 I just saw Ryan this morning, I brought Helen, he's my god daughter, so I just found two minutes with Ryan. Yes, she's going to have dinner with Ryan tonight. Oh really? Yeah. So. Do you have Edgar kind of ready to go, so when he comes up? No, no, but I mean, when Victor gets in, we need to get him on my mic. Okay, let's see if this is my microphone working. Terrific, terrific. Let me close this door here, sorry. Welcome back to the second session of our Japan Speaker Series today. Thank you for joining us for the follow on to the first segment, looking at today's North Korea. We're going to take the second session and look at regional dynamics and various pros and cons of different options that the allies have to deal with the North Korean challenge. You may notice we have a chair missing here, it's only briefly. Victor Chah is on his way, but I figured we might as well get started for the sake of the broadcast and I have some introductory remarks to make anyway, so I'll keep people busy here for a second. So we have four new panelists with us today. Katsu Furukawa came in from Japan, he's a former member of the UN Panel of Experts, spending about four plus years in New York, working with colleagues from around the region, around the world to track the implementation of the ever-tightening sanctions on North Korea, facilitate their implementation where possible and report on the areas that need further attention. He also served previously as a senior fellow at Japan's Research Institute for Science and Technology in Tokyo and spent several years at the Monterey Institute for International Studies here in Washington, so it's great to see Katsu back here. We also have Evan Maderos here, to my right, before Victor gets here. He is managing director for Asia at the Eurasia Group here in Washington and also a non-resident senior fellow here at Carnegie. To have him in-house today, he of course was served on the NSC staff for about six years. During the Obama administration became President Obama's top Asia advisor. He's a particularly strong experience in China, working at Rand and as an advisor to the Treasury Department back in 2007-2008. So it's a pleasure to have Evan here today. My name is Terry. A sandwich there in the middle is managing director for Korea at Bauer Group Asia. It comes to us from New York. It came down yesterday where she had been a research scholar at Columbia University. Sue also worked for several years in the U.S. government, primarily in the intelligence community at the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, but also director for Korea and Japan at the NSC. And when Victor gets here, I'll introduce him now and he'll fill that out when he arrives. But Victor of course is another NSC veteran during the Bush administration, now Korea chair at CSIS and Professor and Dia Song Korea Foundation chair at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. So we have a lot of talent up here on the front and we're going to use this and we're going to start with Katsu in particular kind of act as a bridge from the domestic view into this regional dynamic and there's no better way to do that than with the sanctions piece. We talked a little bit about sanctions impact domestically in Korea but Katsu has a unique experience looking at it from a vantage point in New York and he's actually, we're not really doing presentations per se in this session but Katsu thought that some of what he wanted to talk about initially would really benefit from a visual aid. So Katsu the first question as we talked about, the UN agreed last month to tighten sanctions against North Korea including among other things capping coal exports and I wanted to ask as part of your presentation evaluating the near-term future in terms of where the international sanctions regime is headed based on what you understand about how it's been implemented to date. Have we reached a potential turning point? Is there a real material difference in what has been put together in the UN? Do we just need now to kind of give these new sanctions more time to work or are other measures kind of supplemental measures needed in your opinion? I wanted to give you a chance to give us a little bit of a start in the presentation. Thank you Jun-san. It's been 10 years since the UN Security Council has adapted a first resolution concerning sanctions against North Korea and this year two resolutions were newly adapted to compensate for the previous loophole that exists in the previous resolutions and also add a new sanction measures. However, so far the prospects of the effectiveness of sanctions is not so bright. This, sorry, maybe I should stand here. This is a data set taken by Asia Press Group of Journal of Space Japan. They have data points, multiple data points inside of North Korea cutting across a whole country at least in over 11 cities and counties concerning the commodity price levels. Rice, corn, gasoline, diesel and also exchange rate between North Korea and UN, North Korea and Wuhan, the Chinese UN all are stable up until the point of early November. So it doesn't appear that sanctions, despite the adaption of the very strong Security Council resolutions, there's as early as early November, there's no sign that these sanctions actually imposed any significant cost on the part of North Korea. Now, after this new latest Security Council resolution was adapted at the end of November, whether these sanctions measures would be truthfully implemented by UN member states, we need to closely monitor the economic indicators inside of North Korea and particularly in this regard, as widely known, China has a special responsibility because it has a significant economic interaction with North Korea. Many people believe that China has intentionally violating a resolution which may or may not be necessary too because from my experience, Chinese bureaucracy system is so rigid and it's so hard to mobilize all relevant ministry and agencies. Sanctions are technical in detail and these technical details are very important. But however, Chinese officials coming across relevant ministry and agencies may not quite understand what they are supposed to do. Interagency coordination is always a problem and also the understanding of the international laws are always challenging. The earlier this year, the resolution adapted in March provided a list of 31 vessels to be sanctioned by all UN member states, which include eight vessels operated by Chinese companies. Information obtained to me shows that probably the operator or owner, Chinese owner or operator in relation to these vessels may not have been noticed by the Chinese government. It requires intensive explanations and outreach to get China understand what they have agreed to. But it's not only China. Almost all member states have problems. U.S., ROK, Japan may be the exception in the world because almost all member states really don't regard North Korea as the top priority issues. African member states, government officials ask me, what is UN Security Council resolution? What are you talking about Chapter 7 of UN Charter? Also, there is a strategic miscalculation held by many countries, particularly those in East Asia and also Southeast Asia, that we shouldn't corner North Korea so much. If we isolate it, then we will isolate North Korea. UN sanction is not intended to impose any economic embargo against North Korea, but it's target sanctions. Target sanction, which is aimed at preventing North Korea from developing WMD capability. But somehow, this point has barely been understood by a majority of member states. And several member states are actively valid in UN Security Council resolutions. In the most recent resolutions, a North Korean ambassador based in Egypt is designated for target sanctions. Now, Egypt is currently a member of UN Security Council. What does Egypt has to do with a North Korean ambassador, which has been reportedly dealing with a North Korean major arms dealer? There are a number of cases that are still ongoing concerning the intentional violations of the Security Council resolutions. Lack of the rules of laws in many countries, interagency coordination, international cooperation in sufficient domestic legal systems all combined together to enable North Korea to evade sanctions. Now, North Korea has been desperate and they try to look for every loophole using a very skilled or agents situated around the world. On the contrary, International Committee is not desperate. Let me just show just a few... Is the advance not working? I don't know, maybe I'm so bad at that. You may recall 2002 case of the Spanish Navy's interdiction of the Scott missiles. When they intercepted North Korean cargo and they