 Thank you. Welcome to everybody. My name is John Hamery, President here at CSIS, and Dr. Ham, we welcome you and your team. For several years I have been going to the Asan Institute with great envy, you know, to see their fabulous new building, and finally I can welcome you here. I'm glad we're finding, you know, we should all be standing, I think, when the former National Security Advisor walks in. This is going to be a very interesting session, because the unavoidably were caught looking at two very complicated and quite different problems of managing difficult countries with proliferation issues, and they are in some sense very difficult. There's, the hard part about the agenda, of course, with Iran is sustaining a coalition that agrees with the general policy directions. That's really the tension that we feel right now. There's a lot of controversy, of course, over the agreement of the P5 plus 1. You know, was this the right thing to do? But it was unavoidable as an outcome of the diplomatic path we've been on for the last 10 years. The reason it's taken nine years is it took a long time for the government of Iran to get us, somebody who wasn't a dope, as the president of Iran. I mean, you know, because for all those years it was pretty easy, you know, to hold a consensus when the other guy was so obviously crazy that the rest of the world could agree to hold together. But it's a very different story now. I don't know how many of you have had a chance to see this new website that the government of Iran has put up on their nuclear program. It's really quite interesting. It's really very good. It's visually beautiful. I mean, it's a beautifully crafted website. Really amazing. And it's written as though you had one of the best Washington policy experts sit down with one of the best lawyers in town. It's really good. It's well reasoned. It's thoughtful. And it's completely devoid of histrionics. None of the great Satanists and all that. It's a really quite sophisticated. And it's an insight into what's happening. Because the goal for Iran right now, of course, with these negotiations, isn't to make us happy. It's to break the sanctions. I mean, it's the, it was a very interesting poll that was done by Jim Zogby, who's a brother to John, you know, with a polling firm. But Jim did this very interesting poll on sentiments in Iran. Now it's hard to know the validity of the poll because you don't see the, you know, the essential data of the demography of the poll. But if we assume that it is, that the poll sample is plausibly statistically representative, there's a very interesting thing. It, 60 or I mean, 50 percent of the public supports the government and 65 percent of the public supports the nuclear weapons program. The nuclear weapons program is more popular than the government is. So will the government give it up? Probably not. But they do need to break the sanctions. Because all of the concerns of the Iranian public are around the quality of life and the lack of opportunity and the lack of diplomacy and the kind of restraint of government and things like that. This was really motivating the unsettled nature of the Iranian public, not the nuclear program. So their goal right now is really to shatter the international consensus around the sanctions environment. And of course that means they have to look like they're sensible. I remember, I don't know, any of you see the television series Dallas, you remember that Dallas, you know, it's about the cynical Texas family. You know, I remember JR Ewing, who was kind of the central actor of this, one time said, you know, he said, once you learn how to fake sincerity, it's downhill all the way. You know, and there's a, you know, what we're seeing here, it's I'm not saying they're faking it, but they are trying to shatter the consensus. That's what's going on. Now, of course, that's a very different condition than the one we see with North Korea. North Korea has no credibility on this. There's no plausible narrative that the North Koreans can embrace because the path they're on is one of consistently trying to simply intimidate their way into legitimacy. So it's a profoundly different problem, really. But there's presidential implications for what happens in Iran. And I think that's what we're going to explore today. I think it's going to be quite, quite an important session. I congratulate our colleagues for thinking to do this. And we welcome you here, and I think we should now start for real. We ought to get a real conference underway. And I look forward. Dr. Han, why don't you come up and I say we were proud and happy to be your partner, and we look forward to having you join us here today. Thank you for coming. Dr. Han, I believe congratulations are in order. This is a beautiful dig, almost as nice as ours, actually. No, it's fabulous. Congratulations. And I look forward to coming back constantly from now on, even more so than we've been doing. As I was talking to Victor just before, the way this was put together is, I think, the way it was quite exemplary. How quickly we were able to do it, and it just shows the incredible partnership that we have with CSIS. We were sitting around a couple of us and saying that as soon as this thing broke in the deal in Iran, we said this has to have some implications for North Korea. And should we do something? We need to talk about this, and should we do it in Seoul or Washington? Let's do it in Washington. So who do we do it with? Well, let's go to CSIS. And it just happened so quickly, and that's how we're here today. I think I'm not going to go into the substance of the topic because we have incredible array of experts here. And again, I'm truly grateful for all of them coming together on such a short notice. But I guess it's also testament to the fact that this really is a very important issue that we need to discuss. I think things have happened. We put this thing together very quickly, but even then, some pretty significant events have occurred on the peninsula to make this even more interesting than when we had initially thought it up. The purge of Changsung Tech, I know everybody's talking about it. How to take this? We're not quite sure yet. But I think my own personal observation, if I may, just for your consideration and trying to link up with what we're talking about today, is the fact that for me, the issue is that, on the one hand, it shows you that Kim Jong-un just got rid of his, perhaps, the only person in his regime who has any knowledge of the outside world or who has had any access to the outside world and who probably was the only advocate of some kind of a reform. And the fact that he just purged him is quite significant in terms of, I think, what where North Korea would be going. The other point is, of course, the brutal way, the blatant way in which he had done it. Now, it's interesting that there are now reports coming out that the photo itself of him being led away is actually doctored. It's not a real photo. And if you actually look at it very carefully, it's interesting. There are a couple of photos that show you the frontal side and the backside. And I actually, once I heard this, I try to sit down and actually compare them. And the thing is that these are the defectors who talk about this. And they say that they will never do it in public like this. But so by the time this had happened, by the time the photo was released, of course, they're saying that the guy had long been purged and probably shot. It's just that they doctored this and they, there was this massive government campaign to get people to go home and actually watch this on television. And they actually provided the electricity necessary for people to actually all sit down and sit home and watch it because they wanted people to see this thing. So if you combine the two, what I worry about, of course, is that this really shows you that Kim Jong-un is probably living in a very limited world. And as I always like to say, at least Kim Jong-il, the great thing about Kim Jong-un was he knew that he knew the difference between the propaganda that his government, his regime was spewing out and the reality of things. He was very cynical manipulator, but he knew the difference between the reality and the fake world that the regime was trying to produce. I'm not so sure Kim Jong-un is able to make that distinction. And at this point, it seems to me that there are two things probably Kim Jong-un will end up doing. One is to try to placate his public to say that after this brutal purging, he needs to show the public that he's a generous leader after all, and he'll probably build another theme park somewhere or do something to placate the public, but on the other hand, he also needs to divert attention, and he also needs to show that he's firmly in control of national security issues. And what does that mean in terms of maybe another nuclear test or another provocation? And so I think we are in for some external action on the part of North Korea in the not too distant future. But I just thought that the reason we thought of this theme was because putting all of this together, time is running out. And in a sense, we understand how fragile the deal, the Iranian deal is as it is. But at the same time, in a sense, Koreans are envious. South Koreans are envious. At least there's a partial deal here. But we're so far away from it. And so what's the difference? And some of the things that, for instance, we have come up with, and Dr. Koh, for instance, will be presenting there in the day, is of course the sanctions regime imposed on Iran versus the one on North Korea. How different are they? Do they have an impact? Is that something that we can think about more, et cetera? Anyways, this is just to give you some sense of at least some of the ways in which Koreans are thinking about what the Iranian deal means for the North Korean. I won't go on any longer, but once again, I'm grateful for CSIS, for Victor, for putting this together. I'm grateful for Gary for coming all the way down from Boston to this, and Ambassador Chun Yong-woo, former National Security Advisor for coming with us, and our colleagues, Professor Chun Je-sung and others, Professor Yu Ho-yeol for coming all the way from Seoul to do this. And I really look forward to this conversation and our continuing conversation. Thank you very much. I'm very much pleased to chair the first session. We don't have much time. We have about an hour, so I think we have two speakers and two discussants. So I will restrain myself to the minimum level of moderator. So Dr. Ko Myung-yeon is a research fellow at ASA Institute for Polish Studies. Actually, he is specialized in sanctioned measures. So also he will be followed by David Asher. He's from the Center for New American Security. And then we have two discussants, Professor Chun Je-sung from Seoul National University. And also Mr. Newcombe is from the United Nations sanctioned panel. So without further let me invite Dr. Ko first. Oh, sorry. I think you are seeing a little preview of what I'm going to present. Can I? Sorry. How do I use this? Yep. Nope. Okay, sorry. Can I? Can anyone use the computer? So it's an honor to be here at CSIS. This is actually my second time. Last time I was at the old building almost three years ago. And I think the last time I presented at this basement without any windows, this much airy and then I'm just more relaxed. So what I want, the motivation behind what I want to present now was essentially used the idea, the concept of, sorry, the methodology, if you can call that an infographics to help with understanding of this complex issue of sanctions. As you may know, sanctions measures are incredibly complex. There are three main actors in addition to others, but the major ones are the United Nations, the US and the EU. And there are many, many different layers of information such as, for example, for the United Nations, you have multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions. For the EU, you have Council Decisions Regulations. And for the US, you have what, you know, the Office of Foreign Asset Control, especially this United Nations list, as well as others. So it's incredibly complex. And then, so in order to compare this to sanctions regime, I wanted to make it have a more simplified presentation. So we have an in-house infographic specialist at ASAN. His name is Chesung Han. So we work together to come up with a simple but then powerfully intuitive way of presenting this complex issue. So without further ado, I'm going to go to the background of what's going on. What's going on between the two regimes. So as you may know well, that the state of the nuclear program of the two countries are quite different now. North Korea has abandoned, has left MPT long time ago, has conducted three nuclear tests so far, and clearly is in possession of a weapons-grade uranium, in which more than 90% were Dutch definition. And it has declared to be a nuclear state. And for Iran, it's actually quite the opposite. It's stated with the MPT and has not conducted any nuclear tests so far. It has no weapons-grade uranium. It has high-energy uranium instead, which according to the agreement, they want to dilute it to 5% or less pretty soon. And as you may know, it's back at the negotiating table. So you want to know what the relationship with the South come with the sanctions regime. And you know, the comparison is quite stark. The sanctions regime for against Iran is quite extensive. There's, David, I think, can cover this more later, but then there's strong focus on the financial sanctions. It targets the Iran central bank. The North Korean, in contrast, in case of North Korea, there's no targeting financial sanctions. And it doesn't target the economy. It's a very narrow and specific focus against a proliferation. And then also, in case of Iran, it targets the oil revenues, for example, also the shipping. There's heavy sanctions against Iran's shipping lines, whereas there's such a thing for North Korea. So you might start wondering why that's so. I mean, you might start wondering, because the Iran sanctions regime is so much stronger than the North Korea case that you had this outcome. But then the truth is that both sanctions regime studied out from the pretty much the same baseline a long, long time ago. For some reason, the Iran sanctions regime evolved to be this strict and then powerful, whereas in North Korea's case, it stayed at this low level. So why, you know, what could be explaining this difference? And obviously, one major factor is that North Korea's economy is much less sophisticated than the Iranian one. For this reason, there are fewer targets to sanction in case of North Korea. In Iran, you have many, many targets. So another big factor is China. China, as you may know, is actually a big, you always