 All right hi everyone my name is Frank Aum and I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today for our conversation on a topic I'm very excited about and I've been wanting to dive deeper into for a while now which is the four-party peace talks of the late 1990s. I run the North Korea program here at the US Institute of Peace so before I begin I just want to introduce my organization for those of you who are not familiar. The US Institute of Peace is a national nonpartisan and independent institute founded and funded by congress that has the goal of preventing mitigating and resolving violent conflict and you can find out more about our work at usip.org. Okay so today's discussion will be a little bit different because we're not going to have each of the three speakers provide set remarks instead we're going to jump right into a moderator led Q&A discussion with brief for answers and also done in a very informal fashion where the other speakers can jump in if they want. I've tried to organize the questions thematically and chronologically so that it should be relatively easy to follow and I want to start with providing a bit of a background to help paint the scene so many people who are interested in the Korean Peninsula both as casual observers or as experience experts they often wonder why the United States and North Korea haven't already reached a peace agreement and normalized ties like the US has done with other past quote-unquote adversaries like China or Vietnam. Well one could point to North Korea's nuclear weapons program and say that remains the primary obstacle for the US but North Korea hasn't always had a nuclear program and in fact in the 1990s its nuclear and ballistic missile program was very rudimentary and largely mothballed after the bilateral great framework deal shut down this young gun facility in 1994 so this should have been a perfect moment to discuss a more comprehensive peace agreement especially if both sides were really interested in peace and in fact in April 1996 President Clinton and South Korean President Kim Young-sam met on Jeju Island and proposed four-party peace talks with North Korea and China. This proposal sounds radical now especially when compared to the previous 40 years when the US largely ignored and disengaged from North Korea but also compared to the last two decades where the US approach has been laser focused on North Korea's denuclearization especially as a prerequisite for any peace talks. In fact I would argue that the four-party peace talks proposal was the only time in the last 67 years basically since the 1954 Geneva conference in which the US publicly and proactively proposed and engaged on the specific issue of peace and normalization. Of course there are some other discussions over the years the two Koreas certainly discussed improved relations many times but this did not include the US. I think Kissinger may have had some discussions with China and North Korea in the late 70s and of course the six-party talks in the mid-2000s contemplated some working groups on normalization but none of these ideas advanced past the planning stages. So what happened after Clinton and Kim proposed the four-party peace talks? Well North Korea despite having sought direct talks with the US for decades took over a year to respond and then when it finally engaged the talks seemed to sputter and not make much progress. So that's the basic framing I'm sure we'll get into more details but there obviously isn't much written about this period probably for good reason because there wasn't a whole lot tangible achieved but still I think it seems to probably warrant more study and attention especially because these four-party peace talks represent or should represent the process and discussions that we should ideally be striving for whether it's right now or in the medium term after some sort of interim agreement. Fortunately we have three participants from the US delegation to those talks with us today and they'll be providing some insights from that period and potential lessons for future peace talks. Also today's discussion is very timely since secretaries Blinken and Austin are in Seoul right now talking with the South Korean counterparts about the future direction of our North Korea policy. So let me jump in and introduce our panelists. Our first one is Bob Carlin who is a non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center and the former chief of the Northeast Asia division in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Next is Phillip Young who is the president and chief executive officer of the World Affairs Council of Northern California and back in the 90s he was a senior policy advisor for the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia at the State Department. And then last is Chip Gregson who is senior director for China and the Pacific at the Center for the National Interest. He's also former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs and he was also DOD's representative to the four-party talks. And then before I start the Q&A let me just note for our audience that you can start getting in your questions in the queue by using the chat box function just below the video player on the USIP event page. Okay so let me dive right in and this first question is for Bob. I mentioned earlier that there was this four decade period from the end of the Korean War basically to the 1990s in which the two sides had no serious diplomatic interactions or discussions on peace and security. What was the reason for this gap in interactions during this period? Frank thanks you for that really good lead in your first comments on this overall issue. I'd say it frames the problem in a way that really wasn't in anybody's mind at the time and that's important to understand. One reason that there was no real engagement for so many years after Geneva was neither side was interested. It's really very simple. When I came to the CIA in 1971 the Korean War was only 18 years distant. 18 years is not a long time in the memory of Washington DC. A lot of people had participated in the war and so the image that people had of North Korea was still of the country that had invaded in 1950. Moreover the Pueblo incident was only two years distance. Shoot down of the EC 121 the attack on the Blue House. So the image of North Korea at that time was of a and rightly so was a very belligerent aggressive problem. South Korea was relatively weak at that time don't forget. It was a basket case economically still. So we weren't interested in engaging with North Korea. It was a military problem. It was an INW problem. Big question was are they going to attack? For their part the North Koreans were not interested in dealing with us. They wanted us off the peninsula period from the late 50s through the early 70s to the mid 70s. They only wanted to deal with the South Koreans and I don't think seriously but the proposals for peace talks were all aimed at Seoul. They thought the United States had nothing to do with that that we should leave. In 74 they shifted because they were angry at the South Koreans. They wanted to belittle Pakchunghee and so they made a proposal to the Americans for peace talks. I don't think it was serious but it was the first time that they had aimed something like that at us. But from then until 1990 why wasn't there any real serious engagement? Well beginning in 88 after the Olympics we started slowly to reach out to the North Koreans fairly low level. In 1990 or so when the Soviet Union collapsed that's when Kim Il-sung made a strategic decision. He needed normalization with the Americans and from that point on you began to see little by little increasing signals from the North Koreans that they wanted serious contact with the Americans. That got us to the agreed framework and then came and I guess we'll get into this later. The four-party talks was a bolt from the blue. It was not a carefully considered proposal and I'll talk more about it later. I think it put the North Koreans significantly off balance. Well Bob that actually gets into my next question and also let me add that if Phil Chip and you