found containers and opened it, then they found these Scott missiles clear parts. Nobody can miss them, so in a way it was easy to identify. But now these are lucky days are already over because this is what North Korea is currently shipping abroad. It's an example of a cargo originated from China bound for Syria broken by North Syria, Egypt. As you can see, each part literally doesn't look like anything on the control list of NSG nuclear supplier group or missile technology control regime. Normally, when member states receive a tip from Washington D.C. or some other European countries to inspect specific cargo, they open up the cargo and they found these items. They will just let them go because it doesn't look like missile-related items. But in fact, it takes a village to really identify the nature of each item. Photo interdicted by the authority... Oh, what did I do? This is a photo interdicted by the authorities and this is a photo I took by myself in a particular location and these items were found in the control panel of the tail of a scout missile. The problem is that such item information is not available in an open source in anywhere. So North Korea is currently dismantling bus missiles or into spare parts and pieces and they ship them to Syria. They dispatch experts to technicians to Syria and they compile missile system on site in Middle East. UNASI rocket debris was recovered by South Korean Navy, which included various commercial items. It's not even various, it's just commercial items obtained from United Kingdom, United States, China, Switzerland. So all these countries which have rigorous export control system were defeated by North Korea. Look how the pressure transmitters used for UNASI rocket is not on the... does not meet the prohibited criteria of missile technology control regime. It's commercially available item but they handcraft and create UNASI rocket. You may recall the image of the ascent of the UNASI rocket monitoring the satellite control system of North Korea in Pyongyang. That was taken by a CCTV camera of a Chinese make, which is available online at the price of 20 U.S. dollars. So DPRK has been manufacturing. They are applying commercial items in a way that no other normal countries does. They are manufacturing improvised ballistic missile systems. From our standard, it's really poor and no one would do that if you consult the ballistic missile experts. They would despise what North Korea does. But that's okay for North Korea because their only single objective is to launch rockets that works. And eventually North Korea became one of those few member states which can launch normal device missiles. So this is how North Korea evaluated sanctions while international communities have so much problems in actually catching up with the evasion techniques employed by North Korea. And U.S. Japan, today we are supposed to discuss what to do about U.S. Japan alliance to counter North Korea and also to do something about China. For North Korea, there is no good solutions. However, we need real, both high-level outreach to Chinese political authorities and as well as technical cooperation with Chinese entities and also Southeast Asian countries because Southeast Asia is another problem. A number of North Korean agents are situated in these regions which is now shooting for the regional integration. And this is where American, Japanese, South Korean advanced manufacturers are building factories. So they are producing commodities which are regulated in Japan, South Korea or U.S. or other countries but not here in ASEAN because they don't have laws to begin with. Indonesia is even negatively introducing the catch-all control which can contradict the kind of items that I show to you. So areas for U.S. Japan corporations approach toward China, Chinese bureaucracy can be mobilized and breakthrough to do some movement only from the top approach. High political level engagement is important. And the practitioners level capacity building or engagement to deep understanding about international laws, Evasion techniques are important. Industrial outreach directly to China are important. And also more active use between Chinese companies which value revolutions U.S. Security Council revolutions is an obligation under Security Council revolutions since 2011 2013. Approach to ASEAN U.S. has been providing technical support legal support Japan, South Korea can also coordinate and contribute. And also at the end of the day however when I stepped out of UN I was astonished to see the fairly slow level of advancement in the private security coordination between U.S. Japan and ROK as compared to the relatively impressive advancement of North Korea's WMD capabilities. I think we need a more coordinated plans for accelerating the strengthening of this Toronto Security Corporation to prepare for various kind of provocations, possible provocations to be imposed by North Korea. Nuclear provocation may be undertaken in the new future who knows, but if this comes through we have to be ready to respond. Also we have to remember that sanction is a diplomatic tool it is not a strategy by itself. So if sanction is to take effect where is for what or what kind of diplomatic approach we have to be ready to, when the sanction takes effect we have to be ready to approach to initiate diplomatic approach to North Korea in a coordinated manner. And this component is almost an entirely missing in my view currently because of the political turmoil in South Korea and uncertainty of the next U.S. administrations. All these issues should be discussed and advanced. Excellent, excellent. Thank you very much. Katsu, so that you've already jumped ahead to some of the areas we're going to talk about over the course of the next hour plus. And I apologize Victor for starting without you, but I knew Katsu had this kind of presentation to get started and I wanted to kick things off. So we'll eventually get into some of these areas for U.S.-Japan cooperation, but let me stay on sanctions and we're going to talk a little bit about sanctions, move to China and then move to the Korean Peninsula and we'll brought it out from there. First of all, and I open this up to anyone who would like to talk about this because you've all worked on sanctions and these policies are sanctions, U.N. sanctions there to deny North Korea the ability to make PD progress, progress in its dangerous WMD programs missile nuclear programs or is it to punish North Korea to try to make it a different strategic choice? And it always has been both. What I would say is we have seen over the last let's say 10 to 15 years an evolution in China's approach to sanctions. I think initially the Chinese bought into sanctions primarily as a vehicle for denying North Korea access to sensitive equipment materials and technologies that would advance nuclear missile programs and they were generally speaking pretty good on that front. It subsequently evolved to an appreciation that sanctions had a broader diplomatic role, in other words imposing costs on North Korea for engaging in provocative behavior. I think that shift was most pronounced between Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping because even under Hu Jintao and the great work that Victor and the Bush administration did on North Korea there was still sort of a reluctance in China to put any kind of sanctions on North Korea that would put political pressure on the region. That changed under Xi Jinping and as a result the Chinese increasingly as reflected in the two Security Council resolutions this year recognized that sanctions were much that sanctions could also be used for political signaling purposes to impose some costs, to impose some pain. The question before us today and I think sort of the key question about sanctions is, is China willing to put regime threatening sanctions on North Korea? So, sanctions that are similar in effect but obviously not similar well, similar in effect to the sanctions regime that the Obama administration imposed on Iran. And I think that's a big open question but there's no doubt that China's views on sanctions have evolved. I'm doubtful that they will ever evolve to the point where they would the Chinese would countenance regime threatening type of sanctions and I think there are a whole series of factors related to what's going on in the Chinese domestic political system, their economy, the U.S.