watch this North Korea's back in the international scene. And also, China doesn't really enforce many of the sanctions measures decreed by the United Nations. But I would say there's another sore factor that we've been ignoring so far, which is the fact that North Korea is actually used as a leverage to apply more pressure on Iran, because the international community uses the North Korean case as a counterfactual, where Iran could be in the future unless it's stopped now. So the way I'm going to show that or somehow demonstrate that is by comparing the two sanctions regime quantitatively. And the way you do it is by using like a proxy measure. And then somehow we have to quantify the sanctions. So what I do is I look at the individuals and entities that are mentioned in the sanctions measures. These are the, you know, these are like mentioned in the sanctions. They are targeted because they are, you know, they help with the proliferation of entities of both countries. And so the good thing about the individuals and entities is because these are countable measures. You can count the number of individuals, you can count the number of entities. So you can actually compare the, you know, the different sanctions regimes. And the data comes from, you know, the open sources such as the text from the United Nations Security Council resolutions. The, what I mentioned before, the Office of Foreign Asset Control, especially the Canadian Nationalist List, and the European Union's regulations and decisions. So let me see if I'm going to show this now. But, oh yeah, there's one more slide before I go into that. So, but then again, just comparing the absolute numbers of individuals and entities targeted by the sanctions regime doesn't really mean much because, you know, we're talking about very different baselines here. Iran and North Korea are not really comparable in terms of the economy, in terms of the, you know, system and I mean political system as well. And Iran has a, you know, important role in the international energy trade, whereas North Korea doesn't. So what we have to do instead is to look at the trends of the sanctions measures, the number of individual entities that have us over time. So what I do is, I mean what I did is this, created this graph. So what you see here is that, I don't have the pointer here, but what you see is that in case of Iran, the number of individual entities has grown really geometrically after the second, North Korea's second nuclear test, whereas for North Korea, which actually tested a nuclear weapon, the number of individuals and entities targeted by the sanctions regime stayed pretty much, I mean, it has increased, but not by much. So, you know, where you can call the North Korea's second nuclear test an inflection point, not for North Korea, but for Iran. I think the international community, so clearly with the second nuclear test, which is considered to be more threatening than the first one, to be like a wake up call. So, you know, there is not much time left to prevent Iran from obtaining the nuclear weapons. So, instead of targeting North Korea, which has been, you know, violating all the, you know, the agreements and then going against the sanctions measures, you know, the international community is targeting Iran instead. So, this is another form of looking at this data. This is more like a discretized form of the graph. You can look at this as a clock. So, the clock starts at 12 o'clock. It's a yearly clock. So, it starts at 2005 and goes clockwise to 2013. Each circle represents the number of individuals and entities mentioned in the sanctions regime. It's color coded. So, the blue circles represent the United Nations sanctions measure. And the green one represents the EU and the red one is the US. And this is North Korea. So, as you can see, like the, you know, the sanctions against North Korea is like a few and far in between. Whereas for Iran, it looks like this. As you can see, after the second nuclear test, EU got involved against Iran's sanctions measure in big time. And there's a huge, in a way, huge explosion of, you know, targeted individuals and entities after the, after 2009. And when many of these targets consist of, you know, individuals involved with the Iran's financial institutions, Iran's energy industry, I mean Iran's shipping line. So, you know, this is to put the, you know, the graphs side by side so that you can see the contrast better. So, in conclusion, there's been a, I mean, what I can conclude from this is that there's been a, like a strong international policy coordination to prevent Iran from obtaining the nuclear weapons. Whereas in North Korea, in North Korea's case, there wasn't any, I mean, any reason, exaggeration, there wasn't much. And I think, I mean, I believe that the sanctions against North Korea should be, should you live up to the level of threat it poses to the international community right now compared to Iran, I would say that the sanctions, strength of the sanctions regime is too weak. So, what we should do, what we should do now is to apply Iran's lessons in the North Korea's case. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Goh, for giving us a sanction, your own analysis of a sanction by using the infographics. So, that's quite informative one. Now, I'd like to invite Dr. Dave Escher. We have 10 minutes. Please take over. Why he's taking over the computer, come up here and just work on the computer if you would. I just decided, because he had such incredible graphics, I mean, we are very, very lucky to have such a talented researcher here. Sorry, Dr. Goh. The thing that really is important that he stressed is that the Iran sanctions are much more than just sanctions. It's really a plan of strategic action directed against the Iranian regime and its key centers of gravity and power. In fact, it's actually very similar in strategic design and in coordination to the effort that we had in the Bush administration, which we call the Los Actives Initiative. When I was looking at his slides, it occurred to me, it might be useful to just throw up a couple slides that relate to that if we can bring it up, but the key thing is sanctions alone don't work. Sanctions are only words on the printed page. Actions work, especially when arranged in a whole government campaign or a whole of government's campaign, which is what we've managed to do against the government of Iran, both overtly and under the table as well. And sanctions without actions, or in actions not just driving sanctions, it's okay, I can go on. It's fine. Especially enforcement actions can be actually an illusion or misleading, because people can think that you're actually a lot safer than you really are. Oh, we've got sanctions on North Korea. We haven't heard, here we go, about much bad news involving North Korean nuclear proliferation under this administration. It's actually remarkable, considering the fact that we have a great degree of confidence and fear that the North Koreans are proceeding down the road of enriched uranium and probably highly enriched uranium at multiple facilities, one of which they declared that they had constructed right under our noses, you know, in the middle of the, in the wake of the 2006 breakout. So, you know, the fact that North Korea hasn't been shown since 2007 when the Israeli Air Force took care of North Korea's most extreme act of nuclear proliferation, which was the construction of a little yum-yum on the Euphrates at a site called the Orchard out in the eastern part of Syria, by the way, a site that was under the control of the SSRC, Syria's Scientific and Research Company, which anyone who knows about Syria today can identify very readily as in deeply embedded with the Iranian government. So, you know, no one's ever really come to a conclusion I'm aware of in the open source, and I certainly can't say anything else about what other conclusions might be about whose facility that really was, but one thing we should reflect on, and I want to reflect on a second a little bit more in the context of Iran and North Korea, is that in 2003 when North Korea, when Iran basically backed away from its nuclear program, according to the Director of National Intelligence and the NIE, and as we prepared to go into Iraq, invade a facility started to be constructed in Syria, and I don't think it's a coincidence personally. I know some people beg to differ. I'd like to actually, you know, it'd be interesting to see if you just put these things circumstantially together, you know, you can paint a pretty dark picture. Now it's just circumstantial, but it should be of great concern, and that's because in 2002 in July, the North Korean government, the Syrian government signed a science and technology cooperation agreement that was signed by the President of North Korea, Kim Young-nam, and Assad of Syria, and that began the program of nuclear cooperation, according to multiple articles that have been written about it and have no reason to doubt that. On September 1st of last year in Tehran at the time of the nine aligned movement conference, the Iranian government and the North Korean government signed the exact same science technology agreement, as far as they put it out in public, at least. North Korea doesn't have a lot of science and technology to export or expertise to bring to the world community outside of the world of weapons of mass destruction. I can't really think of why Abbasi Devani, the head of the Iranian nuclear program would be, or one of the key guys in the nuclear program, would be there publicly to receive Kim Young-nam if it wasn't sending a message to the world that something was going on. And why would Iran have declared North Korea that same day to be a member of its axis of resistance, which it hitherto only included Syria and Hezbollah as its partners. These are mysteries that we need to contemplate, I think, especially at this important juncture with Iranian sanctions, because one thing that the Iran sanctions, the agreement with Iran, does not declare as essential, as far as my read of the agreement, and we have experts in the room that can definitely differ if they would like it, and I appreciate it, is that Iran will not possess or acquire a nuclear weapon. It says they won't develop it, and I'd be very concerned about that loophole. The Iranians are experts in something called takia, which is deception or dissimulation, and I've worked on the North Korean and Iranian nuclear proliferation target, as have a lot of people in this room, and we can collectively ruminate on all the pain and suffering we've occurred, but the problem with lifting the sanctions to some extent or moderating some of their impact, and particularly with Iran I'm concerned about the European Union being sort of let out of the room. It's a huge problem, because they've been absolutely critical to the enforcement impact, and by the way, again, these have been extremely successful. I have to give nothing but credit to this administration and its officials for putting together a really effective strategy, but their strategy, much like the strategy that we had when we didn't even have sanctions on North Korea, and we were operating mostly with law enforcement and Department Treasury authorities, regulatory authorities like Section 311 of this USA Patriot Act, was that the Iranian sanctions and North Korean sanctions have been aimed at the top, they've been aimed at the heart of the matter, the regime, they've been aimed at its financial lifelines, and in the case of North Korea's illicit activities and related finances, in Iran's case it's energy. The Iranian sanctions are going to be lifted enough, or the restrictions that oil companies and gas companies and everyone and their mothers storming back over to Tehran. The Iranians have put together an absolutely first class for them, energy team. Rouhani's brought back the sort of Milton Friedman crowd, if there ever existed one among his economic team, so they're actually rather competent and up to now the Iranians, we're so used to Iranians being totally incompetent in economic management that, you know, we may be surprised by what happened, so more over some of the key actions, not even necessarily always sanctions or provisions in international agreements which limited their ability to gain insurance for maritime transport, or have restricted the ability of Iranian ships to call on ports, that's going to be lifted, so that's going to be a problem. But the bigger problem in my mind remains the fact that we have an inefficient regime arrayed against North Korea, and we do not have a program of action involving the Department of Treasury, Department of State, engineered to try to hit the heart of the North Korean regime's finances the way we did back in, you know, 2003 to 2006 period, and I think that's a significant problem for us because nothing in conclusion would be worse in my mind at this stage, at a time when we feel rather confident that things are going to be on a, you know, potentially better road with Iran, a country that has vowed not to develop nuclear weapons for them to be able to acquire nuclear weapons or the means to make nuclear weapons, including highly enriched uranium from the government of North Korea, a government that has a track record of proliferating a nuclear weapons program to a key Iranian ally in Syria and has absolutely nothing to stand in its way, and I agree with Dr. Ham's assessment of Chang's on tech, someone I studied intensively over the years, you know, Chang's demise is not a good sign in my mind. Chang was a corrupt individual, but he was a competently corrupt individual, and I don't think the kid is competently corrupt. I think he's competently I think he's actually quite dangerous in my assessment, and there would be nothing in his mind as I see it that would hold him back from covertly exporting nuclear weapons to a government like Iran at this stage, and it would be exactly the sort of thing the Iranians would do to foil the international system. I spent a lot of time, and it is one last word, studying Iranian irregular warfare. And the thing that, and not just nuclear proliferation, but the Iranians are a revolutionary regime whose founding articles of the regime are to export the revolution. And if you talk to the Saudis, you talk to the Emiratis, you talk to others, the biggest fear is what the Iranians are doing in the Gulf right now. It's not even the nuclear program. The nuclear program is sort of like they sort of think that they can deter their way around it, even if they get nuclear weapons around, the Saudis will say, well, we'll get them too, from Pakistan. They've been making sort of publicly known recently. We'll see how easy it is for the Pakistanis to do it, to sell it. But the point is that the nuclear side of Iran may be