 and welcome to lecture number four in our online version of the issues in National Security Lecture Series. I'm Professor John Jackson, and I will be the master of ceremonies once again for today's event. We're very pleased to have the president of the Naval War College, Admiral Chatfield with us online, and I'd like to give her the opportunity to extend her greetings. Admiral. Thank you so much, Professor Jackson. I'm here with my husband, David Scoville, and we are delighted to share this time in the issues in National Security Affairs and looking forward to a wonderful presentation this evening. Thank you again for joining us, and I'd like to pass the microphone over to my husband, David. Great, thank you all for joining us again. This is becoming sort of the new Primal Hall, and we welcome it, and it's just wonderful how many people are tuning in with us each Tuesday, so look forward to this one on North Korea. And I just wanted to remind most of the spouses you may want to stay for the benefits partner section at the end, because we have a couple people from MWR here to give us some updates for spouses and families, and one will be Dean Wyden, the director of MWR, and he'll give us an update on what to expect over the coming weeks. And then additionally, we have Pamela Martin, who is our school liaison officer, and her job will be to bring you a brief on what's going on with, what the kids will be doing in the upcoming months. So feel free to please ask questions and bring out your best, and make sure that you get your questions answered because it's a wonderful opportunity to speak with those two people. We wanna thank them both for joining us today. Great, Admiral, and David, thank you very much. As we've done over the past several weeks, while we hear from our guest speaker, you're invited to send in questions using the Zoom chat function. We'll gather these questions and relay them to the speaker during the question and answer period. Let's turn now to today's topic, the North Korea problem solved or managed. North Korea is often in the news, and I'm sure you all remember the incredible focus on that country that happened several weeks ago when it appeared that the Korean leader might be ill. Well, we're gonna hear about that and more today from Professor Terry Broering, who is a faculty member in the National Security Affairs Department and as Director of the College's Asia Pacific Studies Group. He has been a research fellow at the Kennedy School at Harvard University, both in the international security program and with the project on managing the atom. He is the past president of the Association of Korean Political Studies. He's published numerous books, articles, and book chapters on Korea and East Asia security issues. Dr. Oric, stand by to be Zoomed. It's yours, sir. Thank you very much for that kind introduction. Let me share the screen first. There, we're all set. Well, as John suggested, I thought two or three weeks ago we might be starting this session with a scavenger hunt to see if we could find Kim Jong-un, but that has been taken care of at least for the time being. He has not been seen for a little over two weeks again, but I think it's a good reminder that we have to be very careful when we jump into the rumor mill on some of these issues. But it did raise some questions about the succession story, which I will touch on a little bit later. As you notice, my title slide is a little different from what I had initially proposed, but essentially in the same general area. And that is when you look over the last several years, 2016, 2017, things were pretty tense on the Korean Peninsula. And there were some very clear indicators that we might be headed towards possible conflict. Then suddenly 2018 happens and we have summits breaking out all over. And there is a reduction in tension and a possible hope that there might be a solution to the denuclearization problem. And yet now clearly for the last year or so, the process has stalled and may remain stalled for the next while here. And so where are we? What comes next? That's what I'd like to address today along with some other topics. So my agenda for today is to first start with a little bit of an overview about North Korean politics, then to talk about the nuclear weapons issue and what they have, what their strategy and doctrine may be in regards to nuclear weapons. And then to end up with the diplomatic process and to talk about how we've gotten to the point we're at now and what might be the possibilities for the future. So let me begin with a brief look at the current politics in regards to North Korea. It's hard to believe that Kim Jong-un has actually been in power now for a little over eight years, how time flies. As he started his reign in 2011, as you see on the slide, when his father Kim Jong-il passed away, leadership likely looked like that photo that you see on the left of the funeral procession of Kim Jong-il. You see Kim leading on the left, his uncle, John Sung-Tek. Of course, he has another story that I'll finish up in just a minute and some of the other civilian leaders on the left-hand side of the hearse, on the right-hand side, the key military leaders. Over this eight years, Kim Jong-un has solidified his position by taking on all the chief positions, by purging a lot of individuals and consolidating his power in that I would argue he is very firmly in control. Whenever we have these sort of succession discussions that you had over the last couple of weeks when Kim was absent, you had all sorts of speculation about instability in the regime. I think that is not necessarily warranted. I think he seems to be clearly in power and the regime seems to be stable. Part of how he has done that is through purging. The military guys on the right-hand side that you see are all removed from their position. Jang Song-taek is another interesting position. He is the one immediately to Kim Jong-un's rear there as he was removed in December of 2013, purged and within a week was executed. And what is significant about that is he certainly was a high-profile individual in the North Korean regime, but he also was Kim Jong-un's uncle, not by blood, but by marriage as Jong-un was married to Kim Jong-il's sister. But nonetheless, it's sent a very clear message that even if