 Thanks, Terry. Thanks everybody for coming. So everybody knows, or at least everybody thinks, that the U.S. ROK Alliance is like Apple Pie. It's great. Arguably, it's the best it's been in 60 years. And to some people's minds, it's the strongest relationship that the U.S. has in Asia. So without arguing that any of that is false, I wanted to come here to talk and paint a slightly different picture. The Alliance is in a good place today, but as my financial advisor tells me, you know, past performance is not an indicator of future outcomes necessarily. So while the U.S. and ROK have much on which they can find common ground today, and they have for the past 60 years, the areas of disagreement within the Alliance, between the U.S. and ROK, are the same areas that are going to promise to get worse as the regional security environment evolves as the threat from North Korea evolves, unless something intervenes to change that. So the region is seeing the rise of several new trends. On the decision-making and defense investment side, we're seeing military modernization and the rise of asymmetric military strategies that erode or counter sort of traditional power projection approaches to military force. On the behavioral side, we're seeing the rise of something that in the Pentagon we're calling gray zone challenges, gray zone coercion, along with newer, much more fluid forms of security cooperation, configurations of defense ties at the bilateral and trilateral level within Asia. Three of these four trends apply directly to North Korea. So the Korean Peninsula is not exempt from these broader phenomena in the region. If I have some kind of bumper sticker argument for what I'm trying to say today, it's that these new regional patterns and these patterns in relation to North Korea are redefining the context in which the U.S. ROK Alliance finds itself and the Alliance is going to have to adapt to these evolutions in order to continue to thrive. So fundamentally, the areas of strongest disagreement within the Alliance are sort of a skew of the region's prevailing trends and the areas of strongest disagreement promise to strain the Alliance even more moving forward as a result. So let me unpack briefly the trends or patterns that I would offer are defining Asia increasingly. The first big military modernization and in some categories actual arms racing right? So you don't hear a lot of people talking about this, some actually in Naval War College faculty, but the objective metrics are there. Defense spending is up in most Asian militaries. There is a very subtle arms race happening in aircraft carriers. China, India, Australia, Japan is not an aircraft carrier per se, but it approximates the capability South Korea Navy has spoken of this as well. They're actively interested in joining this. So this is happening, right? And probably more important, precision strike munitions are spreading rapidly. Everybody has some form of precision strike munition. So ballistic missile defense, cruise missiles, multiple types of V's, and then the intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance systems necessary to enable precision targeting. So you can use these platforms, use these munitions to strike with precision. So layered on top of this military modernization is very clear investment in asymmetric military strategies that make use of these capabilities. So a couple of thumbnail examples. North Korea is developing what it describes in its own language as kamikaze drones as a tactic of swarming against South Korean targets as a relatively inexpensive way to offset a technologically superior rival to the south. Japan and Australia are making taking steps to invest in next generation fighter aircraft, and there are a lot of reasons for taking that step. One of them is a belief that superiority in the air domain can help offset significant naval capacity of competitors in a maritime domain. And in ASEAN countries, most Southeast Asian militaries are investing heavily in Coast Guard, coastal defense, localized maritime defense capabilities like anti-ship missiles, submarines, undersea mines as a way to offset the ability of any aggressor, I think a lot of them probably have China in mind realistically, but any aggressor from projecting power in contravention of their territorial claims. So they're pursuing effectively what looks or what starting to stitch together as sort of anti-access capabilities on sort of a local level in response to the ability of others to project power. Another pattern that has emerged in Asia, is grey zone challenges, grey zone coercion. It describes the kind of coercion that falls ambiguously between peace and war and the term actually comes from Japan's description of Chinese behavior in the East China Sea. But the criteria for grey zone challenges it fits also North Korea's 2010 attack on a South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan. North Korea's most recent cyber attack on Sony. And Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea as well, not just the East China Sea. And so with grey zone challenges you have sort of traditional coercion taking place but it's with non-traditional actors or non-traditional means. And so non-traditional actors, the Coast Guard is not typically what you use to course another state. Fishing vessels are not something you use to course another state. Hackers are not something you use to course another state necessarily. And unarmed drones into another state's territory or into a contested territory. These are moves that have a thin veil of deniability about the fact of aggression surrounding them. And this, you can ponder about what the motivations for this are but the effect of this, the effect of grey zone coercions, this category of force with military or with political purpose is that the aggressor is taking advantage of an ambiguity between aggressor and defender. And that shifts the burden of retaliation decisions and therefore questionable moral hazard to the defender. And