 Thank you very much. Welcome to our lecture of opportunity here today that we have a great opportunity to bring someone up from Washington, D.C., whose home is actually in Japan. And it was a great chance to be able to bring him up for a talk for my career elective, but also to be able to have him speak to the larger audience here. And so it is my great pleasure to introduce to you Nader Shige Machista, who is a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. He is the director of the security and international studies program there and one of Japan's top scholars on North Korea. He is currently a visiting research fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center Asia program in Washington, D.C. and previously served as a senior research fellow at Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies or affectionately known as NIDS. He also has extensive service in government as deputy director of the Office of Strategic Studies at the Ministry of Defense and as the assistant counselor at the Cabinet Secretary for Security and Crisis Management. He is a specialist in Japanese security and foreign policy as well as security issues on the Korean Peninsula and has a very long list of publications. One of my favorites, if you're interested in a book that he wrote is called North Korea's Military Diplomatic Campaigns 1968 to 2008. It is a wonderful book that walks through that historical record of how North Korea has tried to use brinkmanship to advance its goals and I think you will see that the good deal of that reflected in his talk. Many people look at North Korea and see and focus on the last maybe five to ten years of its provocative behavior. They have been doing some of those things many, many years prior to that and you will see a great presentation from Dr. Michi on that. He is a regular commentator in many media sources on a variety of topics related to Japan and Korea. He did his PhD at Johns Hopkins University in international relations and is fluent in Korean and English and today again he will address the history of North Korean brinksmanship. So please join me in welcoming Dr. Michi. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Teri for your kind invitation and introduction. Thank you very much everybody for coming. Today I'm going to talk about the history of North Korea's brinksmanship diplomacy based on the book the study that I did that Teri so kindly mentioned. I'm going to do three things. One is first I will give you the kind of findings of my research based on the history and I will briefly go take you through the history of North Korea's use of force from 1966 up to the present and finally I will talk a little bit about the future outlook. First major findings I have actually five findings and one no finding. First North Korea's first finding is that North Korea's policy objectives have changed in use of in using force have changed from highly ambitious and offensive ones to minimum or defensive ones. Two North Korea's use of force was successful in some cases in which they use force but unsuccessful in others yet in other cases it create produced disastrous disaster negative results to North Korea. Three North Korea's use of force has reflected it's changing policy objectives and military balance in that sense North Korean use of force has been rational and well calculated and as North you know North Korea's use how the modality of use its use of force have changed as military balance have shifted against North Korea since the mid 1970s in favor of South Korea and the US side. For some of North Korea's recent actions are repetition of past actions with tactical changes. I talk about why the reason why they're doing so and finally some of the North Korean actions caused the US ROK side ROK being Republic of Korea to take countermeasures compromising North Korea's military advantages over time and lastly one no finding is that it is not clear at this point whether Kim Jong-un the new leader in his early 30s will play the same game of brinkmanship diplomacy going forward. Let me move to the history the second part. There are five phases if you when you're in which North Korea use force in different ways. The first phase is the covers the years between 1966 and 1972 in which North Korea started to use force aggressively and I kind of named this era Genesis of North Korea's military diplomatic campaigns and second era covers the years between 1973 and 1982 in which North Korea started to use force for diplomatic purposes well coordinated military diplomatic campaigns really started. The third phase which lasted between 1983 and 1992 we saw in this during this phase the rise of use of terrorist attacks and the fourth phase covers years between 1993 and 2008 in which North Korea conducted very elaborate sophisticated use brinkmanship diplomacy using mainly its nuclear and missile capabilities and finally the fifth phase is Kim Jong-un era which started in 2009 as a practical matter although he came to power officially in 2012. So I will talk about walk you through these different phases one by one talking about what happened what the North Koreans did what was objectives and how successful and successful some of their actions were characteristics of the actions and negative consequences of their actions if any. First let me show the slide Genesis of military diplomatic campaigns between 1966 and 1969 North Korea conducted sustained assaults on US ROK forces along the DMZ which were concentrate oops sorry okay concentrated in these areas and then in 1968 North Korean special operation forces attempted and raid on the Blue House South Korean presidential palace in order to assassinate then president Park Jong-hee current president Park Kun-ae's father and in the same year in January just to two days after