-China relationship and the region more broadly that I think serve as barriers for the evolution to Chinese support for regime threatening sanctions but maybe that's something we can talk about today. Part of what Katsu is talking about or presents, paints a picture of both errors of or acts of commission of willful decisions by entities within Beijing or elsewhere to minimize the impact of what we're trying to accomplish and then just omission or just a lack of capacity and inability to successfully or fully implement the sanctions. Do any of you have a view of, if I look at the most recent debate after North Korea's nuclear test and the position of new sanctions, this idea of capping coal exports etc. and some other material exports? Do you sense, are we seeing a shift in at least on the willingness side or the political side in Beijing that they understand that not enough pressure or denial is being implemented and therefore we need to do more or is there at least a willingness to maybe address some of the capacity the lack of capacity issues? Well, personally speaking I have not seen maybe they're willing to have this resolution, a stronger resolution of supporting it but whether it's through willfulness or incompetence or corruption or a whole list of things that you talked about. China just not the bottom line is that China has not been willing to follow through in terms of implementing these sanctions. So the last resolution is a step forward certainly, but how are we going to be able to monitor it? How are we going to make sure that Chinese are willing to really follow through with an implemented and following Evan's point, I think the secondary question there then to us from our policy perspective is how serious are we about sanctions? So what I'm bringing out is secondary sanctions. Now, I know that we are reluctant to do that and pursue that course because that's going to cause further strain in our relationship with China and so we are reluctant to do that. But I think only then we'll show our seriousness in terms of pursuing the sanctions course. When you say secondary sanctions how would you define that? Hurting the entities, third party entities that are actually doing illicit business with North Korea. So the excellent case that are not sufficiently enforcing the sanctions and we have a history of that right? Everybody talks about the 2005 case of when we sanctioned Bank of Delta Asia and there was one time that it actually worked. But we then subsequently got out of that and to get back to talks with North Korea and talks that apart. So this is very distasteful thing for us to be doing but it's sort of mandatory. So that's the question that we have to answer. Do we have political will to do that or not? I agree with Sue absolutely. You're letting her disagree too. Secondary? Well, I'm going to agree and disagree. It's Washington, right? That's the stock and trade of what we do. So I agree. We need to move in the direction of secondary sanctions. One factual piece though. In the EOD Obama administration adopted in May. They actually did adopt secondary sanctions. So any Chinese bank that does, my understanding is any Chinese bank that does business with a designated North Korean entity associated with the nuclear missile program is subject to sanctions. The issue as you know is there really not that many Chinese banks doing business with North Korean entities with the nuclear missile program. So I think what Sue is talking about rightly is really broadening the scope of secondary sanctions. So basically any Chinese bank or financial entity that does business with any North Korean entity would be denied access to the dollar denominated business. Number two, you kick North Korea out of the Swiss system. This is what we did with Iran. And as a result, no Chinese bank can do business with any North Korean bank. So you really broaden out the secondary sanction. And the issue is it could create a lot of friction with China. The other issue is if you do that, you run the risk of China basically directing all of its financing for trade and investment with North Korea to one or two bad banks which happened some instances with Iran. And at that point you then are going to have to figure out a new strategy for going after the bad bank. Can I just ask one? So of those two options that Evan just mentioned the latter one arguably becomes less of a U.S.-China bilateral profit like denying them access to SWIFT. That just compels all business to stop between Chinese and normal one would create much more bilateral friction between the two. So there is what he's describing or a difference between two strategies that could have different impacts on the U.S.-China relationship which everybody every policymaker arguably there's a lot of equities in the U.S.-China relationship and North Korea is one of them and the question has always been how much are you willing to damage the relationship in terms of those other equities because of these issues. But there are ways, as Evan described of doing this, where it doesn't become a direct U.S.-China bilateral issue. Katsu, I know you take particular issue with this terminology of secondary sanctions. Going to that, when I was working for UN until this spring, I barely had any opportunity to actually learn about the dynamism in Washington, D.C. But however, from our point of view of UN in New York no member states were serious about this. We know for sure that, for example, Obama administration was also almost completely preoccupied with Iran deal until last year for understandable reasons and you have Syria conflict and ISIS everything. So North Korea should attract the attention of the international community almost only when they conduct a nuclear weapon test. So it's almost like oh, you are still there and get back to the point of how to swing sanctions. The secondary sanctions, which is I understand, which means is the union of sanctions by U.S. government or each government. In fact it's not secondary, but it's one of the principal pillars of all UN member states obligations in the current UN sanction regime. In 2013 a resolution 2094 was adopted and this resolution obliges all UN member states to impose unilateral sanctions against entities and individuals that have bilateral resolutions. Now however the problem is this UN sanction obligation was really activated by member states. U.S. Treasury Department designated North Korea individual entities and just a few very tiny Chinese companies, but not the other important players. So there are still rooms to actually utilize the existing sanction tools, but I want me to just stress that unilateral sanctions has its own limits. Last year U.S. Treasury Department designated about 10 North Korean individuals for as a representative of the North Korean arms dealer company, which is also sanctioned by UN. I and my colleague trace where these individuals actually travel around the world. So we inquired to all airline companies relevant member states around the world to trace their activities. Surprisingly the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned them in last year generally and our data points was up to the end of September of last year. For nine months these North Korean arms dealers were traveling around the world as if nothing happened. For one thing countries such as China Russia they opposed U.S. military sanctions. Other countries just they didn't know presumably Treasury Department sanctions information can run through the financial regulatory authorities but not necessarily by immigration authorities of other countries. So there are again interagency coordination and so many technical problems and North Koreans were purchasing airline tickets not using credit card or bank wire transfers but U.S. cash or Chinese Yuan or Euro. So North Korea always adapt to the strengthening section and that's how they lived for the previous decades. We really needed more stringent focus on strengthening this military sanction but in a multilateral coordinating manner that's something we need to think about. Sorry what about taking over my mother? Travel restrictions. Is that information shared with immigration authorities? This is another problem. One of the key sanctions to the travel ban the problem is that UN sanctions provide the name is there okay? Data of birth and passport number all information can be easily fortified by North Korea and on contrary to falsified on contrary to counter term effort no member states provide information about their biometric information. Photos, fingerprints none and the interpol doesn't have a pool to be sanctioned. So North Koreans can easily travel worse they also acquire foreign passports so pretending not to be What countries are curious? Could be any countries? I should say Kim Jong-il the Dominican Republic Kim Jong-nam sorry when you went to Tokyo a lot of last time Well that makes sense right? North Koreans look a lot like the Americans so it's not easy to really identify the sanctioned individual this