want to jump in just let me know. You can raise your hand just to signal that but that's a great segue Bob because we talk about the the 1990s the collapse of the Soviet Union. Note Wu was was implementing his post-politique policy trying to reach out and so there was certainly a shift right and not only that that's when we get the signals about North Korea threatening to advance their nuclear weapons. So I think you know this is where we see more engagement. I think the first senior level engagement at the high level was Arnold Cantor and Kim Yong-Sung in New York in I think 1992. And then you had Jimmy Carter and Kim Yong-Sung meet at 94 and then of course the Galuchi-led meetings led to the agreed framework. But then 18 months after that was the proposal for the four-party peace talks. So you already addressed it a little bit but how did the idea for the four-party peace talks come about? Phil go ahead take it. Well I you know if you talk with I think Bob said it right it was sort of a bolt out of the blue for the North Koreans. I think it caught the State Department JCS and DOD Chip I would like you to chime in here sort of flat footed as well. I try to dig a little bit behind as to how that all happened and the best that I can can determine was that there was this desire is it was staff led to some degree. We knew that the South Koreans were very unhappy about feeling left out on the sidelines because of the U.S. and the DPRK had engaged so much with the agreed framework and then we had a submarine incident at that point too. So they were trying to get back into what they seemed in a meaningful position and not being on the sidelines. I think the United States was worried about the ROK because they wanted everyone to be in line and there was help that was going to be needed to implement the agreed framework mainly money and we're also afraid that the agreed framework you know structure might fall apart so there's an incentive to try to do something and you know the best that you know I've done a little bit digging here and there I think it was draft staff driven I think it was mostly through the National Security Council and the ROK and you know there are all these kind of rumors I think Bob Sutinger at that point and you know maybe Bob would be able to tell us that there was some conversations about this kind of thing coming about and I think then it just sort of percolated up and you know that's sort of what I've been able to tell but you know in terms of getting a hard description through the State Department I think the description there was it was it was a surprise. It's interesting because there's moments in history where it seems like these grand ideas come together pretty quickly with not years and years of preparation. I think one example is the presidential nuclear initiatives in the early 90s from President Bush but also the the four-party peace talks ideas. Bob and Chip anything else to chip in on that question? I can add a personal perspective. Phil's actually right that the announcement about the four-party talks caught DOD flat-footed. I was still working for the Marine Corps when the announcement was made and I was in fact at a conference in New Orleans doing Marine Corps business when suddenly found out that my itinerary changed and also my work had changed that I was supposed to go to the Pentagon and work for some guy named Campbell and by the way don't fly back to Washington your tickets have been changed you're going to Geneva. So I show up at Geneva and get up the next morning you know jet lag and everything else. Walk into the four-party talks and there's an officer from the command in Korea walking next to me and he's got a paperback book and I said why do you have that? He said you'll see. We got about five minutes into the talk and the South Korean interpreter and the North Korean interpreter get into a really heated argument with each other. So I turned to the guy next to me and said what's this all about? And he said they're arguing about what was said. I made the obvious comment that they both speak Korean. What's the problem? He says ah that's lesson one. They're different dialects between South and North Korea. I said what's lesson two? He said bring a paperback book next time. Then he opens a book and starts reading. That was a guy named Mike Hayden. You might recall he went on to other things but yeah the talks were a big surprise to DOD. We'd gone from a position in the when the North Korean nuclear program surfaced 1993-4 to a big muscular response and we were moving forces around and talking about deployments and everything. That very quickly got shut down in favor of negotiations but nobody knew what the negotiations were going to look like. So when it was announced it was just this four-party thing. It saved an awful lot of staff work because it wasn't a lot of time to do staff work. So we just went through it and it started from that. The the the sessions were rather bereft of results but at least it served the purpose of actually having dialogue with the North Koreans. So that that was a gain from this in the early days in my estimation. As a as a former staff at OSD sometimes I appreciate it when we don't have too much time to plan and you can just quickly quickly move into the meetings. So let me move on. We had the proposal from Clinton and Kim Young-Sung. North Korea hears that they've been clamoring for talks with the U.S. but they took over a year to respond. The proposal was made April 1996. I think they finally responded April 1997. Why the hesitation from North Korea? Again I'll direct it to Bob first but anyone can join in after. Well the question would I would ask the question differently which is why wouldn't they hesitate? They had the agreed framework which was an extremely important agreement with the U.S. We were just getting into it both sides were moving ahead with it and suddenly out of nowhere comes this idea that the South Koreans and the Chinese should join in talks. The question in Pyongyang was why? What is this about? Is Washington interested in the agreed framework or isn't it? Moreover Pyongyang had no desire to deal with South Korea or Kim Young-Sung. Kim Young-Sung had done what he could to undermine Kim Jong-il when he came in. The South Koreans as far as the North was concerned the South Koreans were being bloody minded. They were only going to get in the way and as for the Chinese the North Korean position was why the Chinese? Why should they take part in this? They withdrew their forces in 1950 whenever it was 57 58. They don't have anything to do with this issue anymore so they shouldn't be part of this process. So naturally it would take the North Koreans a long time to be convinced that this is what they needed to do. I think right before the proposal April 96 the North Koreans had also been proposing bilateral talks so it seems they were set back a little bit by the four-party proposal again as you mentioned Bob because they weren't sure about why China and South Korea had to be involved right. Phil you were going to say. Yeah so I think the South Korean I mean the North Korean reaction could be really categorized I've heard in many ways confused right. I think Bob is absolutely right. The agreed framework represented I think two different approaches and this is where fundamentally the United States and North Korea kind of missed each other. They were going at two different planes right. North Korea look at the agreed framework really as a relationship right. The possibility of normalization that's how they looked at the agreement framework while the United States looked at strictly as a non-proliferation agreement. So right there you've got a huge disconnect and then what happens is that you get what was called really the language of the announcement itself that came up. The language itself was intentionally made ambiguous and so therefore the North Koreans are saying well what does this actually mean. So if you want to go into the nitty gritty we made it ambiguous so we could you know the South Koreans and the United States made it ambiguous so they could you know there could be some