this attempted assassination of president Park North Korea captured US ship Pueblo in the oh this okay in the west east coast of North Korea off the port of Wonsan this is photos of Pueblo USS Pueblo by the way USS Pueblo is currently anchored in the Tadong River in Pyongyang as a museum anti-imperial you know movement or fight museum so if you're interested you might want to visit to take a look at the USS Pueblo. In 1969 North Korea shut down US Navy EC 121 intelligence gathering aircraft and successfully and killing all the members US Navy members on board. In 1970 North Korea attempted to assassinate again President Park Jong-hee of South Korea when he was going to make a speech at the National Theater but failed. What were the objectives and outcome of these actions? First objective that North Korea had was to overthrow the South Korean government but so in order to do so they tried to assassinate President Park but the attempt failed. The second was objective was to hamper US intelligence activities in order to do so they captured Pueblo shut down US EC 121 successfully and this was really successful because they North Korea not only captured Pueblo but captured some of the important intelligence documents. Certainly people on board tried to dump it as much as possible before they got captured but still they couldn't do so perfectly successfully so they obtained some documents they combined them with the intelligence information that they had I mean the Soviet Union had and in all combined them with intelligence information that John Walker was providing to the Soviets and the Soviets could use them to identify the whereabouts of US naval vessels. Third objective was to divert US ROK attention away from the Vietnam War because back then both the United States and South Korea forces were fighting in Vietnam and the North Korea as a part of you know international assistance to the northern Vietnamese communist friends tried to divert US and South Korean attention and kind of by opening a second front on the Korean peninsula and it was reasonably successful in a sense that although North Korea could could not prevent the US both the US and South Korean forces from continuing their fights in Vietnam they could successfully prevent the reinforcement of South Korean forces committed to the Vietnam War. Before the this these attempts President Park was thinking about reinforcing or adding some forces to Vietnam after crisis you know tensions arose on the Korean Peninsula President Park reversed his decision. So what can we say during this period North Korea's objectives in use using force were extremely ambitious and aggressive and fairly successful. Characteristics of the use of force was aggressive direct application of force and also some use of coercive subversive and and a subversive use of force. There were negative consequences to what they did because when North Korea started to attack US and South Korean forces across the DMZ demilitarized zone the US ROK side decided to fortify the DMZ zone the area and so it became difficult for North Korea and special operation forces to infiltrate into the southern side after that and that was part of why South North Korea started to dig tunnels underneath the DMZ in the early I mean from early 1970s and also South Korea decided to establish two-point million man not homerun reserve forces and also there was a South Korea embarked on construction of indigenous defense industry namely Pohang Iron and Steel Company which today is called POSCO. Let me move to the second phase in which North Korea used force for limited way for diplomatic purposes. In 1973 North Korea started to send its naval vessels across the quasi borderline between the north and south called the northern limit line or NLL in order to basically undermine the validity of this line northern limit line which was unilaterally drawn by the United Nations command in 1953 just after the end of the Cold Korean War and it was interesting because North Korea started to send vessels in October 1973 just two months before the conference on UN United Nations conference on UN's law of the sea was held in New York so North Koreans apparently knew that something new was going to take happen in the discussion and the discourse on the international law maritime law and started to make their case by cross having their ship crossing this NLL line and also during this period North Korea started to propose a for the first time a signing of a peace agreement with the United States by the way even today technically speaking the Korean war has not ended it's just we are just had the armistice so the war is technically or legally still ongoing but the fighting has ceased and the North Koreans are telling the Americans to replace sign and peace agreement and to replace the agreed armistice agreement of 1953 with it again in 1974 North Korean operative attempted to assassinate Park Jong-hee present Park but failed and instead in the you know gunfight between the assassin and the South Korean guards present first lady Yu Gyeong-soo present Park's wife got shot and killed in 1976 there was another interesting incident in the place called the joint security area in Panmunjom which is on the borderline between the North and the South and there in which two of American Army US Army officers were killed by brutally by axes that North Korean soldiers were wielding and that created the international crisis after this event the US deployed a large number of air and sea forces and decided to actually cut the poplar tree which kind of became the starting point of this instant in 1981 North Korea attempted to attack US reconnaissance aircraft SR 71 so what are the objectives and outcome first of all North Korea attempted by sending ships across the northern limit line northern