so this is becoming more commonplace. It's outside of Asia as well but let's limit it to Asia for now. So I'm talking a lot about the region. I'm talking a lot about bigger trends in Asia. You know, I'm supposed to be here talking about Korea. Keep in mind for a second what I've described as the prevailing trends in the region. Military modernization arms racing in some categories. Power projection based military strategies but more importantly the rise of asymmetric military strategies. And then the emergence of grey zone coercion as becoming a more commonplace. What I would offer is that the areas of consensus within the US ROK alliance relate very much to historical precedent of the alliance and to present circumstances that the alliance finds itself in but not necessarily to these contours of the future. Not necessarily to these factors that are going to become more important in the future if the past is any indicator of where we might be going. So real quick tick list of some of the most fundamental areas of agreement in the alliance. Both sides agree that the US military presence is essential because of a common view of the North Korea threat, right? Both sides agree that combined forces command needs to remain intact so that the alliance can function as a single combined war fighting command. Okay? Fair enough. You need a single command and control structure. All right. The alliance agrees fundamentally that we need to be prepared for total war against North Korea and for the possibility of a collapse scenario in North Korea. This also makes sense. The alliance agrees that operational control of South Korean forces for the time being at least should remain with South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff in peacetime and effectively with the US commander in wartime. Subject to change maybe but at least we're in agreement about it. We both agree that the US military footprint on the peninsula should be consolidated for the sake of political sustainability if nothing else. It reduces opportunities for friction with civil society, right? And over the long term there's this sort of visionary agreement that the peninsula should eventually be unified peacefully under democratic auspices. So these are major areas of consensus between the US and South Korea and I would suggest that these areas of agreement have almost nothing to do with the direction that the region is heading. It's good to have areas of agreement. It's good to have an alliance with the unified command structure if you think you might have to fight a war. And it's good that the alliance has a shared interest in guarding against what it views as a North Korea threat. But how does an alliance obsessed with North Korea think about other challenges? What happens if in the future China becomes more aggressive throughout the region but not on the Korean peninsula? Does the alliance bury its head in the sand or does it coalesce with the rest of the region? Ignore the regional question. How does the alliance think about Chinese intervention on the Korean peninsula? As far as I'm aware there's no consensus between the US and ROK about how to think about or how to deal with what has happened factually in the past in 1950, Chinese intervention in a conflict with North Korea. How does an alliance that's prepared for total war or collapse deal with what falls in between, grey zone challenges, limited war campaigns? And how does an alliance that is technologically superior deal with an adversary or other competitors who are okay with being technologically inferior and still find a way to coerce? What I'm pointing out with all these questions is that there are a lot of existential things, existential questions that the alliance is not prepared to answer. And these questions have nothing to do necessarily with the things we agree on today. It's not that the things we agree on are bad, it's just what do they have to do with these unresolved issues. And so I've described the way the region's evolving. The major areas of consensus between the US and ROK have suggested that these things don't really converge. What about the areas of disagreement within the alliance? So the key argument I'm offering here is that the disagreements that we have today that we've been able to suppress or ignore or subordinate to larger areas of consensus are going to have to be dealt with in the future. The way the region's evolving, the way North Korea is changing, they're going to force us to face certain issues. And these issues are areas of fundamental disagreement. And so this troubles me, this is a concern. What are they? One is ballistic missile defense. So we have very clear disagreements about this. South Korea is rightly concerned about the costs and benefits of investing in missile defense architecture. But they're also concerned with the appearance of joining sort of regional missile defense architecture. It's public knowledge, it's been voiced in the past. South Korean experts, South Korean officials, worrying about how China might perceive that. And there have also been some concerns that South Korea might be seen as defending Japan or investment in missile defense architecture would benefit Japan. And speaking of Japan the US and ROK have pretty divergent views about Japan about the importance of cooperation with Japan. The USC's trilateral cooperation is crucial not least because Japanese ports and bases are necessary for force flow. They're necessary for the way the US would fight and support itself in a contingency on the Korean peninsula. But South Korea doesn't see Japan as essential to its security. And in surveys you find a plurality of South Koreans and Japanese defining the other as a threat actually. And it goes without saying that the level of trust in the political relationship is quite low. The US and ROK also disagree about military cooperation within the region. So this is not something that people often observe because global Korea, global alliance, we've cooperated in