally agreement on that across the spectrum with that said I would categorize some of the future some of the proposals for US policy along sort of three general lines the first is that this is not the time to relax pressure it is time to ratchet up pressure on North Korea particularly given what we think we know about their economic situation increase sanctions don't draw them down as sort of an opening gesture to to North Korea there's an argument that with all these missile tests North Korea has not paid much of a price for that we've got to change that and begin to add some greater level of accountability to North Korea when they conduct these tests but the question of course is what that is and what that looks like we have had a scaling back of joint exercises in South Korea over the years in part as a political gesture for dialogue but also because of COVID issues but this side of the argument would argue you know we have seen enough of this it's time to go back to a regular exercise regime starting with this spring and continue to press North Korea on the human rights issue on the other side of the coin are those who would argue we've been doing this for the last 20 30 years and it hasn't gotten us anywhere we need to try something different something more proactive and these folks would argue something that I would call as a proactive engagement plan or policy we've got to offer something up front to North Korea to demonstrate some sort of degree of good faith to the North Koreans that we and the South Koreans are willing to adjust what the North always calls our hostile policy offer perhaps some opening sanctions relief proposal something that can have a snapback provision perhaps if North Korea doesn't reciprocate you may if you follow Korean security issues the last number of months there has been a proposal on the table that has been pushed fairly hard by South Korea about having an end of war declaration something that wouldn't replace the armistice but it would be a declaration by the United States by South Korea to indicate that the war is over that we can move forward from that and that it would be a starting point to be able to move towards improving relations economic engagement and again perhaps some sort of sanctions relief this is going to be a tough sell with the missile tests that we have had but again this is the other side of that argument to say what's pressure gotten us and the current policy gotten us so far we need to try something different somewhere in the middle and in where I tend to come down is something that would look at this situation in sort of a different manner and and acknowledge that that denuclearization is highly unlikely ever or at least certainly in the long term and instead this is going to be something that we have to look at as a problem that we manage rather than solve and perhaps the starting point even though we may still talk about denuclearization the starting point is to consider this much more of an arms control problem or a threat reduction problem and so therefore see if we can't negotiate some sort of codification of the testing moratorium that North Korea had voluntarily put in place and we might have to offer some sort of sanctions relief for that but we treat this more as an arms control issue if we can get some sort of limitation on North Korean capabilities and numbers conventional systems also could very easily be on the table as part of this now certainly this is no easy answer either and I have verification listed under that as another big challenge to this but when you look at all of these different options in the North Korean problem in general there are no easy answers answers to this there probably has never been any easy answers to this but this is a third option that may be another way of approaching the North Korean challenge as opposed to these two on the other side of that in the months ahead there are going to be as I move towards wrapping up here and moving to questions I would like to throw out four events if you will to keep an eye on over the next number of months first of all South Korea is in the last stages of its campaign for its presidential election which will be held on March 9th the two candidates E. J. Myeong from the Democratic Party is on the liberal side the progressive side of the party he is likely and he is the successor if you will of the current Moon Jae-in administration he's likely to continue the pro-engagement position of the current South Korean government but on the other side Hyun Suk-yul is the conservative People Power Party candidate if he wins the election then there's likely to see a change in South Korean policy towards the North so far he has a slight edge but it's close enough that this is going to be really interesting as an election to watch then after the Olympics are done is Kim Jong-un going to follow through on his implication that he is reconsidering his testing moratorium on nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles if he crosses those lines the United States and others will likely have a very different response than has been the case up to this point the spring exercises are not far off typically in march and april those are likely to go back to normal if you will and North Korea has typically responded negatively towards those exercises we'll see what that response might be and lastly a good anniversary is another time to test something and in april we have the 110th birthday celebration of Kim Il-sung who is the first leader the grandfather of Kim Jong-un absolutely revered in the North Korean political hierarchy as the founder of the country that would be a good time perhaps to test something and try to have something to commemorate his birthday if you will so stay tuned and watch for those events and so let me just wrap up before I turn it over to to questions here that the North Korean challenge has not gotten any easier and as the months go along as the years go along North Korea continues to increase its capabilities and we need to watch that we need to be concerned denuclearization is highly unlikely going forward but I think there are reasons why that's likely to and probably should at least publicly remain the goal but I think increasingly and I've said this