you are a relative of Kim Jong-un, if you become too powerful economically, politically, that that is not going to shield you from removal and execution as a threat to Kim Jong-un's power. Then in February of 2017, Kim Jong-un's half-brother was killed in Kuala Lumpur Airport. As there you see a picture on the left of him slumped over after two women where we think duped by North Korean agents to put VX agent in a rag over his face while he was in the airport, barely made it out of the airport before he died. Picture of him in much better condition there to the right. But again, Kim Jong-nam was believed to be potentially a threat to Kim Jong-un as a potential person if Kim Jong-un was ever to be ousted. And so Kim Jong-nam removed from any sort of threat. So again, through all the different purges and other aspects of this, and purges are not unusual in communist successions, dictator successions, Kim Jong-un has done a lot to remove the people who were in positions of authority that owed those positions to his father, replaced them with people, and we see a younger generation of people as well who owe their positions to him and has fairly successfully cemented his position. So again, I think he is clearly in power and has consolidated that power. But again, with his disappearance, there were some interesting discussions again about what happens if Kim Jong-un passes away and there is a need to transfer power. And we had some interesting discussions here about what that succession might look like. And while it may not again be something imminent, this certainly is going to happen eventually and how this plays out is interesting. And so some of the people that were raised as a possibility. One is Kim Jong-un, who is Kim Jong-un's sister, who is believed to be a very trusted confidant of Kim Jong-un, but her key drawback is gender and family ties being a member of the Kim family is crucial in North Korea as of course the three leaders of North Korea have all been grandfather, father and now grandson. She has the right bloodline, but is her gender going to be an issue? In other words, is North Korea going to be ready for its first woman leader? Another individual who surfaced surprisingly in this discussion was Kim Pyong-il, who is the half brother of Kim Jong-il. Again, Kim Jong-un's deceased father. He is a retired diplomat who has returned to North Korea. His name has now suddenly surfaced as a potential successor. Another individual is Kim Jong-chul, who is Kim Jong-un's older brother. He does have a position in the government but does not have apparently any aspirations to power. That's probably a good thing for his health. He has already been passed over for leadership by Kim Jong-un as Kim Jong-chul would have normally been at least one of the people given the importance of age and seniority, but his father Kim Jong-il did not believe he had the moxie to be the next leader of North Korea and so was already passed over and is unlikely to be the next leader. Should something sudden happen to Kim Jong-un? And of course, given Kim Jong-un's health, the weight he has put on, he is a smoker, he is a heavy drinker, he has a history of heart issues within his family. You know, if something sudden would happen, you know, that could be the issue that brings this on. But one other possibility is that you might have rule at least temporarily by a party and military committee or to borrow the old Latin American phrase, a junta, that might rule in the stead of some specific Korea successor, at least in transition to some other Kim family member be anointed to be the next leader if Kim Jong-un were to pass away. But again, all of these things remain hypothetical. It is not clear how a succession story would progress, but again, it didn't happen this time, but one never knows when something could happen to Kim Jong-un in the future. Let me now turn to the military side of this. And I always like to start with this slide because we get so focused on the nuclear issues and forget about the conventional military pieces to Korean security. And so as you peruse some of these numbers, let me point out a couple that I think are very important. And some of these numbers are very interesting that look like North Korea has major advantages, but there are some very serious asterisks behind some of these different numbers. First of all, the 1.2 million soldiers in the North Korean military. That is the fourth largest military in the world on a per capita basis. That puts North Korea at number one. Our estimates are that they spend about 25% of their GDP on defense. So that is very, very high. When you look at some of the numbers under that, the tanks and combat aircraft, while those numbers are certainly eye catching, a number of those airframes and tanks are old Soviet models that would have a difficult time going against Korean, a South Korean and US aircraft and tanks. They also lack fuel and spare parts that would make it difficult for them to sustain combat operations. So there are some difficult issues in that regard. When you look at the ships, North Korea has again a number that is significantly more than South Korea, but a lot of those ships are older coastal patrol vessels. They also have the geographic problem of having to split their fleet on two different coasts. And if there was ever a war, they would have a difficult time uniting any of that for any sort of concentration of forces. Two numbers though that are significant and that is the artillery and the multiple rocket launcher system numbers. When you look at the map on the left, the black dots on the North Korean side are the North Korean artillery and rocket launcher positions and the bigger gray circles are the ranges that they have. If you look at their ranges, they overlap the metropolitan area of Seoul. That is a very serious threat that the North Koreans can present for South Korean security. The submarines, 73 submarines. Again, a lot of those are old, but there is advantage in numbers in this particular regard. And plus my understanding from talking to submarine folks in the Yellow Sea that those North Korean submarines would operate. Anti-submarine warfare in that area is very difficult because of all the civilian traffic that's there, as well as the shallowness of that area. And so there are