Haiti, the Gulf of Aden, Afghanistan, Sudan but not in South Korea's backyard. So South Korea has been reluctant to do anything that might be perceived as containing China. So you can debate whether that is good or bad but this is just a reality. And so you don't see much alliance cooperation within the Asia Pacific. There is what looks like an agreement in the newspapers, I have to be careful when talking about this about South Korean cruise missiles and UAVs. So reading the evolution of news stories over time it looks like we had a negotiation and ultimately it ended up that South Korea is now allowed to develop longer range cruise missiles and UAVs with larger payloads. It's capped at no more than 800 kilometers and 500 kilogram payloads according to press. And this limitation is interpreted as an agreement but it can also be interpreted as a disagreement. The fact that there even was the need to consult about this suggests like a divergence of preferences with South Koreans being concerned about sort of hard security in the US it's not that they're unconcerned with hard security but a US concerned with nonproliferation, right? Finally and most vitally the US and South Korea disagree deeply about the best way to respond to North Korean provocations. This became evident in 2010 when South Korea was attacked twice by North Korea and in response the US urged effectively restraints and South Korea not only wanted to retaliate but some within South Korea called for a return of US tactical nonstrategic nuclear weapons, some even called for an independent South Korea nuclear capability, right? There's very clear disagreement there. So missile defense, cooperation with Japan, regional military cooperation, limitations on UAVs and cruise missiles and then responding to North Korean provocations. These are all pretty serious areas of disagreement but present circumstances have kept them sort of marginal. We've managed to sort of like muddle our way through this and none of these decisions have really impacted the alliance and none of these disagreements have really impacted the alliance in a negative way. We've been able to manage our way through this but I don't think that we'll be able to suppress these disagreements forever and I think the way things are headed we are going to be forced to face some or all of these. As North Korea moves closer to its own version of a nuclear triad, so like a secure retaliatory nuclear strike capability, it also moves closer to deterring the alliance from launching a major war or intervention because it almost guarantees that doing so would go nuclear, right? This is the logic of deterrence, mutually assured destruction between nuclear states. At the same time that opens up a bit of a paradox because as long as relations remain hostile, if they know they've deterred major war, that kind of puts us in a box that enables coercion at a smaller scale, right? And so this means gray zone coercion, limited war campaigns that we have just not really thought about for a long time become much more likely. Yet the alliance has fundamental disagreement about how to respond to these exact kinds of challenges. As North Korea attacks in 2010 revealed, U.S. urges restraint, South Koreans urge retaliation. To counter North Korea's growing drone fleet and its growing missile arsenal, it only makes sense that South Korea is going to need or at least want ever better UAVs and cruise missiles. Yet there's fundamentally divergent preferences. South Korea wanting longer range, larger payload systems the U.S. believing that there would need to be limits. The U.S. way of war demands that U.S. use of bases, ports, logistics facilities in Japan be employed to support any sort of conflict in Korea. Japan is operationally essential to a Korean conflict in the eyes of the U.S. Yet South Korea views Japan as unnecessary to its security and in the Bush administration they actually experience military crisis with one another in 2005 I think it was. And so they're not adversaries but clearly there is a latent hostility that can be activated under the wrong conditions. And so the whole structure of my talk today is really a long-winded way of saying that the alliance is optimized for regional challenges that we can see sort of coming down the road. And some may say that's okay, you know the alliance needs to focus on North Korea that should be the priority. I would point out that the alliance is also not optimized to deal with North Korea. And a lot of the things that are changing in the region are things that are reflected in how North Korea is changing as well. North Korea is moving toward a secure nuclear strike capability. When it achieves it I don't know. But we have no plan that I'm aware of to stop it. North Korea has a proven ability because it did so four times in the past year to penetrate South Korean territory with its drones. Yet we have no operational counters to deal with it that I'm aware of. And while the alliance may be prepared for North Korean total war or North Korean total collapse it is not prepared for gray zone coercion or limited war campaigns, limited incursions, seizures of territory, right? So what do we do? At a minimum I think we need to get North Korea right or at least more right than we've gotten it so far. We have a sort of de facto strategy as an alliance that effectively ignores North Korea's nuclear buildup and prepares for total war or collapse. And I think we need to pivot off that, upon intended, and develop a strategy that finds a way to disrupt North Korea's nuclear program. And if we can't do that or we are not willing to do that, then by default we have to be prepared to live with the costs of a North Korean nuclear second strike capability. You either be prepared to live with what will happen or you find a way to prevent it, right? And I would propose that preparing to live with that cost means preparing to live with more gray zone coercion and a greater likelihood of limited war type scenarios on the peninsula. This