starting to be moderated, at least overtly. But there is no sense that the covert action side of Iran, which is not even that covert, as you see in Syria, or you see in the disturbances they're making in Yemen and other places, is anyway being moderated. In fact, Iran seems to be stepping on the accelerator as far as revolutionary export activities along with Hezbollah. And so you can imagine a scenario where Iran, two years from now, has North Korean nuclear weapons, and it's managed to expand its zone of influence across what is known as the Shia Crescent, reaching from Western Afghanistan all the way out to the Levant, and indeed, it crossed into Oman. And I encourage people to be watching very carefully. It's going on between Iran and Oman right now. That would be, it's a very strategically critical piece of geography. So thank you for letting me have this opportunity. I'm sorry I didn't have any fancy graphics, but I look forward to your question. Thank you, David. Now we have two discussions. I will give you each discuss in about seven minutes. Professor Chun. Thank you. Just after listening to the very interesting formative presentations, let me ask several questions first and then some comments. Well, first thing that I have in mind is the question that how comparable are these two cases? You know, to Professor Goh, Dr. Goh, I have a question about if there is a linkage between the Iranian case and North Korean case in maybe American policymakers mind that the continued nuclear test is a wake-up call for Iranian case, then can we find some real linkages in perceptions of American policymakers? Can we complement, you know, the research outcome by looking at, you know, the real historical process of the sanction regimes? Then it will make a better, you know, story. The second question to Dr. Asher is that, you know, in case of the Iran as you said is not just sanctioned, it's a plan of very comprehensive strategic action, which is not the case with North Korea. The sanction against North Korea is all just arms or WMD-related, very target kind of sanction. And why can't we produce this kind of, you know, very comprehensive, you know, plan of strategic action in case of North Korea? But there are many differences between these two cases. As you know, North Korea economies will be small, very closed. There is no voting from the people. So even though the North Korean people have the direct impact from the outside sanctions, they cannot resist government, North Korean government's decision which elicit this kind of sanction. So North Korea, you know, at first hand is less sensitive to outside sanction. So can we compare these two cases in developing more effective sanction regimes in North Korean case to have a better, you know, outcome in changing North Korean behavior? So the related question is with all these, you know, happenings in North Korea after these all-polish purges and all these things, I think there will be a next step by Kim Jong-un is to prove himself as a very legitimate and effective leader by developing the economy, which means that he has to rebuild the economy. Then the sensitivity to economic sanctions will be raised. You know, if you just model through then the sanction is not that, you know, painful to that kind of regime. But if Kim Jong-un, after all these purges with the consolidation of his political power base, then he wants to have a better economy to prove himself. Then if you are in a gain domain, you know, according to Prospect Theory, then they might be more sensitive to economic sanctions. So can we, you know, follow the changing effectiveness of this target country to offset sanctions? The second thing is that, you know, there is no mechanism to put pressure on the people, which will lead us to the weakening government. That doesn't work. So the sanction should be a very targeted one, a very smart sanction, you know, against the aimed at the real power base of Kim Jong-un regime. So we have been talking about the sanctions about luxury goods and financial sanctions. But after 2005, you know, BDA case North Korea is reported to be more prepared. You know, they withdraw all the bank accounts either outside of China. So they become more, you know, kind of, you know, more defensive. So can we find a better, you know, method to, you know, have a better, you know, effectiveness in this regime? So from your experience, you know, can we find a more effective level of the economic sanctions? The last thing could be China. So if you look at the theory of economic sanctions, if the target country can find a alternative source of economic funding to, you know, bypass the obvious effectiveness of sanctions, then it is, it doesn't really take effect. So according to the decision of UN, you know, every country is supposed to, you know, submit the National Implementation Report. So is China really, does it comply with all these decisions by the UN? You know, especially after this year, you know, there is a so-called new pattern of great power relationship between the United States and China. So North Korea nuclear issue seems to be a leading issue that can have some consensus between these two countries. Then can China, you know, take more efforts to put more pressure by having this kind of kind of sanctions? Okay, I'll stop here. Thank you, Professor Zhang. Now I'd like to invite Mr. Newkamp for his comments and questions. Well, I want to thank CIS for inviting me to this beautiful new building, that first trip I've made here and us for extending the invitation. I thought I was going to have seven hours. I'm sorry, I only have seven minutes. I'm here in an official capacity, so let me talk about North Korea sanctions. Usually I start off by trying to explain who I am and what I do because, believe it or not, sanctions are terribly misunderstood even by those who profess to understand them. People who write about sanctions resolutions haven't often taken the time to read them. And so that creates a problem of perception. So when people talk on North Korean sanctions working, they say no, and they're basing their no on counting the number of flat screens that they see at Beijing Airport. But sanctions are a lot more than just a ban on luxury goods. So let me try and unpack it a little bit. The sanctions were adopted to get North Korea back in the NPT. It's not back in the NPT, so I guess you could conclude sanctions aren't working. They were adopted to buy time for diplomacy because that was thought, it was the only way to really resolve the problem. Diplomacy so far hasn't worked. I guess you conclude sanctions haven't worked. But at the same time, when we review it on the panel, when we look at instances of non-compliance of what's going on, we think sanctions have worked to the extent that they have cut into the funds North Korea has to develop these programs. We think it has slowed the path of development of these programs. And it has made their interactions a lot more complicated with the outside world. Now sanctions include a... Let me just unpack it a little bit more. We have sanctions on arms trade. And you might remember that we had 240 tons of arms seized by Panama. To me, that's a big success. Panama was upholding this responsibility and did so in a very productive manner at great expense and effort. There were 200,000 tons of sugar covering this cargo in 50 kilogram sacks. And they had to be unloaded mostly by hand in the presence of no joke, more than several million bees. So it was... That's not a joke. And it is an incredible testimony to Panama that they went through all of this and did so in a very proper manner, documenting everything. We have the list on nonproliferation goods, which is continued to be improved. And that is enforced. We've had shipments that have been stopped containing graphite and so forth. I mentioned the luxury goods. The problem with luxury goods is it's up to member states to publish a list of what constitute luxury goods. Some member states, including China, have not done so yet. There is finance. Finance is really interesting. If you look at the trajectory of sanctions, you will see that financial measures play a greater and greater role in the four measures that have been taken so far. 1718, they're barely mentioned. In 1874, they make a pretty good appearance. In 2087, they're mentioned, but 2087 is not itself, Chapter 7 resolution. And in 2094, they're featured. And they include some very far-reaching steps. And they're pretty much comparable with what's on Iran. The interesting thing about the financial sanctions is that they're reinforced by the Financial Action Task Force. Financial Action Task Force has revised the recommendations that is issued. The new 40 recommendations include one on, it's called REC 7. It's on financing of proliferation. The other thing the Financial Action Task Force has done, it has put Iran and the DPRK on its public statement. By putting it on its public statement, it requires all banks dealing with them to do enhanced due diligence. It is very costly for banks to do enhanced due diligence because it means each bank that's a party to a transaction has to assure itself that it knows the originator and it knows the destination. So as a consequence, banks normally decline to do business with entities that are on the public statement. It is a business decision that they're making. So this has had the double effect of isolating the DPRK from much of the international financial system. In addition, under UN sanctions, we have three DPRK banks that have been designated. Now let's talk a little bit about designations. Iran has a lot more. Dr. Goh, I think his graphics, incredible graphics that he provided show that Iran's a target rich environment. North Korea is much more focused. There are a lot of reasons for that. In the case of the UN, you have to recall that to designate requires consensus either on the security council or on the committee. There are 15 members, five are permanent, 10 are elected. But in the course of sanctions, you have been able to get agreement from 30 of the elected members along with the perm five. So there has been progress made. Some very important DPRK institutions have been designated as well as some individuals. The problems, I don't know how well they're working. And the reason I don't know how well asset freezes are working or the travel ban is working is because member states are not required to report that to the committee or to the security council. The only thing they're required to report to the UN is when they conduct an inspection. So in 2009, the first designation of a DPRK bank took place. It was Tanshan. Tanshan was the military bank. Y'all may be very familiar with it. It had a global presence. I don't know if a dime was frozen, right? Should have been. There should have been money in correspondent accounts, but I don't have a clue if a dime was frozen. If we're gonna get reports, we have to encourage member states to give voluntary reports. I don't know if anyone's ever been denied a visa because of the travel ban. And not only applies to designated individuals, it also applies to their family members. But again, member states aren't required to report, none have done so. We have in our reports asked member states to voluntarily submit any kind of report so that we could evaluate how effective these are. But designations themselves are very important because they give grounds for member states to act because they not only include the designated entity or individual, it includes those operating for or on their behalf, including through illicit means. So if they're blackmailing somebody at a bank to get a deal through, you now have a hook to go after them. If they're operating a front like Tanshan, Tanshan was operating in a front company that's subsequently been designated called Hong Kong Electronics. It was in the Hong Kong company, it was located on Kish Island. But it was a conduit for this. Comed, the arms company, was operating the front in Hong Kong. And that got designated. It was called Hong Kong Leader. So when we find these and we have hooks back, we can go after designations. If they adopt new aliases and they're doing it all the time, learn one, they go after another. David used to say they change names as often as we change shirts. And it's pretty true. But as soon as we learn it, we try to develop the evidence. It has to be very solid evidence. And then we can add to the list of aliases that we have. Now, let's say that you're a country out there and either you have a ship come into port or you have a designated entity operating. And now under the UN Chapter Seven resolutions, you're required to implement that. You're required to go in and freeze the money or inspect the ship, seize the cargo if it's prohibited and then dispose of it. But 50% of UN member states have not implemented the resolutions. 