some challenges there that the North Korean submarine fleet would be able to pose. So I think when you look at some of the age of these systems, fuel and spare parts, that raises some important concerns and asterisks again about the North Korean military capability, its readiness, its ability to sustain combat operations that I think are important to keep in mind when you look at some of these numbers. One other piece to this that I wanna add that shows some of the readiness concerns. This picture comes from November of 2017. And what you don't see in this picture is that is a North Korean soldier trying to defect across the DMZ. There are a lot of bullets flying at that guy. He makes it across, but when he is examined by South Korean doctors, in addition to removing a couple of bullets, they also find that he had seven to eight tapeworms in him. That is another indication of perhaps how well-fed, how ready the bulk of the North Korean military is if this guy has tapeworms in him. But again, an important element to remember as you are thinking about North Korean military readiness. So to the nuclear weapons piece and ballistic missile capability. North Korea has conducted six nuclear weapons tests the latest in September of 2017. And that test we believe was likely of a hydrogen bomb. Estimates are that they may have 30 to 45 warheads. Estimates of course, because North Korea does not report those numbers, but it is based on our estimates of what sort of fissile material they may have and their capabilities. They may have fissile material for another 30 to 60 warheads. But again, these are estimates. Their nuclear weapons come from two sources, reprocess plutonium from their old research reactors that they have, as well as enriched uranium. You see in the lower left there a picture of what a uranium enrichment facility looks like. We think they may have one or two facilities of a thousand to 2,000 centrifuges that can enrich uranium and provide a secondary source to nuclear weapons. North Korea has gone with ballistic missiles as its primary source of delivery vehicles. They have about 500 short-range scud missiles that cover most of the Korean Peninsula. They have 150 to 200 medium-range No-Dong missiles that can cover almost all of Japan. They also have been working on longer-range ICBMs. And the most recent test that they have done in November of 2017 is of the system that you see in the middle there, the Hwasong-15 missile, which the missile folks, when they saw that, were pretty impressed with the size of that missile and the capability that it had. And it demonstrated that it likely can reach the United States. Now, the question is whether they have been able to weaponize a warhead to fit on these long-range missiles. They likely for sure can do it on the short-range and medium-range missiles. But it's not clear whether they have been able to do that for the longer-range missiles because the technology and the challenge is just that much more difficult. Now, there are some scientists and estimates that argue they have been able to do that, but others that say that capability may still be uncertain. But nonetheless, if you can demonstrate perhaps a five to 10% capability that some of these things might work, that may be close enough to generate the deterrence effect that you're looking at. One of the other interesting elements is North Korea is also working on a possible submarine launch ballistic missile system. And they have released some pictures, I believe in the lower right-hand side there, you see a picture of a new submarine under construction. This, I believe, was released in November. If you look closely at the people in the foreground there, the man in the gray jacket is Kim Jong-un. So when Kim shows up to observe some of these different programs, that's a sign of the emphasis that the regime is putting towards these programs. But there had been some recent reports that North Korea may be getting closer than we think to having an operational ballistic missile submarine. Now, certainly not something that is likely to be akin to one of the US boomers that's going to have 20 tubes. It may only have one or two vertical launch tubes. But nonetheless, again, if they can put a submarine out to sea, that is significant. But again, their ability to do that, to be able to conduct deterrence patrols with a submarine, a lot still remains to be seen. They also released a picture in the far right there of a ballistic missile test. The missile didn't travel very far, but it was not of a submarine actually launching the missile. It was a platform submerged to be able to demonstrate and test that system. So they're still working on it and we shall see how far along and when they get to this submarine capability. So when you look at all of these things, what might North Korea's strategy and doctrine be in regards to nuclear weapons? Or phrased another way, how will they use, how did they think about using nuclear weapons? And of course, there's a good deal of speculation to this North Korea doesn't publish formal documents about this and there are some differences of opinion about this. But let me lay out what I think are a couple of different elements to what are likely to be North Korea's approach to nuclear weapons. First of all, I think most importantly, their nuclear capability is about deterrence. It has become a fundamental element of their regime survival strategy that they believe they need nuclear weapons to ensure that they are not going to be the victim of a regime change operation. And North Korean negotiators often point to Libya, to Iraq and suggest that if those countries had nuclear weapons, they would still be around. And so deterrence, the ultimate nuclear weapons, the ultimate deterrent to protect the Kim family regime. What about North Korea using nuclear weapons in any sort of offensive first strike? I think that is highly unlikely because I think North Korea understands if they are going to do that, the gloves come off, the international community will be largely united to end this security problem once and for all. And I think North Korea knows that that this would be the end of the North Korean regime. However, if the regime ever felt like its back was against the wall and had very few other options to secure the regime, I