may be controversial, even more controversial than that. But when it comes to alliance cooperation in the context of the larger region I think we need to be less concerned about what China thinks about our types of cooperation because at the end of the day it's still cooperation. And less concerned about if there's incidental benefit to others because we've cooperated. So if Japan benefits, or if another partner benefits from alliance cooperation, that should be a good thing. Not a bad thing. At a minimum it shouldn't prevent us from pursuing further cooperation. So I think we should be searching out opportunities to make use of the alliance, its capabilities, its high level of operational readiness, ready to fight tonight, its organizational knowledge, the asset of actually knowing how to fight in a combined structure, and advance areas of common interest with other partners in the region. So Japan is doing this already, Australia is doing this already, even Singapore is doing this kind of thing already. If the alliance has an opportunity to contribute to air or maritime patrol networks in Asia, particularly in high friction areas, it should. If the alliance has an opportunity to broaden the coverage of missile defense umbrella or of a surveillance system, it should consider doing so. And if the alliance has an opportunity to help build the self-defense or domain awareness capacities of military partners in Southeast Asia or elsewhere, then it should as long as it's not detracting from the North Korea mission. So if the alliance I'll end this in a second, if the alliance is to endure it needs to do a better job of addressing the problem that gave birth to it, North Korea. But it also needs to have a value proposition that's more than the North Korea we see today because that's changing too. And fundamentally trust, habits of cooperation and international relations are very, very difficult to build to achieve, but we've achieved it with South Korea. This is an asset, and it's an asset that I think we should not let waste, we should protect it, and we should leverage it to deal with North Korea more effectively, and to deal with more than North Korea. So I'll leave it at that. Thanks. Oh, if you guys have questions, I think we'll... this is the footprint of the United States force in South Korea. So I agree that it's very important in the cooperation, in the regional cooperation in each country, including the United States. But I think it's still difficult because we have historical issues in East Asia, especially here, the special year after World War II, so already we have some discussion about how to cooperate in the Hiskai. So some people say the Hiskai won't work. So because China and sometimes are using media and expressed about the entire Japanese emotion. So maybe especially South Korea need to get cooperation, mutual cooperation and security cooperation, but sometimes historical issues fall in the shadow in each country. So still I need footprint of the United States forces in East Asia, but you say maybe the United States decided to change footprint apart, maybe a rotation. Some forces rotation, rotate, rotate, and maybe in the future, they use army force or something from South Korea, especially, some of them from Japan. Because South Korea and Japan, especially Okinawa, have some friction with the society. So my opinion is key between Asia so how do you think about the opinion? So on the question of the US footprint in East Asia, it's very important, right? There is no automatic or deterministic effect of the US military presence. The US military presence in the Middle East is very controversial and generates lots of negative feedback. It's arguably, people debate this, but some people say it's a net bad thing versus a net good thing. But in Asia, it's very different context that in which US military forces are being introduced, there's a very high degree of organic demand for US presence in the region. Almost, I mean, I don't know how much China appreciates us being there, but clearly not North Korea, but almost everybody else, right? Especially South Korea and Japan. And so, I was talking with Terry earlier, there's like a high degree of multiple types of uncertainty in the region. And so the last thing that anyone, foreign policy elites in Asia want is to add to that uncertainty by removing the one constant in the last 60 years, which is the US military presence. It's possible that circumstances change in the future, maybe we're not always there, but for the foreseeable future, certainly maintaining our military presence is essential. And the way the Obama administration has talked about the rebalance to Asia, the net presence is likely to increase in coming years. So that's clearly very important. On the history, the history part, so history is clearly a big problem to the major impediment between South Korea and Japan, right? But Japan is like the hard test of whether history impedes cooperation. So Japan was aggressor relative to the entire region prior to World War II, not just South Korea. And Japan is engaging in more bilateral and trilateral difference cooperation in Southeast Asia and with Australia than South Korea is, right? So Japan's historical legacy is not impeding this degree of cooperation. There are issues of trust throughout East Asia. A lot of it's to do with Japan, but not only Japan, there are latent rivalries within Southeast Asia as well. And so history is a problem. South Korea-Japan relations is very important. But cooperation between them should be possible given what's possible, that's given what Japan is proving possible with other countries in the region, with whom it also has historical legacy. Those are good points. My question about the operation control of South Korea in the whole time. So, I think if you believe that you're alive, we can move to the alliance step like Japan and the United States. We have a real cooperation in the whole time. It will happen. But you already have, United States