is another issue so why international community focused research on the counter terrorism you know biometric information sharing trying to constrain terrorist movement but not North Korean proliferators this is another problem. Okay so let me summarize a little bit because I want to keep moving the discussion forward first session we've got relative political stability I'll get a few defections and other things going on but political stability growing market space biogen feeding in relative terms so certainly to date the impact of sanctions has not been either to deny fully the capability or to punish sufficiently but it does seem that there are opportunities to potentially improve that tool maybe not to the point where it's the decisive tool but certainly we've seen some opportunity to improve that tool another tool kind of parallel policies or something that is completely separate from directly going after North Korea which is and President elect Trump kind of alluded to this context of different policy vis-a-vis China taking a more confrontational stance unless we get progress on some things that are important to us so I guess one of the questions I have to our group is and this relates to how we assess the China-North Korea relationship and we know there are strains in that relationship but how significant is this for assessment but what kind of impact do you think a more aggressive or more confrontational US policy vis-a-vis China in the South China Sea, Taiwan elsewhere will have on their willingness to collaborate and work with us on the North Korea piece will it kind of just drive China into North Korea's arms or does China have sufficiently similar concerns about North Korea nuclear development and instability in the region and other things that that's they're somewhat separate should we think of them as linked or are they sufficiently separate so I'll take that one on I mean when it comes to China and understanding Chinese interests it's all linked so what I would say is the factors that I think are predominantly influential on China's approach to North Korea sanctions etc has much more to do with the upcoming political transition in China and the nature of the Chinese economy than it does whatever happens in the US-China relationship in 2017 so in the fall of 2017 though there will be the 19th party congress a very big a very important and a very complex political transition because five of the seven members of the standing committee arguably 60% of the Politburo below Xi Jinping may even have to designate two professors to Xi Jinping and Nika Chang and this is coming in the wake of a pretty unique past four years in Chinese politics Xi Jinping consolidated power quickly he centralized decision-making effectively he carried out a very intensive anti-corruption effort so the political jockeying I think is going to be particularly intense and it's also particularly consequential so in that context China has three priorities in 2017 stability stability and more stability so their interest in sort of yeah let's work with the Americans and the Japanese and anyone else and really squeeze the North Koreans I think is going to be somewhat limited number two is the economy and the fact that Chinese growth is slowing is something that we're all aware of but more importantly the trade-offs that the government is facing in terms of the pace and scope of deleveraging the pace and scope of over capacity which directly affects the northeastern provinces Liaoning in particular the challenges they're having at preventing the renminbi from falling through the floor the challenges with the capital account in other words anything that might affect economic stability is going to be looked at very very seriously of course North Korea and the sanctions question touches on economic stability but obviously doesn't sort of very narrowly affect macroeconomic policy in China so I think those factors in 2017 are going to have a heavier influence now of course China has its own interests in the way it approaches North Korea the fact that it signed on to the most recent UN Security Council resolution and closed substantially not entirely you know the colex sport loophole is genuinely a good thing and I think that China's own interest and approach to North Korea generally have a greater effect than what happens in the US-China relationship that said on the margins US-China relationship matters and you know it's we don't know yet what's going to happen when the new administration takes office some of the initial moves they made at Taiwan suggest that we're on a pathway to you know a difficult relationship at the beginning we have to see how this all plays out it doesn't help I mean as anybody that's worked on the US-China relationship knows that Taiwan has the unique ability their Taiwan issue has the unique ability to suck the oxygen out of a lot more so it could complicate the ability to coordinate a North Korea policy and the North Koreans are looking sitting back and they're just sort of licking their chops because I think that they see potential for friction in the US-China relationship they know that China doesn't really want any disturbances they're looking at political turmoil in South Korea and the possibility of friction between a new US administration and a new South Korean administration especially if a new South Korean president is center left and they're sort of I'm sure they're thinking in themselves okay when is our next provocation because we want to test everybody and we want to create frictions among all of these actors I want to jump back quickly to sanctions just because of something you raised I would take from what you just described then as if we separate out the purpose of sanctions to be both to punish and to deny the punish piece is particularly difficult to get more traction on in terms of China's help but is it possible to kind of separate out the denial piece and really zero in on that and because presumably China would see benefit in that slowing that process down of North Korean modernization of nuclear missile program can you distinguish a little bit between the two I don't know if you have an opinion about that if a massive effort was put to very speaking it appears to be difficult at this point because you know we have a very expensive sanction regime that's degraded by EVA right now it takes a village to respect those measures because every measure that legally intertweens with each other but most importantly I don't think it's well North Korea have been improving their nuclear capabilities and I don't think this can be stopped so it's sufficiently domestically produced now that it's well I mean I think as Katsu's presentation I mean it requires a level of scrutiny I mean you're talking about a whole bunch of dual use items so there's a level of scrutiny in terms of border trade border traffic that I don't know whether the Chinese government has the will or even the capacity to do something I think there are as Katsu's presentation there are significant challenges better enforcement of the sanctions and I think as much as it may be a political problem I also think it's a capacity problem I just don't think that it's like almost everything else the Chinese government does they're just not you know when you're looking for a degree of sophistication and interagency coordination on any issue of climate whatever issue it's just difficult can I just say something else on sanctions which is I know we always try to talk about the effectiveness of sanctions and the different purposes but it's you know I don't think we ever really you know the sanctions regime is praised it's criticized but we really have no way of knowing whether sanctions work until after the fact I mean if everybody does some people with these sanctions are supposed to fundamentally weaken the regime everybody's going to say that doesn't work because the regime hasn't collapsed and only after it collapses then we'll go oh yeah sanctions work right and it's the same thing with trying to use sanctions to try to press North Korea to come back to the negotiation table until they actually come back to the negotiation table everybody will say sanctions are failing but the day they come back then they go oh yeah you know it worked so sanctions are always maligned you know until after the fact so we have to remember that when we talk about well you know sanctions it's not a policy it's just a tool sanctions the application of sanctions will always be much maligned until after the fact well let's talk let's turn to a second elephant that's in the room which is South Korea and the political situation there obviously there's still a lot we don't know about how this is