think then all options are on the table and they would not hesitate to use a nuclear weapon in any sort of context if they felt it was absolutely necessary to secure the survival of the Kim family regime. Let me also touch upon two other aspects of what some have argued or raised as a possibility for North Korea having nuclear weapons. And the first goes back to a concept that was first generated during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. And that is an issue or a term known as the stability instability paradox. And as a paradox, it was this notion that the United States and the Soviet Union both had so many nuclear weapons that could bomb each other into oblivion. Neither side had any interest and such in escalating a conflict to a strategic nuclear level because of the results. And so what that did was create this paradox that since that was the case, then it freed up both the US and the Russians to conduct operations and shenanigans, if you will, at lower levels with some degree of confidence that they would stay at that level because neither side wanted to escalate to nuclear weapons. In a North Korean context, does that mean that North Korea sees nuclear weapons as sort of the ultimate backstop allowing it to conduct increased lower level provocations for those of you who study Korean politics and security think in 2010 when the Cheonan was sunk or when the islands were shelved, that nuclear weapons would allow the North Koreans to feel they could take on much more risk in this direction and conduct more of these operations knowing that no one would wanna escalate to nuclear weapons. I think that certainly is a possibility but I'm not sure that North Korea is going to necessarily go in that direction nor has it necessarily gone in that direction since 2010. And since it has acquired a nuclear capability but it certainly bears watching. One other related point to this that I think is crucial and that is an argument that some make about North Korea may use its nuclear weapon to coerce reunification that they will somehow lay down the gauntlet to the South and threaten nuclear use unless you agree to reunify with the North in a single United Korea under our leadership. I think that is highly unlikely to ever happen. First of all, what are the scenarios that North Korea could successfully pull off to make that happen and not have that go badly and South Korea is not going to roll over and let that happen. And secondly, even if North Korea could somehow get that to occur, how does it go about integrating a country like South Korea that is twice its size economically so much more advanced and an economy much larger than it and a democracy and think they're going to be able to maintain control of that and not have that go badly. I think the North Koreans understand that I think nuclear weapons is about maintaining the North Korean regime and maintaining coexistence of the two Korean regimes. But again, there is some disagreement about that. Some would argue that that is not necessarily the way to look at that, but I think that is the logic conclusion of logical conclusion of how this plays out. So let me now turn to the nuclear weapons situation and how have we gotten to the situation we are now? What's the likelihood of any sort of progress in regards to denuclearization? And let me back up to 2017 because we have to set the table a bit here for this. So in some respects, we start in January of 2017 when Kim Jong-un announces in his annual New Year's address that North Korea is close to perfecting its ballistic missile capability that can reach the United States and of course by implication with a nuclear weapon. President Trump is already elected by this time and he tweets out this response that it ain't gonna happen, that the United States will not allow North Korea to develop a nuclear capability that can reach the United States. Well, Kim's response was okay, I will test you on that and you can see this graph here that shows the amount of testing, first of all, overall that happened during Kim Jong-un's time. But in 2017, 2016, the extensive ballistic missile testing that happened in regards to building its program. You may recall in August as this tension level is building, President Trump, I believe this was at a luncheon at Mar-a-Lago, gave the famous fire and fury quote that North Korea better watch itself and better back off and of course tensions continue to rise. Kim Jong-un matches that rhetoric and such with action on September, or in September, excuse me, he conducts that sixth nuclear test that I mentioned earlier and likely a hydrogen bomb test that was significantly larger than any of the nuclear tests the United States had conducted prior to that. And then in November of 2017, he conducted again, remember that test of the long range Hwasong-15 test. And so we were set for a pretty tense 2018 as these things were starting to escalate. And if you recall back in these months of 2017, there was some no-kitting discussions about the possibility of war on the Korean Peninsula. Enter 2018 and I'm sorry, let me back up. I should set the scene a little bit before I jump to all the summits. Enter 2018, Kim Jong-un in the 2018 New Year's address offers an olive branch to South Korea in particular and South Korea has the Olympics coming up. He says we are interested in possibly exploring dialogue with the South. We have completed our testing. We now have the capability we are looking for. We'd like to participate in the Olympics and let's possibly explore dialogue. And from there we go to what you see here is a plethora of summits in 2018. Summits breaking out all over in 2018 and 2019. I won't review all of these, but the first one that got on the table on the schedule if you will was in the middle of the April 2018 meeting between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un. But once that got scheduled, Kim immediately went to China and had two summits with Xi Jinping to patch up some pretty rough North Korea-China relations at the time. And then of course in June of 2018 we had the summit meeting in Singapore followed by another one in Hanoi and then you see the picture on the left where Trump, Kim and Moon met at the DMZ in June of 2019 for an impromptu meeting for, it was a very short amount of time