already have operational control of South Korea. So it will extend the time. China is also closing to South Korea. The first time they were sitting in South Korea, not North Korea. So China is now closing to South Korea. So how do you think about the outcome of South Korea in the future? I never thought about OPCON in relation to China. But I would say that OPCON is one of these areas where the alliance has sort of consensus right now, which is a good thing that could change in the future because within South Korea there's disagreement about OPCON. But consensus is good. My concern is that whether we have OPCON or whether South Korea has OPCON, there's been too much energy invested in the OPCON issue relative to what matters for the future. And so the alliance is not investing in all of these questions that are more important. What do we think about Chinese intervention on the Korean peninsula? How do we deal with limited war campaigns? How about these operational challenges that we have not resolved yet? What about, oh crap, North Korea has nukes. What do we do about that? So there are all these big existential questions that the alliance needs to grapple with in order to continue to thrive. And it hasn't so far, partially because it's been focusing on OPCON transition. OPCON for the US was a political offer. It has operational consequences, but it was a South Korean political request to the US as far as I understand. And the US granted that request. So if the South Koreans asked for operational control of their forces, I imagine they would probably receive it. Like why would we hold on to OPCON if they wanted it? So we're in agreement, and if they change their mind we might still be in agreement. What I would say is so what, either way, there are bigger questions. This is operationally consequential, but there are strategically consequential decisions that we have not resolved that we need to invest in as well. I think the US and the Republic of Korea alliance is strongest in the world, in the world history, but anyway I'm going to talk about OPCON transfer continuously. Some critics in my country argue that if OPCON transfer to over the ROK, it's not a big deal right now because if the world occurs right now the United States will help ROK but actually I don't think so because I can agree with that because it's not just only military problem, it's very political problem because you have to get admission from Congress to help my country in the world. So how do you think about that? It is necessary to transfer OPCON now or in the future, in the near future. So I could be wrong, but I honestly don't believe that OPCON decision either way will affect the US likelihood of intervening in a Korea conflict. I think you're right that the Congress needs to approve any sort of long term operation, but we have the executive branch has the authority to engage in short duration operations and also we have treaty obligation. So I would say that there's a very high degree of confidence that we would intervene on behalf of South Korea if South Korea were attacked in a war erupted. But I don't think OPCON affects that decision necessarily either way, whether it's delay or change OPCON. I know you're going to throw something at me. I think somebody wanted to ask you a question about how many stars you're going to get into the comment. I will say I'm not a Korean specialist, but I've heard a talk about a Korean triad. That seems to me that's a bit premature but maybe I'm just out of it. What is the larger strategic issue of how new is this situation as far as I've understood, Seoul was under a massive artillery attack which would approximate in casualties something like a nuclear war. So how new is this situation? Aren't we talking about Matt going way back for a long time on the peninsula? One has to worry about it so many on many levels, but I don't know that that aspect is actually new. And then my question would be this is not regarding the alliance, but just the evolving North Korean situation generally. It does seem to me that the Russian factor has now become kind of more than an annoyance maybe. I wonder if you had any impressions there. I mean the Russians seem to be going all out to show that they are a serious partner as it were for Pyongyang. I take it that's partly to balance Beijing, but I wonder what your impression is and whether the alliance needs to respond or think about the Russian factor at all. So the most important question was the first one. The interview was pretty raunchy, but it was a good laugh. It was a good laugh for freedom. The nuclear triad discussion is new and emerging and everything doesn't start in DC, but I think that one is starting in DC. The reality is that's the direction North Korea is heading. There's a disagreement about how long it would take to get there. There used to be a debate about whether North Korea was just going to have a good enough nuclear capability, like a minimum deterrence kind of thing. It's moving in the direction with its field testing with its statements of establishing a retaliatory strike capability. They're developing KNO8, road mobile ballistic missiles. So you can shoot, move and then shoot again. It's not a fixed missile site, which creates lots of challenges. You have your fixed missile sites. You have late last year announced investments in a ballistic missile submarine force. And then you have short-range ballistic missiles, the nodongs, that traditionally people thought of them as being useful primarily to hit Japan, but they've been, maybe March or so. Sometime last year they tested them changing the angle so that you could use them to attack South Korean territory. And then their drone fleet right now is pretty wimpy. The payloads that they can carry are very low, but they're making the program investments to change that. So you have drones. You have sea-based ballistic missile force. You have fixed missile sites. You have road mobile sites. It's not a triad in the U.S. sense, but it