negotiations involved. The South the North Koreans are saying well what does this mean. I mean it was like what's the agenda going to be. The statement said something about they prohibited US and North Korea talking about peace related issues. Well what does that mean right. And then you know what does a peace arrangement or regime what does that mean. So they had all these questions that rightly so and again you have to realize the context. North Korea desperately needed food. The regime was under incredible amount of stress and therefore for North Korea you know for the for North Korea every move politically is an existential decision for them. That's how they looked at it. For us it's like one of 30 things on our plate and therefore that's why you have to expect them to be very cautious about how they go about any kind of major decisions particularly something like this. It's interesting that we thought that we were making it easier for North Korea by making it a little more ambiguous and not too specific but their perception is wait what does this mean right. But I'm glad you brought some of these vague terms like peace regime and peace arrangements because we're going to get to that next. So one of our main aspirations for the Korean peninsula is a peace regime to replace the armistice regime. It's one of the four goals stated in the 2018 Singapore statement. I always thought the first mention of a peace regime was actually in the Six Party Talks 2005 joint statement. But as you point out it was preceded that it was it was brought up at least as early as the four party talks proposal. In fact there were two committees that were one of the few things that was actually agreed upon in four part talks was the idea of the two committees right one for a peace regime and another committee related to tension reduction. So can you talk a little bit I'm addressing this to Phil but can you talk a little bit about these terms the ambiguity how they may have been perceived by the four parties peace regime peace arrangements what were the nuances here. So it's kind of funny the story for me was that Clinton had just been reelected. I had been at the department for about three years at that point. I wanted to do I'd stayed away from North Korea and Korea intentionally but with the second term I wanted to get more involved. So I remember talking to my boss Stanley Roth and I said you know I want to get involved in this North Korea stuff can I can I you know let me know. So he comes back to me and says you're a lawyer right I go yes I am and he goes okay well would they just decided that they're going to have a subcommittee on the peace regime. I want you to be the head you know the the head of that the delegation for that subcommittee. So I remember I remember this distinctly because Bob was one of the first people I went to to say so what is a peace regime right and Bob looks at me goes I don't know it's whatever we decide it's going to be you know and then he gave me all the paperwork that was about you know what the various positions had been and so it was intentionally ambiguous because there had been so much fight about who was going to sign what and how and it had been such a zero-sum game where it was intractable. I mean North Korea said we're only going to sign it with the United States and South Korea said we're only going to sign it with with North Korea and the United States shouldn't be involved in this right. So you know that's a zero-sum situation and so you know being a lawyer if you know good lawyers and I wasn't part of the legal advice legal team at the department but good lawyers can make can be very creative in kind of the arrangement so if you have peace treaty that's one document peace regime means there can be so many structures and the way I looked at me being a business lawyer at that point is you can structure a deal in any way you want to keep the the desired outcomes that you you want to have and there were so many issues related to that was the U.S. ROK Alliance the withdrawal of U.S. troops you know who signs all of these things and so peace regime was a very ambiguous statement to be able to deal with all of those and to make some adjustments according to what was necessary on the ground and I think the South Koreans felt that way as well you know and the Chinese were interestingly and Bob talks about this first the North Koreans were I think a little worried that it was going to be a one-on-three because the Chinese initial position had been well we think you know inter-Korean issues should be you know dealt with between North and South Korea so in fact they were supporting the the South Korean position and was there progress made in the peace regime subcommittee no not really we saw you know it was a lot of a lot of talk a lot of rhetoric a lot of positioning and I think and you know just hearing sort of what you had heard for for many many years before that they were on a very short lease and I think that Chip said it just right where there wasn't a lot of substantive progress because what happened was they wanted a peace treaty signed first and then they thought you know it was sort of typical let's go talk down peace treaty first ended and then we can talk about the other issues the United States was the other way around let's do confidence building a piece of paper is not going to mean anything if nothing changes on the ground so let's work on confidence building the United States was very serious about that but we got nowhere on any of that so again two fundamentally different approaches to this particular problem Phil I'm glad you brought up some of the other ideas that we'll get into like the U.S. Rock Alliance and the U.S. troop presence particularly because if we're talking about treaty that has a specific legal definition and it can be binding have implications for things like troop presence in the Korean Peninsula whereas a regime or piece arrangements is a lot more vague not legally binding and maybe not as threatening to some of our equities at interest so with that said recognizing that there was the peace regime subcommittee there was also the tensions tensions reduction confidence building subcommittee right and then maybe I'll direct this next question to Chip so we have this other subcommittee on tension reduction but I think so throughout the the four party talks this issue about U.S. troop withdrawal was being raised right so North Korea wanted that to be on the agenda U.S. troop withdrawal and I think particularly during the second round in March 1998 of the talks North Korea requested that specifically that U.S. troop withdrawal be put on the agenda of course let me ask the next question is that a quote or was the did they want quote the disposition of U.S. troops they use the word withdrawal I don't I don't think so but I'm not positive actually you guys were there so please clarify I'm going by secondhand sources news articles but again I think the idea of a discussion about U.S. troops being on the agenda was something that North Korea raised at a minimum right right and and I think at some point that seemed to have depressed the momentum for talks with that and there are probably other ideas things that North Korea raised like humanitarian assistance or focusing just on a U.S. DPRK treaty but let's focus right now on the on the idea of U.S. troop withdrawal and that being on the agenda what was the U.S. government's thinking when they heard this sort of counter proposal from the North Korean side again this is the chip I'm I can characterize I think what the what the feeling was inside DOD as I and as I recall in the interminable meetings that Phil and I and others said I'm not sure there was any violent objection to DOD's position from from the other agencies but troop withdrawal very very much at the end of the process and as I think you said earlier Frank just signing a piece of paper doesn't make the facts on the ground change and that's that's exactly where the feeling was a couple things in the background on this during most of the time between 1950 and 1990 the Republic of Korea was not a democracy it was a dictatorship