limit line tried to make maritime territorial claims and in order to undermine the legal validity of the line it was moderately successful because North Korea could not enforce what they were claiming but at least they could kind of create a situation where there are debate about the by you know the nature and legal standing of the northern limit line to North Korea tried to conclude peace agreement with the United States and actually North Korea was sending asked Romania countries like Romania to tell convey their intention to sign a peace agreement with the US to the US government and people like Henry Kissinger was kind of quite interested and thought about doing so although in the end he decided not to and also North Korea tried to make it I mean encourage the United States to withdraw its forces deployed in South Korea by for example attacking US officers at Pamunjeon and the message basically was like if you try you know keep your young you know American boys in or officers on the Korean peninsula this is what what's going to happen so if you don't like to get you know bogged down in Korea as you as the United as the United States did in Vietnam the US forces should be withdrawn and also fourth North Korea's continue to attempt hampering US intelligence activities but not to successfully they failed to they actually shot probably launched the SA-2 surface to air missile at the SR-71 but missed it and another attempt was made to assassinate South Korean president but it failed so what I we can say about this phase is that North Korea's policy objectives was not as grandiose as those in the 1960s but still quite ambitious such as with you know forcing the US to withdraw its forces from South Korea or undermining the South Korean government another interesting new element that we can see in during this we could see the in this period was that emergence of cooperative objective because in the previous phase the US North Korea was basically attacking both South Korea and US forces but now while attacking some US forces North Korea started to talk about enhancing its relationship with the United States overall North Korean attempt was not very successful in particular the axe murder incident tree cutting incident of 1976 was disastrously unsuccessful undermining the North Korea's international position because international community could easily see how brutal North Korea could be and it really undermined North Korean position characteristics of use of force North Korean use of force during this period the use of force was conducting in a limited and indirect manner unlike the previous period in which North Koreans are really attacking and killing a large number of South Korea and US servicemen and if you can let take a look at this these are the numbers of US casualties killed and wounded and ROK South Korean casualties and death and wounded killed and wounded but you could see a substantial reduction of these numbers in the 1970s and also another thing interesting fact is that while creating a large number of deaths on the US and ROK side they were taking a pretty you know significant casualties on this on their side North Korean side so they are not creating a lot of you know mess on the US ROK side they were taking some you know heat so it was not the one-sided game that they were playing. North Korea was using force coercively in an indirect manner and military actions to was taken to exploit international legal development such as United Nations Conference on Love the Sea and also interestingly attempted attack against the US SL 71 in 1981 was the last direct use of force against North Korea's direct use of force against US personnel and or assets since then they make all the you know use bad languages hostile aggressive language language was at the United States but never have attempted to kill or harm US forces and assets that's quite interesting. There are several negative consequences rising resulting from North Korea's provocations first North South Korea faced with a infiltration of large number of North Korean naval forces coming across the NLL South Korea decided to build up on its own naval capabilities and that eventually resulted in I will talk about it later but in one-sided decisive victory of South Korean Navy against over the North Korean Navy in 1999 battle in the Yellow Sea. Second South Korea decided to fortify its offshore islands there are five these islands Peinyon Do, Techeon Do, Socheon Do, Yongpyeong Do and Udo and these islands are hard to defend because they are more you know far away from North South Korea than from North Korea but they decided to like Taiwanese did to Jinmen and Mazu islands South Korea fortified these islands during this period and also South Korean government adopted what's called the Sassu strategy which means that they would defend NLL no matter what unconditionally because they knew that there were some legal problems in enforcing this NLL because ultimately it was a unilaterally declared line but they decided well you know we'll use force to defend this no matter what. Let me move to the third phase in which terrorism came to the fore. In 1983 North Korean operatives exploded the timed bomb well not timed bomb. Remotely controlled bomb in a tomb of in you know the legendary general of Burma in the capital city Yangon then called Rangoon killing a number of South Korean cabinet members because President Cheon Do-hwan South Korean President Cheon Do-hwan was visiting Rangoon I failed to kill President himself. In 1987 North Korean two operatives set the timed bomb in South Korean airline passenger aircraft flying from the Middle East back to Seoul and exploded it in the air and killing all the passengers on board. North Korea's project objectives during this period seem to have included