achieves the same effect of a sort of secure retaliatory strike capability, which introduces, as you say, the mutual assured destruction thing. You raise a good point about the high cost of a North Korean conflict already. But I think that people, even though the effect of firebombing in Dresden versus the actual nuclear detonations in Nagasaki, Hiroshima, I think there is still a psychological difference even though the casualty effects could be the same. And in terms of war fighting, how we prepare to fight, you have to prepare to fight differently an adversary who's going to do mass artillery fires than an adversary who drops nuclear detonations because of the consequence management. There are all these operational implications that are very different like things you invest in, the things you prepare for are very different if you're dealing with artillery against soul versus nuclear use. So I think there is still a difference, at least in people's minds, even though you're very right to point out that the costs of war are already high. And I think that what you're pointing to is part of why in 2010 the U.S. was urging restraint, right? The U.S. is all too aware of the cost of conflict if it escalates. And that cost is programmed into our calls for restraint. And so the conventional cost of war itself is going to be so high that this is difficult to really have to face. The problem is that as long as we maintain what North Korea considers a hostile policy toward it, these types of sort of provocations, coercion are only going to continue. Why would they not continue, right? If it believes it will not be attacked or invaded, why would it not provoke us if it believes it can achieve something politically? And so that's something that we have unresolved, also the subject of a future book, hopefully. And third point, Russo-North Korean relations historically have been subordinated and Japan-North Korea relations have been subordinated, sort of an inverse function of sort of U.S.-Russia relations. So when U.S.-Russia relations are in the toilet, Russia-North Korea relations are awesome. And whenever U.S.-Russia relations are in a good place, the reset and this kind of thing, the Russo-North Korean relationship gets more distant. Japan-North Korea relations, it's the same relative to Japan-South Korea relations. So like when Japan-South Korea relations are really, really bad, Japan-North Korea relations tend to get a little better. And so this is just, maybe I'm not pointing out causality, but there's a clear correlation here. And so the, I honestly don't know how to think about Russia and Asia because it's been in existence in Asia for so long, but I think you're right to bring it up. But I also think that Russia would be willing to subordinate Asia policy to a larger dynamic, as with like U.S.-Soviet relations in the past. From South Korea and so on, you attended U.S.-Rug and U.S.-Alliance relations. I attended six times the Palestinian search and track operations last year as an operation after or the second wave. It's a very important threat to the, not only for the South Korea, but for the United States. Fortunately, last December 29th, we have a trial effort of remote between the United States, Japan, and South Korea for exchanging the intelligence about North Korean nuclear and Palestinian issues. In my opinion, according to the Defense Review of 2015, it was published just a few days ago. North Korea succeeded to miniature the nuclear bomb and also the ballistic missiles. So I think the North Korea succeeded their program because of United States' strategy, incremental strategy from the beginning of Obama administration. In 2011 there was a live day agreement between North Korea and South, and United States. United States believed North Korea, they will change it from the beginning of Kim Jong-un's regime, but they didn't change anything. And there are just incremental sanctions to North Korea, just stage one and stage two and stage three. So in my opinion, to defend the protect their North Korean nuclear ballistic missile, United States needed to shape some strategic environment by synchronizing the sticky power and the sharp power. In other words, powerful economic sanctions and military deterrence by using the bilateral relationship with Iraq and United States, and also trilateral relationship with Japan, U.S. and probably North Korea by establishing missile defense systems. So what's your opinion as an American perspective for my opinions? Thank you. But there will be some difficulties because of China or Russian factors. I would like to know your options. Well, you've painted a very complicated picture already, right? So the information sharing agreement between U.S. or OK in Japan, this is a great step. It's a positive sign of sort of symbolic cooperation. Maybe there's meaningful cooperation there also that's possible. I don't think it's positive. It's not a great news story because what we really want, so trilateralism is important but we want trilateralism that's anchored in strong South Korea, Japan bilateral relations. So the trilateral relationship is inherently more fragile if it requires U.S. brokerage between South Korea and Japan. And so this is a good thing. It's better than no trilateral coordination, especially on something like time sensitive, like missile defense information queuing and data sharing. But it's not the ultimate goal. It's like a good step in the right direction, I think. And then you had a larger comment about the failure of North Korea policy in general because of North Korea's progress on its nuclear program. And I think that's probably pretty accurate. The Korea community in D.C., the Korea policy community is starting to recognize that the policy of the last five years or so has not worked. The question is what do we do then. So it's easy to criticize and it's hard to propose alternatives. And especially with North Korea, it's doubly hard because we have tried everything except for political reconciliation