and its forces reflected the the way dictatorships work a lot of a lot of soldiers a lot of cannon fodder not maybe less of less sophistication in their plans than uh comes from democratic governments and militaries from democratic governments the nuclear thing came out of the blue in the early 90s and that started to eclipse all the other issues that were played on the peninsula number one Korea democratized and from my personal observation with a lot of exercises in Korea before they became a democracy and after they became a democracy the proficiency of their armed forces went up very rapidly they had to they had to learn to be able to delegate they had to learn to use use their their junior leaders they did all that the things that we tried to teach them over the years turns out they learned it and learned it better than we thought uh but then the nuclear issue eclipsed everything else uh we and and one of the issues that rarely if ever comes up on this is that North Korea has and check me if my source is wrong box in the intel community but North Korea has over 10 000 pieces of long-range artillery in the case on ice overlooking Seoul and Rand in those days did a series of war games on how long it would take to to reduce this threat to one of the one of the if not the biggest mega center on the planet and the and the findings aren't good so North Korea's capital is exceedingly vulnerable to just conventional fires let alone anything that that comes up in the nuclear arena South North Korea was very smart when they lost the money from the collapse of the Soviet Union they changed things and they really went into creating advantages that could be imposed from long range and 80 percent of their forces are deployed within range of the demilitarized zone and South Korea's forces are not there so we in the Department of Defense were not in favor of withdrawing what looked to us like one of the lynchpins of deterrence against North Korea more a little more complex is an agreement to withdraw US forces that was not agreed to by the South Koreans has a would have the effect of splitting the alliance so this this was a very clever move for North Korea to put on the chessboard and one very very hard for us to us to respond to in any way other than just saying no. Thanks for that background Chippa and just another data point is the transfer of peacetime control over rock forces happened just a few years earlier in 1994 so that threat environment that you painted was absolutely true. Bobby. And that the transfer of peacetime opcon was very significant the the our Korean allies kept telling us we need this we need peacetime opcon we had the same conservatism out of Pentagon that y'all have come to expect and love I'm sure that where we were saying not so fast but study this we studied this we did it and yeah it was the right thing to do now we're still into transfer of wartime opcon and the agreement between the Republic of Korea and the United States is that when conditions are met we will do this and the biggest stumbling block to doing this is the is the command and control structure not the arrangements the arrangements are agreed to once we get the structure in place but the remain but it remains to be seen if and when South Korea is going to devote the resources to build out the command and control structure the the the radios the wires all and other stuff that are needed to control a very very sophisticated command and control arrangement that is not equal anywhere else in the world the combined forces command is a unique beast and what we don't want to do is damage deterrence in the interest of progress to enhance deterrence and done right South Koreans having wartime opcon I think can be done to enhance deterrence but we can't do it in such a sense that it leads us in a less competent position than we are now that's a very salient point thank you chip and certainly it's one of the wartime opcon transfer is one of President Moon's top priorities we're seeing it become a more and more of an issue as it factors into the military exercise and testing South Korea's capability to assume the lead of the combined defense but also in terms of South Korea's own ramp up of their military capabilities because that's one of the conditions for the transfer of wartime opcon acquiring these capabilities right before I go to Bob I saw you have your hand up just a reminder to the audience that if you want to ask a question there's a chat box right beneath the video on the main page Bob let me back up this question of US forces is extremely important and not well understood you mentioned that in January 92 we had our first high-level meeting with the North Koreans which I was sitting in and the North Koreans there told us in so many words that we could keep our troops in Korea until and it was way off in the distance future in the agreed framework talks question of US forces never came up never came up so in 90 and in fact they were telling us behind the scenes yeah you can keep your troops as long as they're not pointed at us you can keep your troops in Korea so in 96 when they asked to put it on the agenda and I recall chip DOD reacted strenuously against that no under no in no uncertain terms it can't go on the agenda and our argument from state was they just needed there so they can demonstrate to Pyongyang that at least something that North Korea wants is wants to talk about is on the agenda subsequently the head of the North Korean delegation took us aside and said I need something on the agenda why won't you let it we're not going to call for us withdrawal but we need something on the agenda to make it look like these meetings actually represent a North Korean interest as well so I think it was it was a misfire on our part and it was a it was a problem within the US government it wasn't really between North Korea and the US before I turn to you just I want to follow up I'm glad you brought that point because there is this equivocation from North Korea you mentioned how they didn't bring it up in that first meeting they I've also read that they didn't bring it up to Kim did he had talks with Kim Jong-il and of course in the recent Trump Kim talks over the last couple years they didn't bring up US troops during that period either right so they bring it up in certain instances they seem to downplay it in other instances it's really hard to understand what North Korea's motivation is of course on one hand it could be the fact that they just want some reciprocity they just want something to be on the agenda that they can take back on the other hand is is it maybe a ploy that once we get it on the agenda then all of a sudden we can't backtrack and now they need to have a deliverable or outcome from that specific and agenda item you can see it both ways right that's why the the wording is important if the wording was the disposition of US forces in Korea that's very vague and allows them to talk both three all three sides of the issue if it's very specifically withdrawal then that's something else too too specific I would say so that's why I'm interested I don't recall exactly what the wording was okay chip I appreciate Bob's point and it could very well have been a lack of sophistication on our part on how to how to play this issue North Korea wanted something on the agenda you and Phil and the other folks that play this diplomatic arena much more than than anybody in the Pentagon does there could have been a backdoor agreement that we're not going to put this on unless it says this and you give us this other thing but we didn't do that and I think it's probably this was this was all still pretty new to all of us at the time on negotiating with North Korea and I think that we didn't we weren't as smart as we thought we were yeah so let me jump in here too just sort of for additional context I think that's right I mean you know it seems like now way we talk about this is that people have to remember that it was on not until like 1992 and really 94 we had really significant interactions with the North Koreans we didn't have a lot at that point so you know everyone can be forgiven for the