1718 was adopted in 2006. It gave member states 30 days, seven years later. We're still at a 50% mark. So there's a lot more that we can be doing here. It's very important for them to do it because it means when they take action under the resolutions they're doing it in a lawful manner, not in an arbitrary manner. So I agree. There's a lot more that can be done on North Korea. It could be more strategic. And I think everybody sitting in the Security Council understands that there are more things that can be done and can be done more effectively. I wish I had another seven hours. I'm sorry. I'm sure there'll be another opportunity for you to speak about more than seven hours, maybe seven days. Now, the questions posed upon the speakers, please. Thank you, Professor Chan and thank you for the great questions. So I will address the questions posed by Professor Chan first. So there are two questions. How are comparable these two regimes are? And the second question is whether there's any linkage between the two in terms of policy action. And so I guess, I'll try, I mean, the way I understood the first question is that how can you compare the sanctions regime targeting very different countries here? We're talking about Iran and North Korea. Even though they are part of the axis of evil, we're talking about apples and oranges, so to speak. Then, so that's why I tried to use this proxy measure for, I mean, I tried to count the number of individuals and entities mentioned in the sanctions regimes. So what I mean by proxy measure is that it's a measure that actually, it's more or less correlated with the strengths of the sanctions in terms of implementation and in terms of scope. So if the sanctions measure is very strong, then you expect to see the proxy measure to have, to be stronger in this context, you would see more individuals and entities listed, where if it was in the opposite direction, then you see fewer individuals and entities. But again, we're talking about two different countries and then Iran is, so to speak, it's a target-rich environment. So you have to, you cannot really compare the absolute numbers. You have to look at the trend over time in a way that way you control for these unequal baselines. So this is what I have, I mean, that's why I emphasize the trends rather than the numbers. So then I made actually a strong argument that there's a linkage between the two sanctions regime, no in terms of the numbers, but in terms of the evolution of Iran's sanctions regime vis-a-vis North Korea's. And so essentially the question, the second question is asking whether I was able to find a smoking gun, say a document saying, you know, like, oh, you know, we cannot do much about North Korea, so that's pressure Iran is that. No, I wasn't able to find one, but I know, I mean, from, for a fact, from anecdotal evidence that when there was this review conference of MPT, which took place in 2010, there's a lot of discussion about how to make sure that there's no case such as North Korea, a country that leaves the treaty. So there's been a more focus on the international regimes, in non-proliferation regimes that was taking North Korea into account. North Korea is an extreme case, and I think there's a strong emphasis on preventing another case such as North Korea currently in the future. So that would be my answer to the question, and then definitely it's an area that could be further studied and then strengthen this study. And as for the, I guess, the various comments, I would say that the United Nations, sure, it's a, United Nations international measures is a product of consensus. So it takes a long time, and then, you know, it's actually basically it's a minimum baseline in terms of sanctions. But I think that there's more room to be done in this case because I think, you know, like the reason why the EU and the US bypassed the United Nations in case of Iran is because the consensus from our formation process was taking too much time. And I think in case of North Korea, we are running against the clock. So I think this is a wake-up call for the countries concerned in the North Korea case, such as South Korea and Japan, to take actions on each other and US and China as well, and to take actions on their own and then do more, maybe even outside the United Nations. Thank you. I mean, I think that we are running up against the clock, and it's funny. I think people have sort of put North Korea off to the sideline. Some people are even saying, well, now that we've come up with a reconciliation approach to Iran that in some ways has some reminiscent elements, although I think it has some big differences to what we've done against the BZV North Korea, now it's time to do it again with North Korea. My argument is the opposite, actually. I do think at the end of the day we should look for a diplomatic outcome, but I'm looking at my colleague, Patrick Rohn, and he's written a lot about course of diplomacy. The only diplomacy that's ever been affected against North Korea, in my mind, and you gotta think against North Korea. There's been diplomacy that's sort of with North Korea, and that's basically been, if diplomacy in North Korea has taken the edge of, has aimed at the heart of the matter. What we tried to do was to come up with a program of coherent, coordinated international action with partners to coercibly pressure the Kim regime's financial lifelines and bloodlines, and then decisively counter-protect and deter against its nuclear proliferation potential. What we have now is an effort that is sort of quietly containing, working with the United Nations, working with our partner and other partners and other stakeholders around the world to try to quietly police the North Korean, but I don't think the North Korean proliferation potential, but I'm afraid we can't quietly police this. North Korea, as I mentioned with this Iran agreement, has, that's an agreement that it signed, okay? It's made its voice sort of heard in its own way. They've only had science technology agreements with like, I think four countries I'm aware of, maybe they've had it with six, but China, well, I think they had Libya, China, Syria, and now Iran, I guess maybe it was five, Pakistan had one too, but very limited number of countries, all whom proliferated. So we have to take this as something that's sort of hiding in plain sight potentially, and especially because we want the Iran effort to succeed. We don't want the North Koreans to come and sort of spoil the opportunity by giving the dark side of the Iranian regime, which I think there's a huge battle going on between different forces in Iran right now, so who's gonna win out? You can see it in the IRGC's reprimand their foreign minister overnight, very stiff reprimand for having come out and talked about how we had to sort of change direction in Iran, and he was decisively reprimanded by a whole litany of people, and as was pointed out by John Henry, 65% of the people support the Iranian nuclear weapons program, so it's gonna be tough to stop. So what we need is to get our game on, and I have no sense of the US government, which had its game on superbly well on Iran, has its game on at the same level on North Korea, largely because this administration just like the Bush administration, we've always wanted just to kick the North Korean can down the road, and I just think you can't let that, you can't kick that can down the road on nuclear proliferation and on the deployment of nuclear weapons pointed at our South Korean allies and our Japanese allies, something which I fear very much could occur in the next 12 to 24 months, so please open it up if you like. Now I'd like to open the floor, I can take questions from the floor. Okay, Joe and Gary, please. Yes, is there a mic? I think there is a mic coming. Thanks a lot, thanks for the interesting presentations. Let me just make three quick points first. You know, I agree with David, which is a little bit of a shock, that we do need a much more concerted effort to think about sanctions that might work against North Korea, and hopefully if there are provocations in the near future, although I don't see any signs of them on the WMD front at least, that we will be ready for that. But the second point here is, and the panel is just kind of skirted around this, is how do you put together an effective sanctions regime against North Korea when China is there? And I think Dr. Chun has briefly mentioned it, but I haven't heard anyone else address that. It's easy to say we need tougher sanctions against North Korea, but you know, I'd like you to sit down and write a two-page memo for the Secretary of State saying how you're gonna get China to buy into that tougher regime, particularly if the measures start resembling what was done against Iran. And if I was someone who was sitting in Beijing, I would say, gee, they're trying to make the North Korean regime collapse and I can't accept that. Third point, I'm sorry to do this to you, Bill, we're old friends and I hope you'll forgive me, but you have said, and I know the UN says this at times, that the sanctions have slowed the WMD program. I haven't seen evidence of that laid out in the various pronouncements by the UN, and if you're looking at this from the other end of the tunnel at what is actually going on in the WMD program, it's kind of hard for me to figure out what does slowed mean because I see this program moving forward in a pretty steady way. So if you could try to address that, I'd appreciate that. Thank you. Oh, Gary, it doesn't make sense. So this follows on Joel's question. I think one of the main reasons why we've been successful against Iran is because their government revenues are so heavily dependent upon oil sales and that represented a exposed target. We could persuade or pressure customers to stop buying or reduce purchases of Iranian oil, and since it's traded on the international market, we had financial targets, so we could interfere with their ability to actually get revenue as a consequence of that trade. So the question is whether there's anything comparable in the case of North Korea. I mean, I think we've done a pretty good job of cutting off or limiting their arms sales, but what is it the North Korean cell that actually represents a target in terms of being able to persuade customers to stop buying it? As far as I can tell, they pretty much sell cigarettes and drugs and weapons, but in the absence of them relying on a commodity that we can easily attack, it's hard to see how you could put in place comparable sanctions that would have an impact on the economy the way we've been able to impact the Iranian economy. And just to foot-stop Joel's point, we all know the reason why it's hard to impose sanctions on North Korea. It's because of China's protection. So you've got to answer the question, how do you take advantage of Chinese irritation with Kim Jong-un to strengthen the regime? And I think Bill has laid out a lot of really good ideas for the next nuclear test. We know what we should get in the next Security Council resolution, but you still have that fundamental problem that Beijing is gonna resist sanctions that they fear will provoke a North Korean counterreaction or could produce instability that would hurt China's vital interests. Yeah, and then really the last question, no, come back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, I think all naturally tend to look at Iran and North Korea as kind of separate objects of sanctions, but there is one other element here that brings them together in terms of any effective sanctions regime against North Korea. And that element is the air traffic between Tehran and Pyongyang. Now the WikiLeaks documents revealed that in 2008, Secretary Rice ordered our ambassador in Beijing to make strong representations to the Chinese governments with regard to the intelligence reports we were receiving of a constant flow of airplanes coming in from Tehran to Beijing and from Pyongyang to Beijing with cargos and people being exchanged in those aircraft. And I doubt, frankly, if Secretary Rice believed that the cargos being exchanged were Christmas presents going back and forth. Those representations, according to the documents cited by WikiLeaks, were made, but they failed. Now we have the reports, both last year and this year, that Iranian missile technicians have gone to North Korea, again, through China. They're stationed there on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. There may be some nuclear technicians among them. And yet, the UN sanctions resolutions make only vague references to air traffic. They're a lot more detailed with regard to sea traffic. Now, given the reports last year about the Iranians sending these high-level technicians to North Korea, very high-level observer groups going for both the December 2012 missile test and the February 2013 nuclear test, undoubtedly flying across and probably transferring aircraft in China. Why is it that the ROK and the US don't try to at least propose in the UN resolutions some reference to the specific Iranian North Korean air traffic as an object to be cut off, as Secretary Rice tried to do? And should there be another UN sanctions resolution in the future? And again, if the North Koreans do another nuclear test or big-time missile test, there probably will be, would you recommend or believe that the ROK and the US should propose a specific reference in a resolution to the Iranian North Korean air traffic probably as a means to put some additional pressure on China with regard to sanctions enforcement? Thank you. No. I mean, to answer Gary's question, targeting DPRK drugs, cigarettes, weapons, well, what's exactly what we did and we deprive them of hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit revenue and then we targeted their Chinese banking partners and business conduits and that put them under more pressure than they've ever experienced in their history. And to this day, I still don't understand why we abandoned that. There's no reason you can't proceed diplomatically at the same time you're trying to twist someone's arm on an area that's absolutely legitimate. If they're conducting their international affairs in a way that's blatantly illegal, that involves the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, that involves breaking of international law and they're working through Chinese business partners and Chinese business conduits and including Chinese air conduits. We have to hold somebody accountable. We held the Chinese accountable, by the way. It wasn't just Banco Delta. It was really even built and maybe you can't talk about it anymore but the Chinese government felt responsible and by the way, they acted responsibly for a while after that until we sort of gave the money back as became the famous escapade that Victor had to deal with, unfortunately. But I mean, the point is that we did have a China that acted responsibly and they didn't threaten to attack the United States retaliation. I mean, I remember being called by very senior officials right after the action in Banco Delta and they said, what can we do to cooperate? It wasn't go do whatever to yourself. They were like, we understand what could happen here. We want to work with you. And so began a period of cooperation. I think the air conduit is an absolutely essential element again. I'm only raising the Syria precedent because the North Koreans broadcast it in plain sight, their nuclear proliferation activity but we didn't understand it. They've done it again in my estimate with the Iranians, even though it confounds the whole logic of this Iranian nuclear agreement and we should certainly be policing those air conduits because if they're gonna send something like nuclear weapons to Iran, I very much doubt they're gonna send it by sea where there's an interdiction regime. It would go by air and we have nothing right now in a arsenal of will to stop. Thank you. Bill, you like to respond to the question? Well I guess I've looked at for several responses. Let me just pick up where David left off about the cigarettes, drugs and other contraband like that. It's not within our mandate. So if I have evidence that revenue from narco trafficking or cigarette smuggling is funding WMD programs, then it's within my mandate. If I don't have that kind of evidence, then it's just an illegal program. It is not something we're going to look at. With respect to targeting key economic sectors, no, because the resolutions say that the resolutions are not to prohibit the normal economic development of the DPRK. The resolutions are meant to push them onto a legitimate path by dissuading them from following the other path. So within the UN context, I doubt very much that anything that goes after key civilian revenue sectors is going to