and violence. I mean, the two extreme ends are the only things we haven't tried, it seems like. So I think in D.C., people are very open to the idea of sort of new initiatives if they existed somewhere. So to the extent that you have ideas about how to fix the North Korea nuclear program, write about it. My question kind of clears around this idea that the United States seems to really dominate the conversation particularly as it pertains to responses to North Korea or international issues between nations within the region. It just seems that, and this might be just my own perspective on it, but just seems that the United States continues to be the dominating voice in the room. And my question to you is, do you think that that should continue? Well, do you think that that's the case, first of all? And do you think if it is the case that that should continue with regards to mapping a plan to deal with all these issues that you mentioned? Yeah. So I think we have to calibrate our role relative to what there is demand for in the region. I think right now the U.S. does have a very large voice in Asia across the board. But my reading is that that's how everybody wants it to be right now. Because especially in Southeast Asia, Korea, Japan, they view if the U.S. is voicing opinion extending commitment to the region, that means it's not going anywhere. I think the biggest angst is about, so everybody is worried about like a China-U.S. war, but the biggest angst is about staying power of the U.S. There are many other concerns that countries have, but that one is sort of the bedrock concern that spans everybody. So you know, we don't have, we have two treaty alliances technically in Southeast Asia, but not the same way as with Australia, Korea, and Japan. We don't have these like tight security commitments in Southeast Asia like we do in Northeast Asia and with Australia. But Southeast Asian nations still feel like they need us around. They still feel like our presence is useful. And so as long as that's how the dynamic is viewed, then we should sort of meet that demand. If that changes, if suddenly it's like Uncle Sam go home or whatever, then we should revisit that and sort of update. But I feel like right now people are like hanging on to our coattails saying don't go anywhere right now. We don't know how this China thing is going to play out. And oh by the way, we all have unresolved territorial disputes with each other too. And we've just suppressed that because we're more concerned about China right now. So that's kind of how I see it, but I might be wrong. Another issue that I think can be, it's already very divisive and could get worse, is the renegotiation of the 1-2-3 agreement, the nuclear agreement between South Korea and the United States where South Korea wants to have the ability to add the full fuel cycle and reprocess. And the United States is very reluctant to do that. Japan does have it. South Korea doesn't. South Koreans argue we've been more than model citizens in regards to proliferation issues and yet you won't let us do this. We've essentially kicked the can down the road now in two years I think. How do you see that issue playing out? It's another area of I could have added that to the list. It's an area of fundamental disagreement that we've managed our way through, but we have no sign of actually reconciling, right? And so it's those issues that put the alliance at risk or that will strain the alliance when they come to the fore. And so the way we deal with it is to push it to make it somebody else's problem later. But that's what everybody does. That's what we've done with North Korea for like 60 years is like make it somebody else's problem later. Maybe we can keep doing that. The whole premise of my talk today was that eventually, I don't know what the phrase is, chicken comes home to roost or something. Eventually we're going to have to deal with some of these issues. Maybe not all of them. Maybe the 1-2-3 agreement we can keep pushing down the road until later. Or maybe that's one of the ones that comes to the fore and we have to address. Maybe we have no choice, right? So because the nuclear program in North Korea gets so bad that even though it's not for nuclearization purposes the contrast is too obscene or we need a political bargaining with South Korea to get something else, like who knows, right? So you're right that it's a huge area of disagreement and I don't know how it can actually be resolved in the current context at least. And it's those things that are like irreconcilably divergent that make it hard to have confidence that the alliance will be on a firm footing in the future. Will the US eventually give in on that issue, do you think? It's possible. Under current circumstances, I don't think so. But current circumstances are changing. That's premise of my talk. So, you know, maybe in the future, I don't know. It's a good point. Okay. Appreciate your comments. Why would South Korea give two cents about an ISB that we use called Japan? That we use called Japan we've got across how many thousands of miles of Pacific ocean to get there, so we need some place to be able to do that. So I don't understand the South Korean misgivings with that. Likewise, in the other part of the half-relation response, why do we care about payload of South Koreans that are sovereign countries? Those are both excellent questions. I'm from the Midwest. So South Korea doesn't care that we use Japan rear-area bases. They care up to this point at least about Japanese boots, even support boots on the Korean Peninsula. So as of right now, that's no way. What the U.S. has fallen short on is justifying or explaining to South Korea the essentialness of Japan for Korean contingencies. So it's like the U.S. has a certain way of war like flexible deterrent options and you move forces in mass and then you have staging areas. Everybody has seen this play out in the Iraq war and everything. North Korea knows how we fight a war. They've told us. That