lack of sophistication to some degree especially throughout the whole bureaucracy it takes a while for that to filter through you can't say that now in the sense where you have a fair amount of interaction although it's you know I think you know most recently it's been more one-sided where we it's been since the six parties more about North Korea saying no all the time and instead of getting to yes okay so that's another set of experiences that I think are important but I also have to say that with North Korea you know it's true the whole the idea was this was about in my mind hypothesis testing right and as Bob says if you structure in the right way you can actually answer your question Frank is this the ruse or isn't it are they're serious or they not if you don't ask the question and if you're not given the freedom to start testing and probing you're not going to get anywhere and so I think that was sort of the argument that we were making on state and you know quite frankly when we're putting together the Perry process trying to talk about whether we address a peace treaty or not and how we go about it there were internal discussions about that as well what would be cleared and what wouldn't be and so to me the bigger picture and I think one lesson learned you know well you'll get to this later is don't be afraid to test hypotheses that's what this is all about and if you don't have that opportunity and you don't learn anything you're not going to get anywhere and I think that the whole relationship with North Korea is a perfect example where we don't we're not learning the lessons that we need to learn from all of this it's interesting because this sort of interaction came up again in 2018 with the discussion about the end of war declaration and what that means there were certainly people conflating an end of war declaration with a peace treaty or a peace regime I think there were reports that the State Department was willing to contemplate that idea DOD was more skeptical again because of the implications for US forces and all that but it's interesting that the same debate recurs again and again real quick question to Chip and then I'm going to go back to another question but sticking with confidence building measures was there any other confidence buildings building measures that DOD was okay with if the discussion of US troops wasn't wasn't kosher so what else could have we talked about in terms of tension reduction we could have talked about a lot more South Korean presence in North Korea the Taesan industrial complex was I thought a pretty neat thing I mean yeah there was a lot to worry about with that but when you think about it we got a lot more people inside North Korea that had never been inside North Korea before and that had to have a positive effect not just on relations but on collection and everything else we could have demanded the more access for aid giving organizations to North Korea we were just coming out of a horrific famine in those days and with an extraordinary number of fatalities and there was reason to believe that we could head off more if that happened one of the things that happens with getting aid giving organizations in there is we're working directly with the North Korean public and even autocratic leaders have to worry at some point about popular support and if we could have made more contact with the Korean population that would do harder things to do would be getting some agreement of North Korea to start withdrawing artillery from the case on heights again it's the nuclear issue that drowns everything out but Seoul is already under an existential threat just from conventional artillery before even adding chemical weapons that are quite likely so there were a lot of things that we could do but as you and Phil may have better memory of this than I do or Bob but I don't remember that we went very far down the road on any other confidence building measures that we might introduce a one famous humanitarian guy Andrew Nazios many of you probably remember him he was in and out of North Korea a lot and the information he brought out of North Korea in his dealings with the North Korean population it just left you slack jawed because he was describing a charnel house and it might be might be cynical but we never exploited that with trying to talk about what North Korea is doing to their own people and I think we could have and we may have been able to gain some leverage out of that I don't know we didn't try it so that's a theory but I'll prove it thank you trip I want to jump to the next question I'll direct it to Phil and Chip but of course Bob you can jump in if you want as well so one of the confusing aspects of this period was that there were a lot of talks going on simultaneously it seems there was the missile talks there were the four-party peace talks there was the discussion about the the facility and then of course we got into the period process later and it's it's hard to sometimes understand unless you were there at the time how these various talks bleed it together were they separate were one in the same did they work at cross purposes so starting with Phil how did these talks relate and did they undermine each other or were they complementary well I have to give great credit to you know I would say Chuck Cartman in terms of keeping all this straight okay I think we had the agree framework and then you had the by you know the grief framework which essentially bilateral in terms of the negotiations and then you had the submarine talks that were between the US and North Korea but after that everything that went forward this is one of the great credits that I give to the the four-party talks the four-party talks were the cover or the platform in which everything else was able to emanate from and was the basis I think in sort of a lot of the discussions that we had and you know we we had these initial kumchang knee talks so that mean part of it was the United States was a free the great framework was going to start falling apart so we started initiating these conversations the missile went over but in the end we were able to use the four-party as a way for us to have these conversations unlike the six-party talks which was really created to in my mind to prevent or to prevent the United States the United States didn't want to talk with North Korea so the six-party talks were put into to create that mechanism here it was a mechanism for us to continue conversations and really in the end for North Korea and South Korea to continue as well so in my mind the you know there are some exceptions here there here and there but the Perry process the missile negotiations kumchang knee the four-party talks were us always going back together again to have that kind of conversation I do remember if I recall I think it was in Beijing we had there were four-party talks but we really didn't have four-party talks it was all bilateral conversations with us you know filling the South Koreans in on what was going on so that's kind of the way I looked at it and again I give great credit to Chuck sort of being the person to make sure all of this sort of fit together I'm glad Phil brought up Chuck Cartman in his role and in retrospect I think he should have been given far more authority on on our side and maybe we would have stayed a little bit more coordinated part of the genesis of the six of the Perry process as I recall was that we were getting a lot of worried sounds out of Japan and South Korea that they had lost track of what we were doing Phil mentioned the rocket that went over hanshu this was an interesting time we were in negotiations with the North Koreans and at the US UN headquarters they were being remarkably cooperative and looked like they wanted a deal and we all including Chuck got suspicious so we broke for the weekend it was scheduled to be two weeks of talks so we broke for the weekend at the end of the first week and that was the weekend when the rocket went over hanshu yeah and Phil may remember this we delayed going back to New York for two full days Monday and Tuesday trying to find authorities in the United States that would