get very much traction. Could be wrong, but I sincerely doubt it. With respect to air traffic and what Larry said about conveying technicians back and forth and stationing there, I'd be very happy to include that in our next report. I would have been happy to include it in our prior report. Show me the evidence. Media reports don't reach the objective standard that are required in a panel's report. We have to have something more solid than that. We got to have something that's confirming the standard of evidence that has to go into a report by any panel of experts is very, very high for obvious reasons. And so to put in simply media reports, it would probably cause other portions of the panel's report to be discredited. So we're quite careful about our content. But if you can provide corroborating evidence, I'll fight like hell for it. That it's something we hear quite a bit about just like we hear about DPRK cooperation in the past with Syria and chemical and bio. Hear a lot about it. Suspect may even be boots on the ground, can't prove it. So if we can ever prove it, then we'll incorporate it. With respect to the other aspects of air traffic, air has made an appearance in 2094. It also was a topic we covered in the panel's report that was published in June of this year. We had a major project trying to look at scheduled and non-scheduled air traffic in and out of DPRK. Our results were handicapped because member states, many cases chose not to give us the kind of data we needed to construct the pattern of air traffic. And a lot of that data is not kept by air traffic authorities over a long period of time. And others who might have had the data chose not to cooperate with us as well. So yeah, I'd love to do more on air traffic and we'll continue to look at it extensively. And I'm sure if there are other resolutions, it'll be something that is developed further. Joel, I have one point to answer because Joel asked me a very tough question. It's sometimes, it's in part the absence of what we're seeing. We're intercepting, we're seeing member states intercept a lot of different kinds of cargoes. And we're not seeing things directly for the nuclear program. Either they're having to go about it by other ways or do indigenous development, which takes longer and is more complicated. Perhaps they stockpiled prior to 2006 on some of these key elements. We keep looking for the choke point items. And yeah, the evidence to back up my statement is very soft and fragmentary. So I can see that. Dr. Lowe, final word. Oh, final word. Actually, I skip the final word. And I just wanted to add a detail too. We just said about air traffic. So actually the Chinese government keeps statistics on the number of visitors from DPRK on a monthly basis. So for the first half of this year, there's been 77,000 visits from North Korea to China and of that around 13,000 visits was by airplane. And so it is really interesting to see that a lot of North Koreans visit China, I mean, literally speaking, by air. And I think that actually makes air traffic an interesting target for sanctions. It is interesting to note that earlier this year, a month after the North Korea tested each nuclear weapon for the third time, the number of flights, weekly flights from Pyongyang to Beijing increased from three to five. I think China is not doing enough in that sense. I think despite the talks of teaching North Korea lesson, I think behind the back in a way, they actually had to North Korea. Thanks. Thank you. Please join me in thanking the panelists for their presentation and comments. Thank you. Thank you. It'll be a very short panel. If we just were to answer that question by it, we're not gonna simply be answering that question. I thought sanctions was quite interesting. I expect all of our speakers to answer the questions raised in that panel, but I'll just mention a few that you can all take a crack at. Of course, we didn't know what was going to be said in the panel until we heard them, but, I mean, to me, what was interesting is that there's clearly a view that the sanctions regime that was created against Iran was quite effective. In part because of a level of coordination we haven't seen before multilaterally on sanctions, but also because, as the speaker said, it's a very target-rich environment. And in the case of North Korea, the sum who argued that the strategy with regard to sanctions is wrong, that we've moved away from something that was effective, that you don't have as target-rich an environment as you do in the Iran case. And then, of course, the issue with regard to the role of China and all of this. So I guess some of the questions as we think about the future, the question that this panel was targeted with is, what are the prospects for a North Korean nuclear deal? Again, I think that could be a very short panel. What are the implications for the Iran deal for North Korea? If this agreement moves forward and it is successful, does that create a sort of political momentum, a confidence that leads people to think there are possibilities with North Korea? Is there something in the structure of an Iran deal, not just the six-month deal but something beyond that that might be useful for thinking about North Korea? And on the other side, why is it that we can be so effective with regard to a sanctions regime when Iran and appear not to be as effective with North Korea? Part of it is certainly the structure of the issue, a target-rich environment, but is it also a question of political priority? Clearly, sanctions against Iran were a political priority and is that the same case with North Korea? And then finally, with regard to the question of vertical and horizontal proliferation, are there things that we can do in the post-six-month period in an Iran deal that can actually help address some of our proliferation concerns with regard to North Korea? In other words, can we make demands or are we? Maybe we will make demands of Iran as a part of that deal to curtail some of the ties with North Korea, whether that's in terms of air traffic or other things. So with that as an introduction, largely to get everybody back into the room, now that we have everybody back in the room our two speakers for the panel are Chanyeol Wu who needs no introduction and Gary Samore who also needs no introduction. And our three discussants are Patrick Cronin Michael Green and Professor Yu from Korea University. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. We will begin with our two speakers, Ambassador Chan for about 10 minutes and then Gary for about 10 minutes, and then we will go to our discussants. So Ambassador Chan, it's your floor. Well, thank you, Victor, for giving a chance to speak first. But I think many of the points I tried to make have been taken up by previous speakers and I can shorten my presentation. But I thought that Iranian nuclear deal may have as many implications for the US ROK 1-3 agreement as on the North Korean nuclear deal. But since my focus is on North Korea I'm not going to touch on 1-3 agreement this time. Well, I'll go back to the differences between Iran and North Korea. There have been discussions on this in the previous panel, but let me summarize how I see the difference. Well, I think their ultimate goals are the same, nuclear armament. But they have chosen fundamentally different approaches and strategies in achieving their goals. Iran is Iran's immediate goal, in my view, is not nuclear weapons, but to develop the capabilities to produce nuclear weapons when they need them. And they have chosen the approach of the pretense of compliance with MPT in the name of peaceful uses of nuclear energy by skillfully taking advantage of the loopholes that exist in international nonproliferation regime. And as an architect of US nonproliferation policy, you share the responsibility for the state where we are. In the case of North Korea their goal is nuclear armament now. And to this end they have taken the approach of deception, denial, concealment, prevarication, breakout, and open nuclear armament. So if North Korea wishes to possess nuclear weapons today, welcome to this play. Iran is preparing for the day it may need nuclear weapons and is taking incremental steps toward the nuclear threshold. And what Iran does is to focus on reducing the distance from the breakout to nuclear threshold while North Korea has no patience to stay one step away from the nuclear threshold. Secondly, the legal regimes applicable to the two states are totally different. This was explained in earlier session. As a party to the MPT, technically Iran has legal right to enrich uranium and keep developing the capabilities that could be used to develop to manufacture nuclear weapons at a later stage. As long as it refrains from diverting their enrichment program to active weapons program while pretending to comply fully and faithfully with IAEA safeguards. Whether Iran can enrich up to 20% or only 5% does not make a fundamental difference for Iran. Only if the legitimacy of Iran's right to enrich uranium is recognized and thus Iran is allowed to master enrichment technology. It may have achieved its interim goal and it has good reason to claim that the Geneva nuclear deal was a success. And if Iran is allowed to retain enough of his current operational enrichment capacity, the centrifuges, in order to fully master its enrichment technology, I think Iran may even afford to give up the remaining 5% enrichment for the time being given the right price. In the case of North Korea, you know, the of NPT regime, a sweet international legislation in the form of Security Council resolutions is in place. And under the Security Council resolutions, many people forget about the legal regime applicable to North Korea. North Korea has legal obligations to abandon all these nuclear programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner, regardless of whether they are for peaceful purposes or not. And North Korea is also banned to test ballistic missiles or whatever they call it, you know, any spacecraft as means of delivering nuclear devices. So from legal standpoint, international committees is very equipped to deal with the North Korea. And in terms of substance of nuclear program, I think Iran it is easier for Iran to give up what it already has. Well, thirdly, the most striking difference lies in the levels of collective commitment and the resolve of international community to halting and rolling back the nuclear programs of the two states. In order to earn a few extra months for intervention and response from the breakout of the nuclear threshold, in the case of Iran, the international community could master the political will to impose the most comprehensive and biting sanctions. We touch on all major sources of revenue for Iran even, you know, those areas like shipping, banking, insurance and all those oil and gas which do not have direct relationship with their nuclear programs. As we know, sanctions on North Korea are partial and targeted only on areas which are related to the military establishment. So even if all those sanctions enacted by the Security Council and unilateral sanctions imposed by individual countries are implemented fully, they are limited only to the military aspects of North Korean economy. So I think their military sales represent maybe 10 to 20% of their exports and not many of those military sales are being detected and captured. So I think if all these sanctions are implemented entirely they will affect only about, let's say, about 10% of North Korean exports and I think this is bearable for North Korea. And this brings us to the question of why we have failed in denuclearizing North Korea thus far. I think North Korea's determination for nuclear armament has been far stronger than the combined determination of the international community to roll back North Korea's nuclear weapons programs. North Korea values nuclear weapons as the holy grail of the regime and the source of inflation from their existential crisis and ultimate insurance policy for survival. Therefore the North Korean leaders are determined enough to pay a disproportionate price and sustain enormous sacrifices in economic development and the most basic needs of daily life for the ordinary people in order to retain and improve their nuclear capabilities. An international community has failed to break North Korea's unwavering result by effectively imposing a prohibitive price. In short, the half hearted and teethless sanctions enacted by the Security Council and individual countries have proved not only bearable for North Korea as an insurance premium for the insurance policy they find in nuclear weapons but they have also ended up strengthening North Korea's immune system against sanctions. There is also lack of coordination and unity among the key stakeholders. We talked about different levels of implementation of the sanctions, especially China's half hearted attitude in implementing the Security Council sanctions. And you know that North Korea was allowed to go around sanctions in place and destroy the effectiveness by drastically expanding trade technically allowed with China and thus continue innovative to fund their nuclear and missile programs. So as such what one hand builds would be destroyed by the other hand and messages sent to Pyongyang the net messages sent to Pyongyang was we will be grateful if you are kind enough to denuclearize but don't worry about your regime's stability even if you don't and forgive us if we have to impose some symbolic teethless sanctions just in order to show our disproval with your nuclear armament and I wouldn't say that North Korea would take this as an encouragement for their nuclear armament but I don't think it has really made much impact on North Korean determination. Well there are also some differences with Iran for instance Iran always had to face the military option by Israel when they cannot make a deal the alternative was military military strike by Israel so they had to keep that in mind in the case of North Korea they didn't have to worry about military option and another one last is periodic change of government in Iran while we don't we have a change of government by natural death that's different from periodic changes of government from where we can sometimes have more flexibility from Iranian negotiators well I think I spent too much time already on can you give me a few more minutes because I have to I have to go back to the way forward now given the sacrosanct and disproportionate value as well as the threat perceptions North Korea harbors about outside world no one will bet for the chance of denuclearization now but I'd not agree with those who argue that North Korea will never give up its nuclear capabilities at any price under any circumstances let's forget about it and focus instead