means when you overlay that on the geography of Northeast Asia, Japan becomes the staging area. That's just how it works. We have not done a good job of explaining that or selling that to South Korea. And as a result, South Korea, the government, political officials they don't appreciate this interdependence and they think that Japan is sort of expendable from Korean security. And Japan, increasingly it feels like they're not abandoning South Korea or anything but they're sort of frustrated by this. Japan feels like it's important to South Korean security for this very reason. And like they're being unappreciated. And so it's like, well, if I'm not appreciated I'll take my use of bases elsewhere. And so there's a concern that moving forward if South Korea-Japan relations don't improve that Japan maybe won't want to put itself in danger of North Korean missiles by being rear area base. Maybe Japan's priority is to not get attacked and it gets on North Korea's target list if it's hosting the rear area bases for U.S. forces. And so I think South Korea has a bigger stake than it realizes in keeping Japan interested in supporting a Korea contingency. So the salesmanship of the U.S. government has not been as great as it could be, I think. What was your other awesome question? Why do we care about the payload? Well, not everybody does. So nonproliferation is like in U.S. DNA in relation to other states. We care about it far more than many other states do. And so there was a concern in the 70s, especially in the 80s that proliferation of cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, proliferation of precision strike, long range precision strike was a problem. In part because you could mate that with nuclear material, but also just the conventional fact of it by itself, like it approximates the effect, Lyle's not here, but it approximates the effect of nuclear weapons at a certain point. And so the missile technology control regime was set up. It's like a supplier's cartel to sort of control the spread of cruise missiles and of UAVs. It's a little outdated and like the U.S. model approaching nonproliferation is becoming less relevant because the U.S. no longer has a monopoly on a lot of these technologies and so like substitute capabilities almost up and down the cross categories is available in China or can be developed indigenously in other countries. So like we don't have the monopoly we once did and that was like the undergirding assumption of U.S. nonproliferation policy. And so missile technology control regime was born in that old model and that's the model that we apply when we look at the limitations that South Korea should have. But you know there's people debate these things and other people say that the Korean security situation is distinct and frankly South Korea needs to be able to strike at anything within North Korea and so we need to show allowances for that. Oh by the way that old nonproliferation model is sort of defunct anyway it's not that nonproliferation doesn't matter but the way we're approaching it is sort of in an old school way and so we need to rethink how we do nonproliferation. So yeah, my opinion is evolving about this. You mentioned range and payload you mentioned is not about the crude missile. We don't have limitation to develop crude missile range and payload. That's the limitation to develop electric missile. The problem is crude missile is too old to do that. The problem with talking about this in a public forum is that in newspapers they mention 800 kilometers and 500 kilograms but the government press releases didn't mention any kind of specific details. So the 800-500 was like a guess but nobody knows that the governments agreed to extend range and payload. So if I take you at your word. I'll ask the last question then I think if we're at that point. This is really a tough question and a crystal ball question here but the last seven years or so have been good years for the U.S.-South Korean alliance but prior to that it had been some pretty difficult years under two South Korean legislative or liberal presidents. South Korea's next election coming up in 2017. If South Koreans elect a liberal president do you anticipate major changes in the alliance or are a lot of these good relationships that we've had these last number of years fairly solidified or do you think some of that could be in jeopardy depending on the political wins in both countries? Yeah, so short answer is it depends but the reality is the larger the number of areas of serious disagreement the greater the probability that the progressive side in South Korea will pick up one of those and politicize it. And so like you can't control what things get politicized and what things don't but the more disagreement you have the greater number of areas of disagreement you have the easier it will be to politicize. So like this is why it's like it would be great if we could address a couple of these areas of disagreement while we're on friendly terms because our terms may not be as friendly in the future and so the survival of the alliance is going to like we can manage that better if we can deal with some of these issues on the front end. Because you're right if a progressive president comes to power that could create alliance friction but not to sit I don't think as bad as the past like the executive branch seems to have like a moderating effect on people once they actually come into office. And so I don't think it will end the alliance but we're put more at risk when we have more areas of disagreement. So nothing will be as bad I think is like 2003 and 2004 that was bad. Go ahead. It's very difficult to mention for the elections. Probably there will be many changes. Democratic party opposition party would like to find another way so they would like to follow the former president Kim's policy to engage with North Korea. I think there will be many changes if the other guys are snagged towards North Korea. Any other questions? Okay, thank you very much.