going to play out in terms of how long the political transition may take if indeed impeachment or resignation happens but let's make some assumptions or a couple of scenarios within the next year you could have a significantly more liberal government you could have a government that looks relatively similar say Ban Ki-moon wins and becomes the next president a certain amount of continuity there or a third scenario I can think of you can probably think of others would be a very weak government of either stripe that is not able to really act on its policy inclinations one way or the other what kind of so I'm not necessarily forecasting but you all have a lot of experience in the NSC and let's say you're sitting with your counterparts in Tokyo and Seoul and you're trying to say alright for the next year or so what should our approach be and then how do we hedge ourselves based on some of this uncertainty how do you see the South Korea political dynamic either in terms of a turn of policy vis-a-vis North Korea does that present opportunities create problems as a result I could see some potential problems if Comfort Women Agreement and Jisomi and other things are kind of tossed over because they're tainted with the previous regime where FAD gets derailed so there may be some opportunities but they seem to be more minefields so I wanted to ask about that maybe I can talk a little bit about from my CI experience I'm always doing some worst case scenario high you know with high impact and maybe Victor can have a little bit of more positive outlook about this but I'm very concerned about the alliance issue because I think all of us would agree when it comes to North Korean problem there's a lot of debate right different camps of people saying we should get back engagement even without preconditions some other folks say we need to pressure the regime more but I think everybody's in an agreement that most importantly Seoul and Washington have to be aligned and have a unified policy and when we didn't there were some problems there were times where for example President Kim Jong-un and President Bush when South Korea pursued a sunshine policy we had a different kind of policy and what I'm concerned about this year is that alliance between South Korea and United States has been very strong for the last how many years and both of you guys can attest to Kim Jong-bak and President Bush for example Kim Jong-bak, President Obama even Park Geun-hae and President Park we had a close alliance relationship and that led to some of the very difficult decisions that South Korea has made this year to deploy that to South Korea to have this military intelligence sharing agreement with Tokyo which is not easy from South Korean domestic perspective and what I'm concerned about is just when we have new incoming administrations in United States it's coinciding with this turmoil in South Korea and it does look like however the constitutional court decides on President Park's fate she's on her way out and then we'll have to have an election that will be held within 60 days after the constitutional court votes and you know there are different scenarios but we do have a scenario that's very highly likely which is that Moon Jae-in the opposition party candidate is could take over or even the mayor of Sungnam Lee Jae-myung who is called Trump of Korea he's talked about is that a positive type of framing or negative in Korea would you like to make a question descriptive and concern is that they do have a different policy stance for example they're less in the United States so Lee Jae-myung for example talked about meeting Kim Jong-un any time unconditionally but what I'm concerned about even called Tokyo a security full of South Korea so this is not something that I think it is a potential problem it's a potential challenge for Washington to consider and particularly if I think President-elect Trump he's a number of things on his campaign including pressing hard on South Korea and Japan for them to pay more for our forces of being stationed in both countries and so if you have a scenario that he presses very hard and we don't have a very we don't have a conservative we have somebody else who has a different perspective and if that coincidentally also work with an impevable scenario let's say another wildcard scenario like where the 2003 student the two girls who got accidentally run over by the U.S. forces they let a huge anti-American sentiment in South Korea or huge anti-American protest over beef during U.S. rock FTA negotiation if there's something like that that happens I can see a scenario where it could lead to even putting out of U.S. versus Korea so I don't it's not I don't mean to be dramatic and try to be but I just don't think we can take alliance take it for granted and this is something that we have to but regardless in terms of what we can do I mean obviously we have to reaffirm our commitment to defense South Korea Japan are extended deterrence and there's a number of things we can do and also with North Korea I think what President Elect has to do is to show that and I think he might be the person to do it which is to show to North Korea that we have very different like you have to have different tone different tune right it's not going to be the same kind of game whether we pursue this or that it's going to be a different scenario and we have but we do have to speak with the unified force and what do you think that scenario what is the different scenario that the next administration could present in terms of talking because President Elect has said things that are concerning to South Korea he needs to reaffirm reaffirm alliance saying you know and not talk about pulling US troops out of Korea pulling or saying that you know they have to press South Korea because this is not a normal time is what I'm saying so I don't think this kind of talk is helpful in terms of the alliance but you know ironically ironically it was the progressive South Korean government that was in favor of op-con transition that they were in favor of a more independent Korean autonomous defense I mean so I think everything Su said was let me step back so impeachment vote was last week court has six months I think they're going to take the full six months just because the number of charges on the docket are so many that the court will need all that time to adjudicate them if you remember in 2004 when Nomi Hyun was impeached the court had one issue and that was violation of election law that was the only thing they had to take in two months we're talking about a dozen charges and none of which are as clear cut as violating the election law so I think they're going to take the full six months and then if they uphold the motion then maybe there's an election sometime in line if you had the vote today probably the progressive would win I think the argument to be made and this is where this is where a situation like Evan when he was the director would be on the phone you know with the incoming South Korean blue house trying to coordinate and the argument I think that should be made is you know you may have some inclination to do things differently but look we've got a new UN Security Council resolution where the Chinese are now going to uphold 60% of hard currency on coal shipments and they have in the past that's a big deal in addition to that you have the new treasury sanctions the section 311 treasury sanctions that are now going into effect after this 30 or 60 days coming these are new these are our new level of sanctioning and we have to see how these things play out we have to see if they have any sort of impact if they soften the North Korean will to come back to talks if they restrained from doing testing before we try anything different because we worked so hard to get the right Evan has the scars on his back and how getting the Chinese to try to do something with regard to the humanitarian loophole in previous resolutions now we finally have that we can't throw it all away now and based on what Katsu is telling us there are some nuts and bolts things that we can do to just make them better and more effective going forward go ahead because I want to ask one other quick question but I don't know if you want to give a thought to this too could this actually play to our benefit to some extent North Korea has an incentive not to create fear or give greater political strength to the right in South Korea by aggressive provocations during this period of time so does this almost put North Korea a little bit on the sidelines because they don't want to royal the political waters so again the data we collected shows North Korea targets US elections and provocations under Kim Jong-un it's