on nonproliferation to other countries I think these arguments are very irresponsible how can we prevent nonproliferation if we cannot denuclearize is it technically possible in my view there still remains chance of participating in the six party talks can muster the political will to change North Korea's strategic calculus and the fact that has withstood international pressure for denuclearization means that insurance premium North Korea has paid in the form of sanctions has been affordable compared to the value they attach to nuclear weapons I think one way maybe the only way to change Pyongyang's strategic calculus is to drastically raise the insurance premium to the point of threatening their regime stability if North Korea is given no other choice but regime collapse with nuclear weapons or survival without them I would bet they could opt for the letter although I would not rule out the possibility of Pyongyang preferring a collapse with nuclear weapons we all agree that China's cooperation is central to this and I think China can and should do more than just paying lip service to the virtues of denuclearization and repeating its mild disapproval of North Korea's policy I don't believe sanctions are panacea but all we can expect from tightened and really biting sanctions should change North Korea's strategic calculus and bring them back to serious negotiations in other words they are helpful in giving one less chance to diplomacy and strengthening the hand of diplomacy and in the previous session many wondered what sanctions are left that can make a difference I don't know if you are aware of the draft that US presented in the last Security Council resolution in the aftermath of the third nuclear testing it included cracking down on North Korea's shipping activities related to North Korea it included provision that would bend all ships that have been to North Korea over the past six months to any ports of the UN member states and there was also provision for inspection of all North Korean cargo whether it's on the high seas or in the transit countries the trucks transiting China or other countries these were very strong sanctions and I think if there was political will if all these countries, China and other countries in the Security Council agreed that denuclearization of North Korea is more important than many other things and stability of North Korean regime I don't think that they would have China would have tried that hard to take all the teeth out of the Security Council resolution so well we we gave lip service to the cooperation of China which didn't exist but I think all China did was to take to make Security Council resolution harmless and teethless but I think we should set a timeline we shouldn't give North Korea indefinite time to play games and to keep building up their nuclear capabilities set a deadline and if they do not renew their commitment or reiterate their commitment to denuclearization and ready to take some meaningful measures to prove their seriousness I think with the countries concerned from the five parties participating in six party talks they should begin drafting I don't count on Security Council to take new measures but if China doesn't cooperate with the new Security Council resolution then I think the individual countries having stakes on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula should work together to establish a coalition of the willing to impose national, stronger national sanctions that can really bite North Korea and I think U.S. can more than just blaming China I think U.S. Congress can come up with legislation modeled after Iran Sanctions Act you can devise North Korea Sanctions Act with new sanctions on shipping related to North Korea and inspection of North Korea or banning or punishing all those entities whether they are Chinese entities or any entities that do business, big business with North Korea and I think there are ways we haven't really touched on the real sanctions that can touch on North Korean nerve so my suggestion is to explore the new areas of sanctions that are not limited to North Korean military activities or the activities of military establishment but they can cover all major sources of revenue for the North Korean regime let me stop here first of all I want to thank ASAN Institute and CSIS for organizing this seminar and I want to say it's a particular pleasure to an honor to appear next to my former colleague Ambassador Chun who you can tell from his presentation that he always had a gift for both clear and colorful expressions when we worked together in the blue house and the white house respectively so Che Bung asked me to talk about the implications of the deal between Iran and the P5 plus 1 for nuclear negotiations with North Korea now just to remind everybody the P5 plus 1 agreement with Iran is an interim agreement it's essentially a six month truce Iran agrees to freeze its nuclear program no critical work on completion of the heavy water research reactor and some modest rollback mainly to get rid of their stockpile of 20% in rich uranium and in exchange the P5 plus 1 agree to no additional nuclear related sanctions and some modest rollback of the existing sanctions worth some billions of dollars now the agreement also lays out general principles for a final resolution of the nuclear issue including a mutually defined indigenous enrichment program in Iran although there's an option to extend for another six months of negotiations which most observers think is very likely in other words this interim, you should not expect this interim agreement to lead to a final deal in six months because the P5 plus 1 and Iran are still very apart and the international elements and Iran shows no willingness to accept the kind of severe limits on its nuclear activities that the US will insist on as a conditions for sanctions relief so this interim agreement could easily become a rolling process that freezes the program but doesn't really eliminate it now in principle this joint action plan the deal between Iran and the P5 plus 1 is exactly the interim agreement that the US should be prepared to accept with North Korea as a basis for resuming six party talks and as a first step toward resolving the North Korea nuclear issue but it seems to me there are three important differences and I'll go through each of those first the US has some experience with North Korea we've already had three interim agreements the October 1994 agreed framework which Tom Hubbard was essential in being one of the chief negotiators the September 2005 statement and the February 2012 leap day deal so we've tried three times with North Korea in each case what happened they cheated or they reneged on the deal by revealing a secret enrichment program or conducting long range rocket and nuclear tests now Americans are very generous and trusting people but having been burned three times even we figured out that diplomacy with North Korea is a pretty treacherous business and unless we see some pretty convincing evidence that they're serious naturally Washington is going to be reluctant to jump back into negotiations with North Korea the second big difference as we discussed in the first panel is the effectiveness of our sanctions leverage is very different and people have done a good job of talking about why as we said the Iranians are relatively vulnerable to sanctions because of their dependence on oil exports and as well as international financial transfers and because the political system in Iran is relatively susceptible to economic pressure translating into political pressure on the government that's why Rouhani was elected in contrast the North Korean economy is very insular it's protected by the Chinese as we've talked about and of course economic deprivation and public opinion doesn't count for very much in North Korea so we don't really have the same tools available with the North as we do with Iran although I think we had a good discussion today about ways in which we might sharpen our sanctions leverage against North Korea and my guess is that we will have an opportunity to try to put in place those additional instruments in the future but the third and the most important difference and I don't think people have really talked about this yet is the relative transparency of the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea in the case of Iran we're pretty confident that the nuclear freeze actually freezes the program in other words as far as we know there aren't any additional undeclared facilities that are not covered by the freeze so in this case when we're easing sanctions in exchange for freezing the nuclear program we think we're actually getting what we're paying for the situation in North Korea is the opposite we strongly believe there must be undeclared nuclear facilities so relieving the sanctions to relieve the sanctions in exchange for a freeze on nuclear facilities that young beyond would be meaningless if those undeclared facilities continue to operate so it seems to me the biggest barrier to reaching an interim agreement with North Korea that eases sanctions in exchange for freezing some nuclear activities is that we need to know the North Koreans in some way have to indicate or acknowledge what the totality of the program is so that we know we're getting something in exchange for sanctions relief now frankly I am very I doubt the North Koreans are going to give up their nuclear secrets very easily and I'm skeptical that the Chinese are willing or able to force the North Koreans to do so although I know the US government is working very closely with Beijing because there has been some subtle shift in China's policy toward North Korea we know they've been very unhappy with Kim Jong-un proceeding with rocket tests and nuclear tests against Chinese advice and I think these latest developments with the purge of Changsong tech may make the Chinese even more unhappy so there may be some opening there but at least so far Beijing has not been prepared to convince the North Koreans that they have to put all their cards on the table as a basis for having a genuine negotiation for an interim agreement and until that happens I don't see how an interim agreement is possible thank you great ways to start off the panel now we'll go to our discussions in the order that they appear on your program in order to allow for maximum time for discussion we're going to ask our discussions to try to do five minutes if possible I'm sure there'll be other opportunities to intervene in the question and answer so first up is Patrick Cronin from CNES Victor thank you very much hard to surpass or even to come close to dealing with these two excellent presentations in five minutes let me make five points first the information gap that we suffer from has not changed the lack of information as well is very very important as we talked about what we learned about the purge in North Korea coming well after the fact Dr. Ham suggests that that's going to be the future what we're going to learn when there's a palace coup we'll read about it the next month there'll be indicators it'll look brilliant in hindsight it'll be so obvious but we won't see it on the day it actually happens and with that kind of information gap it makes it so much more difficult and this is what I think Gary Seymour may not in terms of relative transparency of the nuclear programs as well it's the same problem with information that we still suffer from the fact that North Korea is having export gold does suggest that maybe they're desperate but they've been desperate for a long time this is a 20 year war plus in terms of just thinking about their nuclear program and so we don't know how desperate they have to be prediction has always been wrong and I'm afraid that we still don't know even basic issues like the miniaturization of warheads, road mobile missiles and many other things about the stability regime, the decision making in Pyongyang. Second point is what motivates Kim Jong-un in the leadership? Well we were pretty certain a few days ago that there was this very clear regency around Kim Jong-un what's happened to that now? So much for the regency and if Kim Jong-un really is one of the least capable leaders in the world with nuclear weapons let's say about our prediction about his willingness to suffer more pain the problem with coercive diplomacy in the case of Kim Jong-un is acute because as much political will as we have to tolerate a higher risk of political instability and by us I mean including China North Korea probably still has in the form of Kim Jong-un a greater degree of interest in political will in surviving so unless we can do what's very difficult and I think Ambassador Chun hinted at this because never say never about their willingness to give up nuclear weapons but we'd have to change their calculus from this impatience with wanting to deploy nuclear weapons unlike Iran which may be willing to have the components, the building blocks of a bomb and then even if we could get the North Koreans to accept that would we really know it? Is it in their nature and culture and their regime and could we implement it? That's sort of the third point is our own problem with implementation here of sanctions even if we were so lucky as to get to an agreement and this is John Hammer's point at the very beginning he said you know Iran's acceptance is aimed at breaking the sanctions well at one level so is our aim, our aim is for Iran to break the sanctions that is to accept the conditions under which they no longer have to be sanctioned and held hostage to the global economy. The problem is there's a lot of skepticism about what comes next in the North Korea it's magnified many fold and the fact that they have this two pathways to nuclear production with uranium being harder to verify, how does one verify this? The loopholes the three times that Gary Seymour has already mentioned that we've already been down this road before makes us even more skeptical and it makes us even much more skeptical because these are divided bodies necessarily checking executive power we could barely implement the agreed framework. How could we implement something given this disastrous track record in many ways that North Korea has exhibited not to mention the other issues by the way like human rights abuses that necessarily are part of the larger picture it's not just as David Asher pointed out with Iran it's not just the nuclear program it's what they're doing in covert ops for instance that's really hurting people and that's not stopping. Another point here is China Vice President Biden and Xi Jinping had five and a half hours of discussions I think it's fair to say that if this bilateral relationship between the US and China is effective if it can have content North Korea becomes a litmus test for