change our negotiating instructions silence from our superiors so we went back up to New York with our original negotiating instructions we got a deal in line with our original negotiating instructions and everybody's cell phone blew up on the way to the airport with people yelling at us because we signed the deal well we asked you to change instructions but you didn't um so congress got worried they had a hearing uh in um the national security advisor name will come back in a moment was testifying and he said we're going to start a process we're going to get somebody to run it well who's going to run it well we don't know then all this back and finally he said somebody like a bill Perry bang that was Friday afternoon the gavel comes down everybody goes home bill Perry picks up his weekend newspaper the san jose mercury news and finds he's been named a special envoy to north to the to the Korean party process he comes to Washington next week and he was angry because he'd been ambushed on this nobody told him and he's in that conference from right off of the state department office there he had a bunch of us in there uh Phil I think you were there yeah and uh we all told him in one way or another our allies don't trust us anymore and he said you're wrong flew off to Japan to Seoul came back we're on the same conference room again he's lecturing us saying our allies don't trust us anymore oh I heard that somewhere so we this was not a high point of organization on on on how we were doing North Korea was still a sideshow and uh and still our mono focus was on the North Korean nuclear program not on the overall security situation of northeast Asia and the overall threat that North Korea uh embody not just to South Korea and Japan and everybody but to their own people and uh uh bill Perry tried hard we went to North Korea bearing gifts we had a big trunk full of um you know of medical supplies the North Koreans and Bob knows this this tendency in North Korea is far better than I do but uh the happy sounds happy sounds you're going to get to meet the dear leader you're going to meet the dear leader so for two days they're pumping us up and then the last day they just stone faced no questions nothing answered and it had a psychological effect on those of us in the party that were there with Bill Perry uh that oh my god we failed no you didn't fail this this is North Korea this this is part of the normal process if you can call it a process but it was it was it was high drama and by the way Perry's special assistant along there at the time was asked Carter who then went on to have his own North Korean dream when he came back to the government in a higher position so no good deed goes unpunished with North Korea so we had the Perry process and then by the time we got to 2000 we sort of swept up in summit tree right um or at least there was the inter-Korean summit and then the meeting with uh Madeleine Albright and then the return trip with Vice Marshall Joe um did that just kind of subsumed the the the four-party peace talks I think the loss was in 99 but at that point I think everyone was caught up in the summit tree and the very senior level meetings bob you're shaking your head but you're you're muted it's a good thing I'm muted I've been muttering now look the four-party talks never had a chance it never was going to go anywhere it never got traction it never accomplished anything I can I can tell you after the first meeting and I was Chuck's advisor and I said to Chuck I'll never say this publicly but these will never succeed these are never going to go anywhere and it was it was just clear to me that it couldn't go anywhere Phil is right we used it as an opportunity they have bilateral talks with the North Koreans on other issues but that's that's not that's not that's not much in favor of four-party talks as for coordinating everything I would take a different view one of the problems was the US other than Chuck the US government really didn't have a central point for the policy as far as as I'm concerned he thought the agreed framework talks and what was built out of that should be the center of our policy missile talks were not well conceived were not well plugged in almost accomplished nothing until the end the kumjong need talks were very important but it was because it was a big drain on our intellectual and diplomatic energy we had to get over that so all through this it was a agreed framework the agreed framework was so important because it was not just the the words on paper it was the it was the environment that it created for all sorts of other talks between all different parties all under this umbrella this this atmosphere that the agreed framework had created I think that's important four-party didn't fit into that four-party was badly conceived as Chip and Phil pointed out it was dropped on the bureaucracy no one knew really how to make it work why in the world were the Chinese there only because the South Koreans didn't want it to be three-way talks so it was just an it was a zebra combined with a tiger combined with an ostrich it just couldn't couldn't survive and by 99 this you know the Swiss hosted this thing they paid for a lot of stuff and they used to give us nice croissant during the coffee breaks as we had more and more meetings which weren't going anywhere the croissant got smaller and smaller and smaller so by 99 they were miniscule and to me that was a short sign that this was not going to be picked up on that indicator Bob thank you for that candor I think we're running out of time but I appreciate that pessimism because I feel like you know for those of us who want these types of talks peace talks it gets to that question okay well what can we learn from this period and this is basically the last question to finish up the takeaways and the lessons right because we you talked about the woeful lack of preparation um Phil mentioned the the ambiguous nature of the initial proposal but I'm not even sure if we if we even if we prepared meticulously for the talks even if the the proposal was specific and clear I'm still not sure that North Korea would have responded differently they may still have taken a lot of time to respond they may still have proposed what they wanted to have on the agenda so you know what are the takeaways we talked about all these things that were wrong about it but what can we take from that experience if we ever get to the point in the future where it's appropriate to have these sorts of discussions on normalization and peace I don't know anyone whoever wants to jump in first so let me jump in really quickly one is that I have come to realize that is a fact of nature it is a reality that things are going to get dropped on us no matter what things are going to be conceived for various reasons and so my my lesson learned is expect something like this it's always going to happen and the best thing you do is you make some lemon out of lemon you make lemonade out of lemons and so I kind of disagree with Bob is that I think the four-party talks allowed us to deal with South Korea at least initially in a way that we would it made it easier for us to do that and gave us the platform to where they had some way to interact with the North Koreans to some degree and politically that was good for them I think that one of the lessons I learned from that period is that seemingly intractable positions such as who signs and who doesn't you know troops all of that change and I think that you know I had an argument with someone said that you know country's interests do not change over time yeah that may be the case but I do believe that governments perceptions of what their interests do and I think the art of diplomacy is creating possibilities and ways of ways for people to look at things in a different manner and I think that is from that time to now is a really great demonstration of that and then finally I think what this period shows to me is that you know timing this you know I kind of relate the Perry process as part of that whole area that whole you know it's all one big package is that timing is everything and so when the timing is right