where President Trump happened to be in South Korea at the time and suggested how about a meeting with Kim as long as I'm in the neighborhood. And so you see the three of them. The fun part about this for me for many years when I would give presentations about all this, I had to Photoshop these pictures but now I actually had real photos of these people together and we had a number of different meetings in this regard. But these summit meetings didn't accomplish a lot at least in regards to denuclearization. They did accomplish a lot in lowering tension levels. Moon and Kim have had a number of different efforts to try to have some joint economic projects. They have reduced tensions along the DMZ and conducted several different gestures in that regard. But as far as denuclearization, not a lot has necessarily happened. We had one other meeting of note last October, 2019. There was a working group meeting, not a summit meeting between the leaders in Stockholm, Sweden to try to work on the details of these meetings because one of the interesting parts of this is typically when you have from the United States side when you look at the left-hand meetings there, when you have a summit meeting like this, you have lower-level working groups of the technocrats who know the nuclear issues, they work out the details, they have a rough agreement in place and you bring the major leaders to the table to find the final document. That was apparently not working very well and so President Trump decided let's sort of flip that routine and let's have a summit meeting to meet first and hopefully we can work out the details. That hasn't worked out well either and so we have not had somewhat argue any progress at all towards denuclearization and the process has stalled. And so this stalled dialogue where we are at currently, right after the February meeting in Hanoi, Kim laid out a marker last April that said the United States has till the end of the year to change its attitude, to be more flexible in its approach to North Korea, reduce its hostile policy. In particular, the flexible piece for North Korea has been a reduction of the economic sanctions that have been in place. Kim really wants those lifted. As we got closer to the end of the year, we had a number of North Korean officials who started to weigh in and say that the United States has not shown any progress, that they have not been flexible, talks are done unless the United States changes its opinion. North Korea is losing its patience and then of course there was the famous eye-catching phrase that one North Korean official said, it is up to the United States to determine what Christmas gift it's going to get this year. If you don't want to get coal in your stocking, they didn't say that part, but the United States needs to reduce its hostile policy and so it was up to the United States to determine what sort of Christmas gift it would get. And of course it didn't take long for many to come up with all sorts of interesting portrayals of that online. I remember the photo of Kim on a horse earlier. Someone did a nice Photoshop here. Of course the Christmas gift was believed to likely be a missile test, particularly a long range missile test that would get the United States attention. That has not happened. He has conducted a lot of short range missile tests, which has been very concerning to Japan and South Korea, but not for the United States. But at the end of the year, Kim held a very impromptu party meeting as well. And at the conclusion of this party meeting laid out what may have been a sort of new direction for North Korea policy. And that is that essentially he was giving up on any sort of possible relaxation of economic sanctions by the United States. This was going to be a long struggle. So North Koreans be ready to tighten your belts. This is not going to end anytime soon. We're going to continue to work on our weapons development. He also said that we are no longer bound by the moratorium that he had informally concluded with President Trump on not testing any nuclear weapons and long range ballistic missile systems. And then interestingly, he said, if the United States persists, there is never going to be a possibility of denuclearization. The if is an interesting possibility because some wonder, does that mean there is still a possibility that North Korea might be willing to denuclearize if the United States changes its position or is that simply a suggestion in regards to trying to keep this process going? And so this takes us to where we are currently and what is the likelihood that we move forward in any sort of possible direction? I would suggest that there are four key elements to watch as we go forward as possible variables to see where denuclearization might possibly go in the next months or years. First of all, is the result of the US presidential election that is coming up. It is very clear that one of the key drivers in this whole process has been President Trump's personal relationship that he feels he has with Kim Jong-un. The dialogue has been put on hold certainly because of the election and add COVID-19 to that as well. So we will have a delay, certainly until the end of the election and after the inauguration. If President Trump is reelected in 2021, there is a possibility that there is a renewed effort by the administration to try to restart the dialogue with Kim. But if Joe Biden is elected, then it could be a very different circumstance. Biden has indicated that he has been critical of President Trump's approach, that he has felt that Trump has reached out to North Korea in ways that have not been helpful and hasn't gotten anything for this. He has said he would be open to dialogue with Kim Jong-un, but would be much tougher. A Biden presidency would no doubt be very different and would be viewed very differently by North Korea than a continued Trump presidency. But again, this is certainly one of the key variables. The second one is the goal of denuclearization. And this is a key element of this whole process. Denuclearization as a goal is what is clearly the driving goal for this process. And yet, I think if you asked most North Korea analysts, they would argue the likelihood of achieving denuclearization is very, very slim if a possibility at all. Yet, everybody still