this content and I told that President Xi was extremely head wrapped attention when the Vice President explained the power of precedent of the Iran example. That's an opening we need to push it even if it's not going to go far enough and Gary Seymour has been there in the White House he knows and Ambassador Chun in the Blue House we know why China will only go so far but there are still events to come probably as you hinted. So after that fourth nuclear test after the next provocation after the palace coup there's a new opportunity here with China to do something different and more than they've done in the past and then finally President Park Park and Hei very little has been said about hers first year in the Blue House but she's proven to be a pragmatic adapter as a leader her trust politic had to adapt when the K-Song industrial complex was closed and after the family issue was thrown under the bus by the North Koreans and she's working hard on the U.S. ROK alliance she still needs to work more to prepare not just with the United States but with other countries like Japan on contingencies that are coming down the road but she's not a risk taker at this point there's no incentive for her to become a risk taker so it's easier for pundits to talk about risk I've even talked about it but when you're responsible for millions of citizens in a democracy you really have to be careful and pragmatic and I think she's going to continue to be pragmatic so that means the verdict is press ahead with the sanctions I think you know can we get to Zhang's financier and get ready for that little black book of other bank codes that we can go after after another provocation can we get ready for the kinds of air and sea and shipping sanctions with China after the next provocation these are things that we can at least pre-position and Bill Milken was talking about this get them ready to go so that we can use the United Nations, the EU, our national governments to try to clamp down and yes it's going to have to be with more Chinese support than we've ever seen to date but let's try it thank you thank you Patrick and I'll go to Dr. Michael Green thank you Victor Gary and Ambassador Chun absolutely spot on the only thing I would say is if I had given Gary's talk eight years ago Gary would have called me a crazy neocon but we're all John Bolton but we're all John Bolton now right there is frankly much less partisanship to the North Korea issue because it's so obvious now what the problem is and our answers are increments or variations on the spectrum not radically different and so I guess that's the one good thing that's come out of the past 15 years of experience with North Korea let me add three points to what's been said I don't disagree with anything I heard elaborate briefly on the differences between Iran and North Korea second briefly touch on what I think is the North Korean lesson for Iran and third just to add a bit of an exclamation point to what Ambassador Chun said about sanctions this may have come up in the earlier session I was at another CSIS event and I apologize if it did but it seems to me one of the most important differences between Iran and North Korea is their strategic objective and it's been said for North Korea it's regime survival Iran I think has a much more erudentist hegemonic persian hegemonic ambition in the middle in the greater Middle East and so the things David Asher talked about that terrorism, support for Hezbollah and so forth are not just dangerous and painful for societies and individuals they are part of a larger strategic vision that includes for example destabilizing Bahrain which is the source of our naval presence in the region and similar steps so the broader Iranian vision of regional hegemony is not as unrealistic as one might think and that's why Iran doesn't have to have an absolute declared nuclear weapons capability if it has a very short leap to get to nuclear weapons capability it has the course of tool it needs to use these other instruments with impunity undermine American presence undermine friends and allies in the region and flip a lot of governments in pursuit of a broader regional ambition that has not in my view gone away at all in the Iranian calculus and so while this is an interim agreement that's very reasonable really in terms of nonproliferation we really have to think about it in terms of whether or not it positions Iran better to continue this larger strategy I have real concerns on that front North Korea is different and North Korea is not going to overtake or cause regime change in South Korea and it's condemned in by China, Japan, Korea, the U.S. and Russia it's got like the line in Officer and the Gentlemen it's got no place to go that means that the North Korea nuclear capability does have to be absolutely obvious to the other powers and that North Korea will use it for coercive leverage for regime survival to get concessions which is dangerous in some ways more unpredictable because North Korea doesn't have a longer term regional hegemonic plan the bottom line for me though is we should consider this as well because it gives me some concern about where we may be heading with Iran second Gary was absolutely right even Americans after three times dealing with the North Koreans get the lesson we can't trust them what worries me is that the Iranians think they have three more times and that our history of dealing with these issues is not so great and that spans several administrations including Bush the agreed framework was actually a quite strong interim step but we didn't keep the pressure on we didn't try to get in any serious way the inspections that were necessary Huang Zheng yap when he came to Washington said we knew that we had time to as he put it confront you with a real nuclear deterrent the 2007 decision on BDA sent the signal that basically when we get some kind of progress we're very quick to just give up pressure it's very hard for democratic societies to sustain this kind of tension in international relations especially Korea which is right next door and I think Iran I worry Iran may have drawn the lesson from our diplomacy with North Korea that once you get in an interim agreement it's really hard even for the Americans to get back to pressure so if this is a rolling process as Gary described in terms of negotiating a nuclear deal that's very sensible and very reasonable but again does it because of our experience with North Korea suggest Iran times on their side you can break up as John Hammer said the coalition finally on sanctions I think Ambassador Chun's absolutely right Gary's right the North Koreans will once again soon probably present us with an opportunity my closing comment would be let's not do what we do every other time every other time the US puts the highest priority on solidarity in the security council and as a result we will accept watered down sanctions to keep China and Russia on board and the Chinese and Russians absolutely know that every time this time we ought to have in place the kinds of sanctions Ambassador Chun talked about with Japan and Korea and with other allies and make it very clear in the UN that's where we're going we can all do this together or we can do it on ourselves because too often it is important to get China on board but the asking price I think has been too high because the purpose of economic sanctions at this point in my view is not just as a coercive tool for diplomacy because we've just heard from all the panelists that diplomacy isn't working and it's not likely to for a long time so one of the most important roles now for sanctions is to constrain and restrain and roll back the North Korean program and there's a lot more we could do to do that not just raising the price for diplomatic reasons raising the price for demonstration reasons to other proliferators and to slow down and mess with the program and we're not going to get that with UN Security Council sanctions so I hope that next time we're prepared to push the US, Korea, Japan effort first with the Security Council solidarity being the second priority if we're really going to get serious about this. Thanks Thank you Michael and then Professor you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much and I'm very pleased to be here in a new building, CSIS and yesterday we had actually planned to have a seminar but because of the snow so this is the only time that I came here by spending almost 13 hours from Seoul to here but I have only 5 minutes. The first thing is that I think the North Korean case is quite unique. We should understand that North Korea's desire or determination to develop nuclear weapons is quite different. We already applied many examples which gave up their nuclear development program like in Ukraine and Brazil and also we had the case of Libyan and this time we are trying to talk about the Iranian case. I think the sanction is important and it has contributed something for North Korea to consider whether they continue to develop or maintain their nuclear development program so I think sanction is very important but sanction is not enough because of the uniqueness of North Korean case. The first thing is that there is a South Korea as hostage. Well I do not want to say it as hostage but it seems as a similar case. Whenever we try to talk about North Korean nuclear development, we think about the peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and the almost Korean population in the South so I think we should understand the uniqueness of Korean case. The second point is that there is a new development inside North Korea as we have seen that Jang Sung-taek case. I do not know whether Jang Sung-taek is just trying to have a more moderate policy directions such as to pursue a cooperation with Park Geun-hye government as we have observed in Kaesong Special Economic Show and also Jang Sung-taek has special connection or cooperation with China and therefore if China really wants to denuclearization on the Korean peninsula since the third round of nuclear tests in North Korea then I think the removal of Jang Sung-taek means that Kim Jong-un would like to be more independent from China's influence or the connection with China and therefore I think we should consider this kind of a new situation in North Korea. North Korea already declared that they would continue to do a strategy that means that they would continue to maintain a nuclear development program along with the economic recovery plan and therefore we should understand what Kim Jong-un really considered what had in mind to maintain regime survival or maintain his own power or influence in North Korea. The third point is that when I attended a September conference in Beijing Kim Ge-gwan attended and also Lee Young-won is the delegate of North Korea Six-Party talks, they said that they would like to come to the regime Six-Party talks regardless of the preconditions. Well that is clearly a difference from what they had argued in May or April this year. So we have to keep in mind that North Korea is trying to change or try to negotiate under new conditions. However, the U.S. came to the Beijing conference without sending their official delegates. That means that they are trying to maintain the preconditions for resuming the Six-Party talks and because of their kind of attitude, the North Korea which has tried to maintain some distance with China, they could not find a better negotiation position with the U.S. And the U.S. should understand that North Korea, North Korea regime or Kim Jong-un wants to have a dialogue with the U.S. So I think the U.S. should play a more major role in this regard, in these concerns and therefore we want to see a more political leadership from the U.S. Well we understand that the U.S. has many concerns all over the world and particularly they had a successful deal with Iranian case but considering the difference between Iran and North Korea, I think it's time for the U.S. to realize that the U.S. should involve in this case, not just to ask or demand China because China has definitely some limitations in their influence and also North Korea do not want to see China has a major role in this regard. So I think in the future we should maintain the sanction. Well, if North Korea tries to have the first round of nuclear tests, we should continue to raise upon the sanction. However, we need to make a unity towards North Korea and consistency. And in this case, the U.S. should pay more attention to resolving this kind of crisis and to bring North Korea into a dialogue to show that what is the preconditions for North Korea to have dialogue with the U.S. Thank you. Okay, great. All very useful and discussion worthy interventions. So now we have a few minutes left. We'll go to open the floor for any questions that you might have. Just put up your hand. We don't have any name cards for you. So just put up your hand. If you have any questions, we'll come to you with a mic. And while we're coming to you with a mic, let me just ask one question. That is all of... Ambassador Chan, you worked on... I mean everybody knows you as the former National Security Advisor, but we also know you was working on the February 2007 implementation agreement in the Six-Party Talks. And then Gary's worked on both the 94 and the state deal. And Gary mentioned this idea of sort of these interim agreements that we reached, like the one we reached in Iran. I guess one of the questions might be, when the United States reaches these sorts of interim deals, once we reach them, do we tend to want them more than the other party once we reach them? Do we have a tendency to want them to succeed more than the other side? So I just throw that one out there and then we'll go to the audience for questions. So do we have a mic? Since some of the panelists mentioned China's deal with nuclear issues, Korean Peninsula nuclear issues, I just want to make some comments. First, I'd like to emphasize that China's will on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is very strong and very clear. I think there's no doubt about that. But I think the difference is what is the proper way to reach our common goal. I think we don't think sanction is the only way out. Today our topics is about Iran's deal's implications on the last Korean issues. But I think some of the panelists mentioned that it looks like sanctions works. But I think that's only one side of the story. I think the other side is dialogue also works. If it's not for the dialogues between P5 plus 1 with Iran, there will be no deal. And I think each side of both of the United States and Iran, they go backward a little bit. That's why an interim deal was reached. I think we should also take lessons from this deal that is we should encourage dialogue. I think that's why we continue to encourage dialogue between