a 26 day window plus or minus every US election presidential election or by election sample size is small for Kim Jong-un but there's a definite difference from Kim Jong-un the window was almost twice that so the only reason that we haven't seen anything so they did two MRBM tests within that window before the presidential election I think the reason we haven't seen anything after the election was because of what was happening in South Korea they didn't want to give President Park anything but if you notice the day after the impeachment vote literally the day after they publicized a military exercise where they attacked the blue house oh that's right you think the North Koreans aren't predictable they're very predictable but does it play still by because I think the conservatives in South Korea would be dying for some sort of provocation because it doesn't help them in terms of both distracting the public and electing them because they're known to be helpful in North Korea North Koreans bracketed Noh Mi-hyun's election with provocations so before Noh Mi-hyun's election they did provocations and then right after they did provocations I mean I'm just going based on the data they the only reason they didn't do anything after Trump's election was Trump or Clinton because they saw the gravity of the situation in South Korea and wanted to get her out but I think now that the impeachment vote has happened the constitutional court ideally is not under political pressure I say ideally not under political pressure so I expect that we're going to see many more things beating up perhaps to say goodbye to the Obama administration and things also afterwards reading Mr. Trump how do you see how do you see the South Korean public responding to those those kind of provocations how does it make the next likely presidential election sort of play out so I don't have the data on this I just have anecdotes and anecdotally sometimes it has benefited the conservatives but sometimes it happens but you take the previous National Assembly election the provocations benefited the conservatives when people thought the conservatives were going to lose you take the last National Assembly election the conservatives lost big they lost big time despite the provocations so it's hard to say how the public will respond to it but I think as everybody would agree these provocations are partly about these political messages but it's all about a multi-tested they are heavily engaged in the multi-tested program an operational need to move Katsu, I'm sorry I think we can come up with you know plausible actions on the part of the ministry in the coming months or coming years but I think we should be prepared for different possible scenarios we should base our discussion on a more scenario based on a planning approach because we have to be ready if North Korea choose to do a particular type of provocations we have to be ready that in this context wherever I may ask South Korean administration I am already deeply concerned about the very slow progress of the security cooperation I think between Japan South Korea or international settings my conversation with the South Korean experts officials I felt as if there are some unreasonable expectations on the part of the US to coordinate between U.S. ROK Korean system and U.S. Japan alliance systems somehow U.S. is very good at coordinating everything without the Japan ROK talking to each other that's not the case and any actions on the part of U.S. North Korea require North Korea support from Japan if Japan is attacked by North Korea U.S. will respond which will involve casualties or damage in ROK but these kind of realistic, snare-based findings doesn't appear to have evolved so I think it's regardless of the administration in South Korea this is the kind of thing that three countries have to elaborate and I think your point is well taken especially the comment you made earlier that I had worked on the trilateral side of things and we padded ourselves in the back especially during the Limyabok period of the progress that we made but even and I think we have made progress again in recent years after the downturn in Japan-Korea relations but it hasn't kept pace North Korea's development of nuclear missiles the credibility and the scent of the threat should have prompted us to do so two observations the first I mean I entirely agree with the tenor of the discussion here and the need for there to be more in the trilateral trilateral lane two observations the first is that Sue has a frog in her throat the second is that the second is that you know I think there is actually an opportunity now for quiet but deliberate improvement of the trilateral relationship because ironically even though we are in this a secret period and present part doesn't have any power in practice what that means is day-to-day foreign policy falls to the professional so I think there is you know there is at least quietly continue to push forward I think if you get a progressive government in South Korea I don't think they do not think they will walk back the comfort women again because the money has already been dispersed and and I don't think they'll walk back to someone else I just don't think given how much the policy landscape has changed on North Korea really pretty much the lack of debate certainly in Washington but increasingly so in South Korea at least among experts the fall belongs to U.S. and all the policy what about on FAD on FAD too I think I think it would be so the signpost would be if a new administration candidates don't start talking about reversing the FAD decision but if they start talking about that not a vote but if they just call for a discussion that's a very bad signpost because that immediately politicizes very high-profile with that issue which could basically end it but I think doesn't one of the candidates some of them do but I think some of the candidates on the center left side some of the more senior candidates senior people on the center left side and Minju particularly were not opposed to that they are going to be part of you know they may be potentially part of a Bangi Moon coalition right if the ruling party breaks apart or they may be part of and Minju candidate but I really see it hard for walking back these things I slightly disagree because I think it depends on who from the center left because now they're not all the same so Lee Jae-myung the mayor of Songnam did say Japan is a security for South Korea because of their own repentant ways from the early history so I do think if you're talking about Moon Jae-in some other people but they're not one voice they are different candidates and there are different possibilities so maybe it is hard to walk away from but even the compliment issue I think we can always flare up again depending on the situation so it is something still I think we need to monitor I want to move on from South Korea unless there's any following because we're running out of time and there's two key well one big issue but kind of two sides to it that I want to talk about getting to the issue of what do we do and what are our options you can put them on a spectrum all the way starting from a hamburger with Kim Jae-un and unconditional dialogue breaking down barriers to cultural diplomacy and other types of outreach and efforts essentially recalibrating our own our own perceptions of what we're willing to tolerate and saying you know what the unrestrained nuclear missile program is much worse than the alternative of some kind of freeze and a cap and a verifiable freeze on North Korean nuclear development and let's just try to see if we can develop something that puts a cap on that and build better north south relations and ties over time all the way to preemptive military strikes to essentially degrade and deny, prevent North Korean a true ICBM nuclear capability or whatever we consider to be a threshold that we can simply not tolerate North Korea having the ability to utilize and so I wonder are there any kind of strategic circumstances or rationale that you consider where we might revisit our own demands really in a Trump administration going forward in the next year such as non-proliferation promises, cap and freeze talking about a peace regime limiting joint exercises or so to bring North Korea back through association tables Before touching on those specifics I'm concerned that the Trump administration might be again deeply involved in the Middle Eastern affairs if so far as I understand some of the very small number concrete proposal announced by Mr. Trump is some secret plan to kill ISIS and also abrogation of the Iran deals if these particular Iran deals is to be revisited it will have a significant