holds to the goal of denuclearization. And this gets at something I've often referred to as the goals dilemma in regards to denuclearization. If the goal of denuclearization is difficult to reach and perhaps impossible to reach, if you can't reach a goal, you would change it. Except changing the goal is very difficult in this particular context because of these security implications, of the implications it has for the broader nonproliferation policies of the United States, of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in general, to simply sort of accept North Korea as a nuclear weapon state and move on. Critics would argue has some very serious implications for nonproliferation in general and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, essentially sending a message to other would-be proliferators, certainly Iran, but potentially others. You know, you can go nuclear, the United States and others are going to get angry for 10 years, but eventually they get over it and they will accept you as a nuclear weapon state. And so the importance of maintaining denuclearization as a goal, still relatively high. But yet others would also argue that if you really want to achieve this goal, the only way you're gonna get to it is taking out the North Korean regime, either fomenting a collapse of North Korea or some sort of military operation, but yet the costs of that are significantly high. And does anyone really wanna take that on? So when you look at this, you've got a goal that you can't reach, but you can't change. And if you really wanted to reach the goal, the costs are too high that no one really wants to take that on. The goal's dilemma. Well, so what happens when the United States and South Korea and others eventually give up on denuclearization? I don't think that's going to happen for a while and I think we will continue to try to pursue this, but it's going to be sort of a finessing of that goal. But what follows? Is there sort of a de facto accommodation of North Korea? Does it essentially become looked at like another Pakistan? Or is there some sort of return to the pressure that we had in 2016, 2017? You ratchet up sanctions, threaten military action, et cetera. The answer to that is going to have a key role here. Another key variable is going to come in 2022 and that is the South Korean presidential elections. Moon Jae-in was elected in 2017 in a special election. The South Korean constitution does not allow reelection. He can only run for a single five-year term. He is on the liberal side of the political spectrum on the progressive side as the North South Korean label goes. South Korean politics have typically been sort of in 10-year cycles that when you elect a conservative, there are two conservatives elected, so two five-year conservative presidents. Moon Jae-in is the first progressive liberal president. So history would indicate that there would be another progressive who would likely be very pro-engagement with North Korea. But if it's a conservative who is elected to the Blue House, which is the South Korean version of the White House, we could have a very different context because while Moon Jae-in has been pro-engagement with North Korea, conservatives have been very concerned, very critical of his approach, arguing that he has gone too far, too fast, in trying to reach out to North Korea and try to change inter-Korean relations. So if it's a conservative elected, we could have a very clear change in South Korea's position and that's going to affect where this all goes. Then lastly, of course, what is North Korea's response going to be to all of this? And let me throw out perhaps two possible extremes, if you will, to this. First of all, might you argue that North Korea returns to what some would argue is its typical posture, that it is going to return to a very provocative stance, it is going to conduct more testing, it is going to try to get attention back to its concerns and its issues, try to coerce in particular against sanctions relief by provocative behavior. And so we will see that sort of return, perhaps after the 2020 election to see if Trump has reelected or not and if diplomacy has a chance. Or perhaps another interesting possibility is, is it that the possibility North Korea may actually seek to moderate its position based on this argument? That could you argue that Kim Jong-un may actually be trying to sort of change the narrative from this provocative North Korea to one that is more of a notion that North Korea can be a responsible nuclear weapons state that can be accepted in the international community in that way, that if it decides to test again like it did in 2016, 2017, it is simply going to recreate all of the ire and all of the pressure on North Korea again. And is that really in its interest to do, particularly because Kim, we believe, wants to get the sanctions reduced, not increased because he wants to focus on economic growth. It's not clear, but I think these are two very interesting possibilities to think about to see how North Korea responds. So when you put these four together, I think these are perhaps four of the key variables to watch going forward in regards to how this may play out in the next number of months. Let me conclude with just a couple of final comments and then open it up to any questions that you might have. To put my cards on the table, in the end, I am very skeptical that we ever get to denuclearization. I think there are a lot of reasons North Korea will want to keep its nuclear weapons for security concerns, but I certainly think and agree that it's worth the effort to try to see what kinds of things we can get in regards to perhaps arms control, couched at least initially in the language of an interim step on the way to denuclearization, even though again, I don't think we can get to that. If it can lower attention levels, I think that's a good thing. Returning to 2016, 2017 context, I think is not helpful for security on the region. But I also would argue, while I am not happy by any stretch that North Korea has nuclear weapons, I don't necessarily think that it is the doomsday scenario that some might believe it is. It certainly is not a good thing for the security environment, but I think eventually we will have to learn to manage this problem. It is not one