the United States and North Korea. As the last panelist mentioned, I think North Korea is really eager to have direct contacts with the United States. I think we encourage both sides to have a very positive approach toward direct contacts. And also I think it's very important for the Six Party talks to resume. But right now the problem is the relevant parties are not great on the relevant threshold to go back to the Six Party talks. So that's why we think it's very important for each side to set a very reasonable threshold to go back to the Six Party talks. We do think that our concerns could be resolved and talked during the dialogues, during the process not just as a precondition to go back to the dialogues. We do think for a very complicated issues as North Korean nuclear, the Korean Peninsula nuclear issues, sanctions is not the only way out. We should have, not only have a resolve, we should also have wisdom to approach from different panels. Thank you. Great, thank you. So just to summarize the question, do we learn from the Iran example that it's not just sanctions but dialogue that's a necessary part of getting to where we want to get to, you know, whatever that objective is. Okay, yes. Thank you, Jin Suk Lee from NBC TV Korea. If we compare North Korea with Iran, I think there are four factors. The Iranian government, Iranian people, North Korean government, North Korean people, and especially I would like to highlight Iranian people. Iranian people are more informed and 60% of Iranian people are under 30 years old. They're quite well informed, they're open to the international community, they know what is happening outside Iran. On the other hand, North Korean people, they live in a very closed society, they don't know what is happening. So in case of Iran, the Iranian regime has to worry about the possibility of their re-election. On the other hand, in North Korea, as Ambassador Chan pointed out, the regime changes by the death of the leader. So there's quite a big difference. Hence the China factor enters without the support of China. It will be very difficult for us to reach a successful deal with North Korea. And if we see what is happening between the United States and China these days when the United States supports Japan's collective defense rights it seems that China is quite unhappy with what is going on. Could we just expect support from China right now? And just coming back to the Iranian factor again, how much or how little has the Iranian people factor contributed to the successful Iranian deal? Thank you. Ken Meyer, Corps of World Oaks. As a only semi-informed layman, it seems like there's a fairly simple solution to the North Korean nuclear weapon problem. And that is that we strike a deal with them whereby they will dismantle their program in return for us removing our troops from the Korean peninsula. Why is that option never discussed? Okay, so we have, I think what we'll do is just go down the line so we'll start with Ambassador Chun and then work our way down. And consider this also your closing statement too. Well on the last question about withdrawal of U.S. troops putting on the table, well if you look at September joint statement, September 2005 joint statement, it includes well it doesn't include withdrawal of U.S. troops, but it includes as a way of reducing North Korea's threat perceptions. It includes peace agreement or peace regime on the Korean peninsula and normalization of bilateral U.S. North Korea relations. So these are the political and security incentives. It's a political incentive, security assurance for North Korea. And we of course have this economic package, you know, energy, economic assistance. We don't specify the amount but these three components are already in the 19, September 19 joint statement. And I had discussions, well I had discussions with Kim Ki-kwan about these things and he asked me if peace agreement would mean withdrawal of U.S. troops. What I told him was that U.S. troops will stay there stay there in Pyongyang maybe, not in Pyongyang but in Pyong-Tek, different. In Pyong-Tek, Camp Humphrey watching baseball, but this is troops of a country with which you may have already established diplomatic relations maybe a non-hostile state staging troops in Camp Humphrey so it's not the same U.S. troops as you see them now. But what he said was the North Korean military will see no meaning in peace agreement or peace regime if it doesn't involve withdrawal of U.S. troops. But this will become a, this will become discussed if we get into the specifics of peace regime at a later date but nobody has decided whether this will be involved or not. So I have a few more minutes on sanctions so I would like to answer to the question from the floor. I don't think the Iran nuclear deal would have been possible without comprehensive and really biting sanctions. I don't believe that sanctions will resolve or will compare North Korea to Dino Christ by themselves but they will change the structure of interest for North Korea. They will create incentives for the North Koreans to come back to the Six Party Talks and to negotiate seriously. That's the merit of sanctions and at the current level of sanctions North Korea will not have incentives to come back. Well, they will have incentives to come back to the Six Party Talks to play games, to waste their time until and demanding repeal of sanctions or easing of sanctions in place until they find a pretext for a fourth nuclear testing. So I don't think that in that way Six Party Talks will serve any useful purpose. So without North Korea's commitment to denuclearization and they can show by declaring their undeclared nuclear facilities, enrichment facilities and halt their existing nuclear facilities and that's the best way to show their seriousness about denuclearization. And I don't attach much value to moratorium on nuclear testing or missile test. That's already banned by Security Council Resolution which is part of international law. So if there is an agreement on moratorium that doesn't really add up to the existing legal regime in place. So what I'm saying is that the sanctions imposed on Iran which is not developing nuclear weapons yet are far more biting and comprehensive. They cover civilian sectors of Iranian economy gas and oil, shipping, banking, everything and that cut off all the avenues of massive cash flow into Iran and Iran is more pluralistic society than North Korea and the merchants in the bazaar will rise up against the Iranian government because their currency value is plummeting every day is halved after sanctions. So this creates a lot of disorder or economic disruptions in Iran that could compel the government to change its calculus about nuclear programs. That's I think how we or the P5 plus 1 achieved in my view is not a successful deal but a modest progress in interim progress in the talks. But in the case of North Korea it's already developing nuclear weapons and tested three times. So in theory the sanctions should be far more onerous for North Korea to get them to back to the negotiation table and negotiate seriously in the six party talks. But the sanctions imposed on Iran I would say are at least five times more biting than which claims that it's only enriching uranium for peaceful purposes and they have no interest in developing nuclear weapons and it's banned by Sharia or by Islamic rules. But for North Korea they have gone much further than Iran and the sanctions are half hearted and non-biting. I don't think that's the way to get North Korea interested in serious negotiations. So I'll be brief. Victor asked a very provocative question do we want these interim agreements more than the other side? I'm not sure we do but I think we certainly take them more seriously. I mean in the Clinton administration and in the Obama administration I'm sure in the Bush administration the U.S. made a genuine effort to try to fulfill its end of the bargain. That doesn't mean we were always capable of doing what we said we would do. Of course there are events beyond your control that might lead to delays but we didn't deliberately violate the agreement and we didn't renege on it as soon as we thought it was a good idea to walk away. North Korean's behavior is just the opposite. They deliberately cheated on the 1994 agreed framework and they walked away from the joint 2005 joint statement and the leap day deal where it suited their interest to walk away. So I think that's the big difference is how genuine a country is in viewing these interim agreements. A, implementing them and B, seeing them as a step toward a ultimate diplomatic resolution. With respect to Iran I think there are probably more in the North Korea category than the U.S. category but we'll see as this negotiation proceeds. The second I just wanted to make a comment on what the Chinese diplomat said well yes of course any interim agreement will require dialogue and negotiation between the U.S. and Iran and the point I was trying to make is that any deal has to be some measure of sanctions relief in exchange for some measure of nuclear constraint. But you can't have that negotiation unless all of the cards are on the table. So if North Korea is hiding a big part of its nuclear program how can you possibly have a negotiation when we don't know what we're paying for. Or at least the North Koreans can't expect to get very much for a partial freeze. And the leap day deal I think showed that. I mean the U.S. was prepared to accept a freeze on Yongbyon but we didn't pay very much for it because we knew or believed that that wasn't really comprehensive and therefore it wasn't worth very much. Patrick. Victor three points. One patients in dialogue are not always the safest policy. The proper way to denuclearize North Korea therefore is not necessarily to allow continued unfettered nuclearization and waiting for the day when they're getting serious. Secondly it's a myth that dialogue is somehow lacking and missing. There has been nothing but dialogue in all sorts of secret and open channels. That's the reality. What's been lacking is the genuine sincerity in the part of North Korea about those dialogues. That's the missing element and as a country that supports in two countries U.S. or K. supporting the rule of law we're looking for genuine sincerity about agreed rules of the road. And finally no it's not all about sanctions it's also about a spotlight on North Korea. Information this is the world's last closed society and we're going to witness during our lifetime the end of that closed society. Information plays a huge role in what's going to happen in the future of North Korea and we should use that. That's not a sanction that's globalization. Mike. On Victor's question do we want to deal more than the other side does. I think Gary answered that accurately. We are more faithful to the deal we implement it. The other side doesn't really want the deal they cheat. So I think in that sense Gary is absolutely right. However I do think we are loathe as democratic societies loathe to reapply coercion and introduce tension again in a relationship until we're just absolutely unable to deny that the other side is blatantly cheating. And so we will be very patient because if Gary and Sid and you and I were running it would be different but when the principles have moved on to the next problem, Iran and South Korea whatever it is, to then go up as the assistant secretary or senior director and say boss we're going to have to reopen sanctions, we're going to need you to travel on Asia. We just hate doing it and it's not just the US, Japan and Korea frankly are the same. So we do have that problem and that gets us every time. We don't have a real stat for pressure and sanctions. We have an on-off switch and that's a problem. On this issue that's come up with Professor Yu and our Chinese colleagues interventions about going back to the table with the North Koreans without preconditions, to me it's a little bit like we're playing football with the North Koreans and during half time they went onto the field when nobody was looking and moved the football down from the 50 yard line to our 20 yard line and then they went in the parking lot and lit all our cars on fire and then they stole all of our equipment out of the stands and then they came back and said okay we're ready to resume the game on your 20 yard line with no preconditions. This is the dilemma that the administration has you can't just pretend that they didn't cheat and significantly advance the nuclear program and it's tricky because for the reasons Gary said you want to try to find a way to find an internal agreement but you can't start as if nothing happened and can't meaning must not and I think the administration knows that. I think it's very difficult to trust a country like North Korea is true that we had a lot of experience that was treated by North Koreans but I think it's time for us to bring North Koreans new leadership and it is time for US really genuinely play a major role in dealing with this kind of things. One thing is that when Kim Jong-il died, North Korean newspaper immediately told us that the Supreme Leader should maintain what previous leaders had achieved. That means that they declared that nuclearization of North Korea nuclear weapons is the will of Kim Jong-il but recently North Korea has changed that slightly that it is the will of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il to denuclearization under Korean Peninsula. Well it's true that North Koreans delegate at the Sixth Party to still confuse about what denuclearization of the whole Korean Peninsula and therefore I think it is very important for us to make a unitary approach to North Korean nuclear issues and therefore I think it is true that we had a lot of mistakes or treated by North Korea but we should not abandon to have dialogue with North Korea. Thanks. Thank you. Well that's all the time we have for this panel. Let's thank our panelists for a very interesting discussion. Before we adjourn, Choi Bong would you like to say a few words in closing or? It's a very good speech. No. If North Koreans do a fourth nuclear test you guys are all talking about that occasion right that there may be a future occasion in which we can actually start implementing all of this together but that's a strange thing to say actually or think but we live in a very strange world but again the panel completely exceeded our bested expectations in terms of where we could get out of this particular issue and again I'd just like to thank all the participants who came from well from Seoul just for five minutes which goes to show how expensive this guy is to just five minutes of his time but also again all of our panelists and especially CSIS for providing this magnificent facility indication for this. Thank you again.