you got to go for it and you got to go for really big and and that is an argument for being bold when you can't that's a good point I think we've seen how how things change over time you mentioned you know that we talked about North Korea's you know willingness to engage with South Korea or sit at the same table South Korea and China and I mentioned this earlier but Kim Jong-un one of the statements I can I think it might have been in 2018 he talked about being willing to at some point open it up open up the process from a bilateral usdprk to a multilateral process with China and and South Korea so you're right and you know with more experience they become more acclimated to these different negotiating formats bob chip any other takeaways lessons learned from the four-party talks chip I put a couple of things on the table one one of the questions that came in on chat was whether we crossed the Rubicon of format since the Trump Kim summits no I don't think so we can get back to regular order now so that the staff can do their jobs but what I think one of the things out of the not only the four-party talks but the very process and everything else is that it's okay to be talking to North Korea about de-nuclearization as a matter of fact you should do that but we need to broaden the aperture here which really important what we're really talking about at the root here is the safety and the security of our allies and friends so we need to keep our eye on that and then put it into context so that then we can find some common interest the Russia China South Korea Japan United States to go forward I fear that we hurt our credibility in the United States when we hang everything on one issue of de-nuclearization number one Kim's not going to voluntarily give up his nuclear weapons because without his nuclear weapons he has nothing the number two a candid self-examination what could we offer North Korea as a security guarantee that North Korea would believe they know we change governments every four years every eight anyway and the guarantees of one administration oftentimes don't go into the next administration they know that there's UN study after UN study on North Korea's brutalization of its own population sooner or later the United States wakes up the human rights we're in one of those phases right now where that puts Kim in a very bad light so all of all of which is to say yes talking is good chat chat a job job is better than war war but we've got to make sure that we're addressing the right objectives and putting things in the right context and not putting everything on something that I've come to believe is not going to happen we have a little less than 15 minutes left so I want to get to the audience questions but Bob any any thoughts on takeaways let's get to the audience I think that'll be useful yeah okay so Chip referred to the first question which gets to the format of the talks we recently we had the precedent set of the leader to leader level summit so the question is have we now crossed the Rubicon in terms of format since the Trump Kim summits can we go back to a multilateral format that's initiated by working level talks and should we go back to the format so you know two different questions here one is you know bilateral four-party six-party multilateral and then also going from working level to more senior levels any thoughts on on those format questions and I will address it to Bob first I don't think multilateral works with North Korea certainly not going in not until quite a bit has been established we saw with keto that you can have multilateral talks with the North Koreans very useful ones but it's a very particular type of format talking about a very specific type of issue broader talks in a multilateral setting seems to me is just asking for trouble so my view is those don't work very well that has nothing to do with the summit yes it's a good thing Trump opened that door it means we can get back to it more easily when it's the proper time it isn't the proper time now obviously and we got a lot of work to do before it will be don't forget Kim Kim Jong-un is not going to risk his reputation again going into a summit with an American president and coming out with nothing so I think he's going to want to see a likelihood of progress as much as we are so I'll jump in I think it's a version of all of the above I think that multilateral at the beginning is not helpful it is incredibly unwieldy four-party talks just you know three of us can remember this I mean oh my god right translations everyone's saying something it just was it is interminable forever and that's what ship was they get a book right there's something to be said for that but that's not to say that at a later stage multilateral will not be critical because I do think that if we're serious about creating a security environment if we believe that North Korea ultimately wants security it's just not going to rely on the United States word or South Korea's word there's got to be other people involved and that will have to happen at some stage I do also credit Trump with this notion of symmetry but it has to be combined smartly with working level and I think that's been the problem all along where at least the previous the with with Trump and Bush and Obama it was one or the other and what I what what I mean by that is Trump was all symmetry and nothing working level and I think the Bush years in particular was all working level and no taste of cemetery or high level which also made it very difficult so it's got to be a combination of both ship any thoughts Trump was not the first and not the only American politician to think that somehow a personal relationship can be established across cultures across countries with bone deep differences we had some of that during the Clinton administration and that brings me back to what I said it probably too much length before but we need to keep our eye on the price here it's the safety and security of our allies and friends the nuclear weapons to North Korea are part of it but they're only a part of it and we can multilateralize the process but that's got to be but it's got to be part of a bigger process we got other things to talk about with Russia the North Korea but that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about North Korea with them same thing with China and put this thing into into context our other remedies like sanctions that prove it to be a failure once one after another we impose a set of sanctions when we get tired of negotiations agreements and cheating on agreements and North Korea always finds a way to work around the sanctions fairly easily the again that's we have there's a bigger issue here that we need to tackle instead of continuing to embarrass ourselves by focusing on mission impossible by itself thanks ship it seems to me that you know the path of least resistance for North Korea has been the bilateral level talks and so I like the idea of combining the formats where you start with bilateral to get North Korea on board and then as things develop you bring in different players as necessary according to their interests so from the bilateral 204 party eventually six party and internationalizing it as the as the needs rise so the next question I want to raise relates to an end of war declaration so last week there was the House Armed Services Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee had a hearing and Representative Andy Kim raised the question about the possibility of declaring an end to the Korean War he asked of General Abrams who basically said it's you know end of war declaration is not a problem from a military standpoint but it has to be part of a bigger plan Secretary Blinken had more of a political response basically saying well we need to review the issue further right but what are your thoughts on an end of war declaration as a part of the process to kick off a negotiation further negotiations with North Korea and anyone can jump in but I will direct it to Bob first if no one else jumps in okay the it seems to me that people should go back to the October 2000 joint communique which is a sort of a