in a number of different forums we have to continue or we have to start to look much more at North Korea as a challenge to manage than a problem to solve and that has a whole different sort of set of dynamics to it and I think we have to start to shift in that direction so let me stop there and open it up to any questions that you may have thank you very I'd like to acknowledge that we have 200 people participating via zoom here today so I think that's a comment on the seriousness of the issue and the scholarship of our presenter so very glad to to see that happen are there questions here in the auditory Dean so Terry as usual I learned a ton here and I have so many questions I want to ask but the one question that struck me was when you put that map up can you tell us a little bit about Chinese foreign policy towards North Korea and any changes that have occurred over time give us a good overview of South Korean policy towards North Korea and potential changes US changes in foreign policy how has China's rise and has that changed or has it been yeah and I think that's a really interesting story because we often portray in the media that they're close allies and there certainly is a relationship between the two and they have some common interests but there's also some degree of lack of trust between the two sides for example I think North Korea is is very nervous about the economic dependency they have on China although they really have no choice at this particular point even with the lockdown there are signs that economic exchanges starting to open up there were reports last week of a train or two that may have crossed the border the Chinese are often looking sort of warily at the North Koreans as well that that we think the Chinese control the North Koreans but that's really not the case at all as the North Koreans are are very willing to act independently but when you go back to the testing that happened in 2016 and 2017 and the sanctions regime I mean you look at all the UN sanctions that were applied to North Korea that required Chinese support in the UN Security Council and I think China was very clearly unhappy with North Korean actions because China wants stability on the Korean Peninsula they still want a divided Korea but they want stability and when North Korea stirs the pot with missile tests and and all the things that happened in 2016 and 2017 I think Chinese anger was was legitimate but going forward China has always sort of been a defender if you will of North Korea in a number of different ways politically and such and so most recently you have seen China try to get sanctions relief in the UN Security Council the United States has gone to the Security Council in the wake of these January tests to try to get a statement of condemnation from the Security Council an increase in sanctions in addition to unilateral sanctions the US applied and China and Russia have have said no so I think China will continue to defend North Korea in some of those different ways so there is a relationship I think they have certainly some interest in in in each other's continued development or or the relationship if you will but there's also some weariness on both sides I think in regards to this relationship as well but certainly for the moment North Korea is an important state that China wants to see the division remain North Korea as a buffer state is crucial for Chinese foreign policy in the region and we'll continue to support that any other questions here in the auditorium Gary do you have some questions via zoom ready thank you we have quite a few questions on on zoom related to the relationship with China and South Korea and Japan any hope for the six party talks to be resumed and how aligned are our South Korea and Japan in regards to approaching North Korea yeah boy that's a that's a complicated question and a lot of pieces to that let me start with the Japan South Korea part to that Japanese South Korean relations are in a tough spot and for a lot of issues besides North Korea and they go back to unresolved historical issues etc on North Korea they don't align entirely as Japan is has much more of a of a hard edge a position towards North Korea the Moon administration is has been much more pro-engagement in regards to the North Korean position if conservatives are elected in if young wins the South Korean presidential election in March then Japan and South Korea may be much more aligned there I think there also may be an opening for improved South Korea Japan relations with a new administration in the Blue House and Seoul but there are still a lot of historical structural issues that are going to be part of that the six party talks I don't see that happening anytime soon I think it is much more likely that it is going to be bilateral at the start perhaps trilateral with the U.S. South Korea and North Korea or or perhaps China I think you know there could be much more of a quad sort of of arrangement there but none of that has been sort of on the table for any recent period of time so you know in many respects it's the United States and North Korea is is an important starting point here as well as inter-Korean relations and we just haven't seen much progress on that front going forward but again you know 2018 when Kim offered an olive branch in his new year's address in January of 2018 that came as a surprise perhaps there is something like that possible as well but it's not not very optimistic at this particular stage another question that came in is for in regards to weapons development and and just the that it's obvious that North Korea does not have the economy to develop or or potentially does not have the resources to develop weapons does China then have a guiding hand in North Korea weaponry and its development and is North Korea a weapons program for testing Chinese weapons? Yeah North Korea you would be surprised how much of that capability has been developed indigenously over the years as their scientists have been able to to make a lot of that progress they have worked in the past with Iran a good bit and Pakistan on its nuclear program back in in the day to get some of these things started but a lot of it is is done indigenously now as far as resources go that's the interesting question