that's going to go away and one that can be solved in its entirety. And I think that North Korea as a security problem can continue to be managed. It will become part of a very different security architecture in East Asia. And North Korea has been deterred for the past 60 plus years from strategic level actions and I think can continue to be deterred in that regard. And so again, I think there is reason to hope that this problem can be managed in the years ahead, though I think it is going to be certainly a challenge as we move forward. So let me stop there and open it up to any questions. And John, I'm going to unshare this slide so I can see folks. Great, Terry. That was a terrific rundown of a very complex subject and I appreciate that. We do have a couple of questions, some easy, some not so easy. So let's start with the easy one. We talked about Kim Jong-un being a young generation. How old is he and does he in fact represent a younger generation in power? Yeah, he's in his mid 30s, 35, 36, depending on which date you choose. You know, he has had exposure abroad. He was educated in Switzerland. He has some degree of knowledge and exposure to the outside world. But with that said, I would still be very cautious about suddenly Kim Jong-un being this enlightened leader that is going to bring all sorts of change to North Korea. There was certainly a lot of speculation in that regard when he first came into power. But he certainly has had a lot of challenges simply cementing his position in North Korea and making sure he has consolidated that power. But I wouldn't necessarily see that because of these generational differences it's going to necessarily mean a great deal of reform in North Korea. But I think one of the interesting variables that I didn't touch on due to time in the presentation is one of the things that has been a secret to North Korea being able to have lasted as long as it has is its ability to control the flow of information into North Korea. That is changing though and has changed over the last 10 to 15 years as more and more information has leaked into North Korea through smuggled DVDs, thumb drives, other sorts of informational sources like that that more and more North Koreans are seeing what the outside world looks like. I think it's interesting to imagine if you fast forward over the next 10 or 15 years how that changes society in North Korea and may generate some degree of pressure and change within North Korea. But if you are expecting North Korea to suddenly change radically over the next 10 to 15 years there are other dynamics that Kim is concerned about that the elites are concerned about to make sure that they maintain control of North Korea in the years ahead. Very good. Couple of questions. What is the relationship between China, Russia and North Korea? How would you evaluate that relationship? Yeah, and I think there are some differences there certainly. Economically, politically, the North Korea-China relationship is very important. China is North Korea's economic lifeline in many different ways. And if China wanted to make the North Korean economy hurt more than it does, it certainly could. Now I think what's important though is we often hear it portrayed in the media that China and North Korea are allies. They have a great deal of mistrust between them. In my presentation, I commented about how when Kim went to Xi Jinping in April of 2018 to repair relations, Kim had yet to visit Xi Jinping personally and yet the South Korean leader had gone to China and had several meetings with Xi Jinping prior to that on several occasions. Never happened before. And so there was a great deal of unhappiness in that relationship. China was not happy with North Korea's testing, stirring the security pot in the region. Remember, all of those sanctions resolutions in the United Nations, China had to support those. And particularly in 2017, China was very angry that North Korea continued to test all those missiles and nuclear weapons tests because all of those things were not helpful for China's interests. It drove South Korea and Japan and the United States closer together in trilateral cooperation. It increased military exercises, discussions in South Korea about redeploying US tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea, South Korea going nuclear itself. All those things were not in China's interests and yet North Korea seemed to be thumbing their nose at China and doing it anyway. And so China's anger was real and they were clearly also enforcing the sanctions at this time as well. But I think there has always been a limit to how far China is willing to go to impose that kind of pressure because the last thing they wanna do is impose so much pressure that they push the collapse of the North Korean regime and now they've got that mess right on their border that not only the mess itself, but the potential of having a United Korea under South Korea's leadership, a US ally being on China's border. And I think for those reasons, again, China has important strategic interests, but both sides don't necessarily trust each other to any extent. Quickly on the Russia side, Kim has definitely recognized his political and economic dependence on China as I've described and has reached out to Putin on a couple of occasions, but Putin doesn't have much interest. He's got bigger fish to fry on the other side of his country. And so that really hasn't gone in any major direction. You talk quite a bit about the Korean technology. Is this homegrown or do they have assistance in engineering and technology from other players and might we be able to sway those other individuals to not provide such a help? Yeah, the North Koreans today have a lot of indigenous capability. I mean, a lot of the missile technology and work that they do on that, some of the nuclear weapons pieces, they have built a lot of that technology themselves, but they have gotten help over the years, certainly going back into the 1980s when they obtained some help through acquiring a research reactor and some of the nuclear technology through that. They also have done a lot of work with Pakistan and with Iran on missile technology and sharing of that. If you look at the medium range Iranian, Pakistani and North Korean ballistic missile, they have an awful lot of