repercussion in the Middle East and again, the United States may be gradually shelled back to the Middle Eastern issues and somehow North Korean programs will be positioned with a secondary quality as was the case until last year this focus on the Asian programs really has to be changed by the new administration and that has to be the basis for all other possible consideration for policy don't worry, you may be right but as Victor said Kim Jong-un is not going to let that happen he would have provocative just say hey, pay me some attention but you may be right in the beginning but yeah what do you guys think about the situation of all the reasons why to date we have not been, I mean we've offered talks and we've had the leap day deal and we've tried to do a few things is there a scenario or situation where maybe we ought to think both between South Korea and the United States really lowering the bar even further to what we've said to date we would not be willing to tolerate well, I mean lowering the bar essentially means we'd be willing to go into the negotiation that that would be that would be a risky diplomatic policy in terms of allies and others and amplification can't rule it out because I think for any, for the next administration whatever their policy is going to be is necessarily going to entail more risk just because of what North Korea could do and the capabilities are so that can mean more risk in diplomacy and as you said willing to lower the bar in terms of de-nuclearization more risk in terms of our policy with China leveraging the US-China relationship even more it can mean more risk in terms of our military posture and actions I mean I think to me the real so too quickly the first is what worries me the most right now is that with January 8th coming up and his birthday and then whenever he took a bunch of these dates coming up that they may try to put another satellite to inform it danger of course is that they have said that they have standardized the weapons design for a war here in the United States and you see them backing a big-page missile how do you know what's on the top of that missile it raises real concerns and it puts us in a realm of strategic thinking that we haven't enforced to the end before do we really think North Korea would kind of unprovoked launch a nuclear weapon in the United States as you know it doesn't matter if they stack a missile and they have said they can put a nuclear warhead on a missile and the IC just last week said they believe they can make it even if there's a 1% chance right the 1% chance or as one of my friends formerly in nonproliferation said if there's a 1% chance you know of some sort of you have to spend 100% of your effort to eliminate that 1% chance so there's that the second thing I would say is these aren't direct answers to your questions that's right in the end and I think both Sue and Evan would agree so much of this depends on what the president that the demonstration of a North Korean ICDN that's close to the United States absolutely unacceptable that will determine the policy doesn't then you know we can even fall back into other things I mean in the end I mean that's what it comes down to whether it's North Korea, whether it's not Syria or anything that's what it comes down to and that's the thing about President Trump you don't know and here the proactive approach by Abe to really make a connection with Trump seems useful because if he feels at least that pick up let's call let's call Abe see if he wants to talk about see what he thinks about me making this decision he probably won't have that same relationship we're feeling with the leader of South Korea just given what's going on and that level of high level communication and connection could be really vital because I would think if the U.S. president made a decision like that I think South Korea would have a real problem with that I don't know what how Japan would react but that's that's a big change taking something out on the on Japan I think as we discussed in the previous sessions when North Korea launched missiles into the Japan's easy summer with enhanced precision levels I observed a perception in Japan for U.S. it's ICBM but for us the threat is already materialized but the question is whether the missile would be loaded with nuclear warhead or not which would be another significant game changer for Japan's red perceptions and in this respect the use of force against targeting North Korea there might be some different scenarios under certain circumstances it may not be widely supported in Japan or South Korea for us to wait for North Korea to launch ICBM the timeline is not the same for U.S. allies in Asia for Japan the ROK the threat already exists and I certainly understand that the negotiating for you know that is not targeted at the total abortion total denuclearization would legitimize North Korea's but when sanctions take effect we have to do something diplomatically it's not like we just sit tight and North Korea is going to decay until they kneel down and declare that we will abandon nuclear warhead I don't think that will happen historically sanctions have very limited objectives but grand objectives have not been achieved by sanctions alone so we have to think about what diplomatic approach could be feasible I'm sure there are diplomatic statecraft which can achieve which can launch diplomatic approach without compromising our eventual objective the nuclearization of North Korea but some level of some measures to confront North Korea about it to expand their nuclear or vassimist also now is becoming a really increasing priority for Japan and also for South Korea as well well here's a quick idea and I wonder what you guys think about it let's say we go we start off on the sanctions are going forward we're working to improve their implementation the olive branch is offered with the new administration so if we're willing to talk we're not just willing to talk like the previous administration was willing to talk doesn't have to be denuclearization right away etc but we need to address the threats that each of us face you could start on a build a better armistice confident building measures issues because some of the challenges we faced have been artillery shells or box mines floating down or you could say let's talk capping up or freezing a nuclear program in exchange for something and I want to ask you what's going on I certainly wouldn't offer any multilateral sanctions but maybe you could lift some of the unilateral sanctions for a freeze let me get to the punchline is let's work towards a meeting to talk about it face to face come to the UN General Assembly come to the UN General Assembly meeting in New York in September let's talk about it it's a UN meeting you have every right to attend and let's talk about it as in the President of the United States would meet with Kim Jong-un in New York on the sideline of the UN General Assembly right and they do the little walk of shame but no I'm not really joking I don't necessarily think it's a great idea but you could offer that and as the goal by which you would begin then to have a discussion I would think it would be intriguing to the North Korean side I don't know if Kim Jong-un would ever come to New York to attend a General Assembly meeting but is that or some version of that or if it wasn't that approach what would be the way that you would go about so here would be the first NSC staff response would be what if that conversation didn't go well then what do we do that's it that's the end if you take it to that level at the beginning and it doesn't go well you have no place else to go but you have time between now and September to work it out and if it's not going to go well then he just doesn't come the other thing in terms of what Sue said is like what do you have to give and so here I think it's well first I should step back and I should say I think that you know this administration tried very hard to talk to North Korean the other administration was that Kim Jong-un does not want to talk to the United States to China or to South Korea right so the second thing is that when you talk about you know so we'll lift some sanctions at least based on someone that tracked two discussions that have taken place there's a new sanction that North Korea wants to remove immediately that's quite complicated and that is the OFAC designation right and so I know that there are technical ways of dealing with that but that's a huge political division so I think that makes things a lot more complicated because at least on the human right side the environment has fundamentally changed since 2014 much harder to say alright we'll just lift some of these sanctions