so when you look at North Korea's economic problems part of that is because their defense budget is estimated and again emphasis on estimation here that it could be as high as 25 percent of its GDP and there was just a report that came out last week that North Korea's cyber hacking has been able to get all sorts of resources and that they those are likely being put into the weapons programs so North Korea has been able to devote a good deal of weaponry excuse me a good deal of funding towards its its weapons program and the parades have been an interesting glimpse into those different capabilities and not only on the nuclear and the missile side of things but also some of these parades pointed to some of the improvements in small arms and other sorts of lower level systems as well so North Korea despite the economic trouble and and the the price that its population pays for this is devoting a good deal of the scarce resources including the stolen digital currency towards its military capabilities but again a lot of that is indigenously developed in particular some of the missile technology as well as other things thank you a separate question does South Korea and and or Japan have in place operational missile defense systems that perhaps Israel has yes but there's an interesting difference here and this gets back to China and and differences South Korea and Japan have in regards to China in 1998 North Korea tested its first medium-range ballistic missile that traveled over the Japanese homeland and that really got Japan's attention and that is is the marker of when Japan goes all in on missile defense not only developing its own indigenous missile defense capability but working with the United States for a regional ballistic missile defense architecture if you will South Korea also has a ballistic missile defense capability it's got Pac-3s it also has Aegis destroyers with ballistic missile defense capabilities but South Korea has been careful to keep it as an independent capability and not work with the United States and certainly not work with Japan and the United States in sort of a regional configuration because of the fears of what the reaction from China would be and of course South Korea got a taste of what that was going to be when we deployed THAAD batteries to South Korea and the Chinese punished the South Korean economy several billion dollars of impact on the South Korean economy by restricting tourist groups to South Korea punishing the South Korean corporations that had operations within China in particular the Lotte Corporation who gave the golf course in South Korea gave that land for the THAAD batteries and so South Korea has been very concerned about angering China in regards to ballistic missile defense now with that said there are some interesting elements here as perhaps some changing dynamics within South Korea there's interesting public opinion data in South Korea that is pointing to a slow deterioration and a majority of such of negative views on China even more so that there is a more negative view of China than Japan and giving given where South Korean-Japan relations are these days that's saying a lot and so there's also a sense that that China is increasingly a threat to South Korean security but still South Korea depends heavily on Chinese trade and investment and so South Korea has been sort of walking this policy position that's often referred to as strategic ambiguity between the United States as its top security partner excuse me on one hand and China as its economic partner on the other but there's increasing sentiment that perhaps South Korean needs to shift more in the direction of away from from China I think perhaps the best way I have I've heard this described by by some South Korean analysts is the United States will always be South Korea's number one security partner and close ally but we still have to figure out a way to manage our relationship with China because they are still there in the neighborhood and are still central for South Korean economic prosperity so that creates a very interesting dynamic that that I think is part of the bigger picture that points to why missile defense South Korea is a little more careful about keeping a separate sort of missile defense capability from Japan and the United States Gary let me pass the final question what is the reign of the Korean weapons do they represent a threat to the continental United States and this recent situation where airlines were grounded on the west coast seemed to be in coordination with these Korean tests any comments about that yeah that's that's one of the interesting debates about North Korea's capability they have certainly demonstrated the capability for short medium-range missiles for certain intermediate range systems as well the question is the ICBMs and the long-range missiles from some of the tests that they did in 2017 the missile community I think would would suggest that there's a fairly strong consensus that those missiles can probably reach the United States probably or at least a fairly decent percentage there still is some question in my view about the ability to put a nuclear warhead on top of those that do they have the guidance systems to be able to get these to the right location do they have the reentry vehicles that are going to be much more challenging for that type of a long-range ballistic missile to be able to actually get to the target detonate when they are supposed to those kinds of issues are are still I think some question marks but the bottom line North Korea continues to work on this capability and improve that even without some of the long-range tests and and the question is is there enough capability to be able to possibly have a deterrent impact on the United States and its actions and you may not need 190 confidence in a system to get that 10 15% may be enough for North Korea to get some degree of deterrent benefit from those systems but the big question then is if North Korea wants more confidence in those systems is it going to have to test them and then what's that going to mean for the security environment and again those are are the the difficult ominous questions as we go forward thank you very much a terrific presentation we thank you all for joining us