similarities. And so that because of some of that cooperation, but today the North Koreans are able to do a lot of that on their own. Syria has also been another one that they have worked with in the past, but a lot of it today is indigenous capability. Question, is there a red line that where the North Koreans to cross it would cause the US and our allies to take action? That's a tough question. And I mean, I think that the short answer is yes, where that red line is, you know, that would certainly depend on the context and such, you know, I think any North Korean nuclear use that appeared aggressive and as I mentioned, a first strike, I think that would certainly be crossing a red line. Either some conventional actions that North Korea could take, that certainly could potentially be aspects of a red line. I think it's very hard to necessarily draw those lines as to what that would entail. And that would be very context dependent. And I think certainly the United States and South Korea have an interest in not necessarily making those lines explicit because you get a bit of deterrence value by making sure the other side is not clear where those lines are to be able to necessarily walk up to those lines. If anyone has concern more than anyone else, I suspect it's the Japanese. What can the Japanese do to address the situation? Well, that is a tough question. And Japan is very worried about that because there is some speculation and I've certainly heard this in several different quarters in Japan when I have talked to different analysts there that North Korea, if it were ever to lash out might not do so against the South but might instead lash out against Japan. And that that may actually make the South Koreans hesitate because certainly from historical animosity but also a sort of unity among Koreans, if you will. So I think Japan is very concerned about that and what that might mean. Again, when you look at the notion of capabilities from a United States perspective, we look at the long range, the Wasang 15, Wasang 14 missiles and whether they can reach the United States, whether they are weaponized. But from a Japanese perspective, they're looking at the medium range Nodong missiles which North Korea probably has weaponized those with nuclear warheads but also certainly has weaponized those with chemical warheads, possibly even biological warheads as well as of course, conventional warheads. And probably a final question, does the COVID-19 situation, has that caused us difficulties in being able to work with the North Koreans and do we know anything about how they are dealing with this crisis? Well, of course, the North Koreans do not have COVID-19 in their country. Well, that's the reports, of course. And no one's buying that. What the extent of COVID-19 is in North Korea, of course, it's unclear. There are certainly some indicators and no one believes that that's likely the case. What that means for North Korea remains to be seen. They are very susceptible to this sort of issue when you look at what it means in the North Korean healthcare system. I mean, they do not have the latest technologies, testing would be issues if the virus spread. That would be a very serious problem for North Korea. And so they will work very hard to control this. Now, you may have seen that Kim Jong-un dropped out of circulation for a time being prior to about two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago. He was probably being very careful to make sure you see North Korean officials wearing masks. So there is concern about COVID-19 in North Korea. And so clearly it is present, but to what degree and what the implications are remains to be seen and their healthcare system is not very well equipped to deal with that. And so that would be very serious if that started running through North Korea in any serious way. But again, it's so, so hard to tell. Well, we're interested in any closing remarks you might have, Terry. And are there any books that you would recommend that people wanted to delve more deeply, your own or others that might be of interest on this subject? Well, I think if you are interested in understanding more about North Korea, a really good book that I would recommend, and I use it in class all the time is called North Korea Confidential. And it's written by two journalists who live in South Korea. They are American journalists who study North Korea very closely and go through a number of different aspects of North Korean society that I think are very well done. And I think you will find it very eye-opening that it is a very different North Korea than is often portrayed in U.S. media. Well, what other books about North Korea? If you follow Andre Lankoff, he is a very interesting guy as well, L-A-N-K-O-V. He has written extensively about North Korea that is very interesting. He is Russian who went to, he did his PhD in North Korea and now lives in the South and teaches in South Korean universities and has a very direct presentation about what he sees North Korea does. Well, since you put me on the spot, let me mention then a book about the U.S. nuclear umbrella for North Korea or for the United States, the United States nuclear umbrella for Japan and South Korea that lays out some arguments that I think raise some questions about the nuclear umbrella put it in my view in a more realistic view. I think the United States is very unlikely to ever use nuclear weapons to defend Japan and South Korea. It is much more about a political reassurance and about helping and making sure Japan and South Korea don't go nuclear themselves, but the United States would certainly be there to defend South Korea and Japan with conventional weapons and it has plenty of that to bring to the table. But again, I think the nuclear umbrella is a much more nuanced sort of issue and a much more of a political demonstration. All right, sir. Well, thank you very much for your time and for sharing your knowledge on this important topic. We'll comment that the next lecture will be taking place next Tuesday and Professor Walter Burbick will be talking about the Arctic Ocean region and American power. So hope you can join us for that. We'll now pause for about 60 seconds and then we will switch to our family discussion group meeting. Thanks again, Terry. You are very welcome.