pathway to that we said that both countries will avoid it's either hostile policies or right to exist yeah toward the other the next step from that can be the era of the Korean War is over now that sounds soft and in sort of goofy but it's not because it allows both sides to take a number of steps under an umbrella of a of a transformed situation and still have in front of them the problem of moving from the armistice to the peace regime but it gives it impetus it allows both sides to agree that they're going to be serious about this they're going to go slowly and a lot of the other things that have been attached to the Korean War such as a lot of the US sanctions which date back to them can be dealt with without any sense of contradicting their their central policies so I think we can go at this step by step I think it's a good idea so my view is you know again just the devil's in the details and all this is just simply just saying it um you know I you know there's a part of me that wants to again hypothesis tests with the North Koreans one of their big talking points has always been the reason why they have nuclear weapons the reason why they have so many troops is because they're in a state of war with the United States we're the enemy etc etc etc so it seems to me that um you know if that's the impediment is there a way in which we can get rid of that impediment to see if they're really genuine about what they want to do or not I mean intellectually there's there's you know one can say well you know you can see you know if you look at their perspective they're saying why should we give this up when we're still enemies right so let's let's test that so in principle I don't think it's a bad idea but you know with a simple declaration you know I can see where they're going to say well you know we still have the armistice you know you get into all these other issues here right we still have the armistice it's a ceasefire we're still in a state of war so you've got to formally end this state of war I think and you know the mechanism for that has to be thought through but that's what I would be looking at thank you and then uh let's go to our last question which is on US troop withdrawals we talked about this earlier and Chip had a lot of great points about it so 2021 we're in a different situation South Korea's defense and deterrence capabilities have been enhanced incredibly certainly over the last decade they have a very capable and competent military and they've been acquiring additional capabilities including things like F-35s Apache helicopters they're developing their own indigenous Korean fighter they're talking about acquiring iron dome not to mention their extended ballistic missile the range of their ballistic missiles as well as enhanced payloads so they're taking a lot of steps and as well as their ballistic missile defense right not only the US deployment of that but their own gem T systems now that South Korea's military has grown stronger and the US military should be looking at our fourth posture not in terms of just numbers but also capabilities and what the mission is not only in the Korean Peninsula but in the region can we uh readdress the issue of the US fourth posture on the Korean peninsula uh certainly we're not going to raise it if North Korea doesn't um it's it's not that much of a concern for us but how do we think about the fourth posture issue today differently from 20 years ago and I'll go to uh chip first for this one there has been over time a gradual decrease in the mathematical number of troops on the peninsula uh the latest figure that I knew was 28,500 and it became almost a religious totem that we had to be there every day it even raised political issues if we had to over want to take a squadron on their air combat proficiency um so there is so there is that force there is there is one US element on the DMZ and that's the second infantry division the famous Indian head division it's got 10,000 US troops it's got 1100 Korean troops as part of that but the vast majority of the third rock army and the first rock army that is guarding the northern approaches to South Korea are all obviously Korean uh so it's not um it's not like there are force US forces poised on the DMZ to invade North Korea which invading somebody through the most fortified border in history of the planet is not really a good idea the vast majority of the 28,500 that we have there on the peninsula are other than combat troops engineers communications logistics maintenance air force at Osan air base and and this so can we make adjustments to it yes we make adjustments to it over time the next big adjustment is going to be the transfer of opcon control that we talked about earlier but that's uh the both sides agree both the Koreans in the US agree the conditions have to be met and and then we'll do that um the uh North Korean myth that the United States is poised uh in the starters blocks to invade North Korea is absolutely not true uh we're there to defend the Republic of Korea and that we we don't emphasize that enough as far as the declaration of end of war and things that we talked about you can develop over time a long list of conditions that should be met under that end of war principle one of which is to get rid of the cocked pistol posture of the North Koreans on the on the border with South Korea I think South Korea would agree with that too not to mention the periodic provocations that occur and they've been they've been deadly in the past and what does an end of war declaration mean in terms of like the sinking of the China nor the attack in the joint security area that the kill two US troops or the ones that that were mentioned earlier about the EC 121 number shot down the seizure of the Pueblo and things like that what how do we treat that under if we've signed an end of war declaration and what does it say about an end of war declaration so all good questions um yeah Frank you know again US troops disposition all of that I mean you know you you can't that's that's one narrow slice of the geography right I mean there's a larger issue here between the United States and China um and I think Korean the Korean Peninsula northeast Asia has to figure highly prominently into that and part of that has to you know um that kind of conversation you know engenders a lot you know much larger issues here that have to be considered and considered carefully and I think that ultimately within that context one has to figure out what the rationale would be for a for US troops and I think there is one but you know that's something that has to be articulated has to be articulated very clearly not only for the Chinese and the South Koreans and others in East Asia but for the American public themselves and that's something that's um you know I think has to be well thought through thanks so I want to give Bob the last word before we end this session so Bob it's useful to go back as you said 25 years and see if we can pull any um any meaning out of what went on I think most of the lessons are negative ones but that's fine nothing wrong with negative lessons if it helps you avoid getting into the same swamp the situation is so different now Kim Jong-un is a completely different cat than his father was we have very little experience unfortunately uh in dealing with him or understanding him and so that's going to have to be job one the reconnaissance uh to figure out what he wants what he thinks how he works we made a stab at that in in uh 2018 2019 but we fell backwards and we have to recover I think a lot of that ground before we can really launch into uh substantive engagement thanks Bob and so um I'll end it here I want to thank uh all of our speakers for contributing their thoughts and I apologize for making them reach back 25 I can barely remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday and so coming back 25 years and dusting off the folders I I really appreciate I also want to thank um our AV team and my colleague Lucy Steemus and Yang for helping put the event together thank you so much for joining us and thank you again to the speakers as well take care thank you Frank