my question is you know you want sanctions took three years how many years and North Korea sanctions most everyone agrees really comprehensive strong sanctions really started taking place early this year February, March and so on so what is this rush why are we not giving sanctions some chance it's only been eight months, nine months of really doing this and we talked about we have not done secondary sanctions we have not really pressed there are more that we can press right I think maybe talks at some point could in theory work I highly doubt it that's normally where I just don't think but in theory you could but I think there's such thing as timing and I think it's just right now premature you've done so much work just to get to this point why do you want to just give it away so I think just by keeping with this and giving some time they will increase your leverage so when you do eventually return to talks you have more to talk about so because for North Koreans to come for Kim Jong-un to come you will definitely for a second rid of the sanctions right which to me would be a non-starter because the UN sanctions are there for the the nuclear program or there for prohibited program so we can't but if you get rid of the UN sanctions and the nuclear program is still there you've blown a hole in the non-proliferation regime with all kinds of implications globally I agree with you and I kind of offer that first one up as a straw man because the other although you know I think we need to be creative but the other option or end result is you really end up in a situation where okay we're no more going to denuclearize North Korea than we were able to denuclearize the Soviet Union and we're going to enter into essentially a nuclear standoff albeit at a much better advantage of the United States will have and then you're in a deterrence and containment mode and perhaps that's the other direction we need to go and think about working with allies how do we strengthen the credibility and effectiveness of deterrence in that regard so these weapons are never used can I just say on the sanctions piece the sanctions piece that and I think there are set of sanctions now that have are about to be implemented that will be implemented that are I think at a different level so why not allow those to convince the progressive self the government and others to allow those to move forward to get as Sue said leverage and I think leverage is the key word for the incoming administration because I think the one thing that we've seen from this is the businessman almost all you know diplomats always generals in there all the principles are well most of the principles are businessmen and you know diplomats look for compromise businessmen look for leverage so so that's I think an appealing are you generals look for weaknesses so in other words with you saying sanctions are leverage if you're eventually looking to go back to a negotiation about the sanctions that you've been working on for a long time why start walking away from them before they agree one I was just going to speak one comment on your preemptive strike question it's just that in reality that's not realistic and North Korea is not I don't think actually a nuclear missile it's about to strike us so in reality we're not going to in real world really do a preemptive strike against them why don't you think North Korea having a long range missile that's nuclear capable is a realistic possibility I mean they will but it's not that they are actually going to attack the United States because they know it's going to be end of the regime well they need to know that well that's what I'm saying so that's what I'm getting at I think preemptive strike we can talk about it but it's not a realistic policy option in reality this is why it does come to deterrence that Kim Jong-un regime has to be deterred that if they he were you will use this weapon that it will be the end of North Korea could that be a declaratory policy let's say they start stacking a ICBM or they don't even need to stack down the line if they move towards solid fuel where a preemptive declaratory statement would be just to let you know if this is a nuclear weapon we will respond with overwhelming force to eliminate your country or something for that it's to make him believe that Mr. Trump can say that maybe he's actually believable because you actually don't know with him and that's one one advantage of Mr. Trump maybe is that you can use the madman theory that I am very serious about this and so Kim Jong-un about to drag his people down with him I think who takes the conversation in an interesting direction because right now this sort of locus of unpredictability and instability for everybody the US Japan Korea and China has been North Korea and one of the frustrations that I always had at the NSC was it seemed like the Chinese were spent far more time managing the rational Americans than the sort of irrational uncontrollable North Koreans and if you change the dynamic to a point at which the other actors in this equation say actually the unpredictable potentially volatile actor in this is not just North Korea but it may be the United States that changes the equation of course that's a difficult complicated thing to do because it's the United States and how credible is it for the United States to act like a volatile unpredictable unstable character but do you agree there's one person that might be Mr. Trump I would say my view is this is the presidency this is not one person this is an administration a secretary of defense a secretary of state is the administration as a whole able to reduce the degree of predictability of US policy in a way that generates leverage it's a big play it's a hard thing to do administration ever seriously contemplated because in some sense what you're saying is and I often thought about this how do I walk into the Oval Office and say Mr. President the most effective strategy is to walk up to the brink of war but not go over the brink but make everybody think you're prepared to go over the brink and then hope there's no miscalculation or accident I see the challenge you would have so I'm simply saying Mr. President Trump as any administration true brink of minship on this particular issue is a very complicated proposition of course they do any final thoughts yes, just two comments with regard to the idea of nuclear standoff it doesn't come at the free cost because from Japan's perspective we have to divert more resources for basic missile defense be that be North Korea that will enable China to free ride on North Korea's costing-folding strategy against Japan Japan would have less fewer resources to maintain determined relationship with China so it doesn't come at the free cost and also with respect to this timing of the lifting of sanctions I agree one of the lessons we have learned from Banco Delta Asia is that there was so much rush to reach agreement with North Korea at a time when sanctions were effective so this timing a coordination of diplomatic opportunity and sanctions it's a diplomatic statecraft that really needs to be fought through I agree with other participants I agree with that to put it very nicely I would just add the one aspect we haven't really talked about too much is the deterrence aspect and that has both an aspect of declared policy and I think there's space for a new administration to clarify publicly declared policy because there's all sorts of things that can and should be said that sound pretty robust and I think are useful early on and can actually be a sort of can play an important role in addition to sort of the sanctions piece and we haven't really talked about that but there's a lot that can be done both with declared policy of course with just force posture itself that can enhance the sanctions piece and as Victor I think very eloquently pointed out it's all about leverage gaining leverage over North Korea and if you have a strategy that has that is both posture and statements and a robust sanctions piece that begins to look like something that is a testable proposition I'm not convinced it's going to work because it's a hard problem but that looks like a pretty credible package for an administration Interesting, well that's terrific I really appreciate you guys coming in today and talking about this we used up all the time in this conversation but we do have our reception and able to talk further if you have any questions thank you for joining us today very productive afternoon and please help me thank our panel for being a part of this the email works this one yeah and the cell phone yeah and the email what are you doing now in Tokyo it's a difficult problem but it's going to get smaller