one assassination of South Korean president for obvious reasons but it was disaster three failed why because they not only failed to kill the president but also the fact that North Korean agent did the job was revealed because some of the agent got arrested just after executing this operation and second objective that North Korea had was to undermine success for convening of the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988 so that was probably why they exploded the bomb on the Korean airliner to show demonstrate to the world that the coming to Seoul can be pretty dangerous but again this was disaster three failed because one of the two operatives one male one female female one failed to kill him herself that actually the this male agent committed the suicide you know take took a you know a pill poisonous pill and killed himself successfully she failed he took the pill couldn't and she survived and eventually she made the confession that she was acting under North Korean authorities under the order of Kim Jong-il and so that was really a big negative international you know kind of revelation that North Korea was undertaking terrorist attacks I would say these policy objectives that the North Korean had during the period came out of reflected North Korea's sense of desperation because back then still North Korea and South Korea was competing on the relatively on the equal footing but when these you know events happened and they was revealed that the North Koreans you know part is executed these terrorist attacks it was clear that North Korea has lost in this competition for legitimacy on the Korean Peninsula and the South Korea I would say after nine by the end of 1987 prevailed in this competition with North Korea and so in that sense in a way I would say that North Korea's objective during this period was defensive one actions were aggressive and offensive but intentions because they are trying to prevent South Korea to achieve from achieving successes international successes of convening Olympic games in Seoul disastrous outcome and and the characteristics during this period of the terrorist type subversive attempt with direct and indirect use of force and interesting again the Rangoon incident in Yangon which took place in Yang in Burma was the last subversive attempt on the part of North Korea against South Korean leadership so since this time North Korea again order you know the wars and attacks verbal attacks targeted at the South Korean government never have attempted to kill assassinated South Korean president negative consequences of what North Korea did during this period was a designation by the US government of North Korea as a terrorist terrorism sponsoring countries which made a life very difficult for the country let me move to the fourth stage this is a elaborate and sustained major diplomatic campaigns between 1993 and 94 North Korea conducted what I would call a war first nuclear diplomacy in which North Korea used its cap capacity and intention to produce nuclear weapons in order to lure the US into a negotiating table and eventually in 1994 they kind of obtained the successfully of the signed the US North Korea agreed framework in which North Korea promised to freeze its nuclear development while the United States decided to provide heavy fuel oil as well as a light water reactor to North Korea between 1998 let me skip this let me 1998 and 2000 North Korea conducted this missile diplomacy using the development of a longer range by stick missile which North Korea launched for the first time in August 1998 which flew over Japan for the time first time and okay and then in while conducting these nuclear and missile diplomacy North Korea was kind of playing a side show which I would characterize as a campaign to undermine the Korean Armistice because they are again trying to take up the issue of NLL and other things and North Korean vessels again started to cross the northern limit line and the North Korean argument was this okay this northern limit line is illegal and not binding not binding and invalid but because South Korea tried to enforce this illegal line clashes are inevitable and was a can might be created because of that so if the US and DPRK government signed a peace agreement replacing the Armistice agreement and the draw a new line based on the international law such as UN convention on the law of the sea that these clashes and the skirmishes and the wars will be prevented that was North Korea's argument but because in order to do so North Korea again in a systematic and continuous manner started to send its vessels across the NLL to the north but the South Koreans really responded this quite strongly because by that time North Korean Navy had a decisive superiority over the North Korean counterpart and as the as a result there was a big battle of Yonpyon taking place in on June that's 15th of 1999 in which South Korean vessels basically beat up beat up on the North Korean counterpart and by the way one of the vessels involved in this battle was a South Korean Colvet Chonan and interestingly North Korea in 2002 let me talk a little bit about in a surprise attack sank one of North South Korean first boat called a Chamsul and which again was actually involved in a battle of Yonpyon in 1999 so I would say this was the first attempt by North Korea to take a revenge for its defeat in 1999 naval battle and then between 2002 and 2008 North Korea conducted the second round of nuclear diplomacy during which time North Korea launched the first Teppodon II longer range ballistic missile which failed in 2006 and also conducted the first nuclear test in October 2006 which was half success for half failure because before the test North Korea basically said there was going to be a four kiloton nuclear test and when they did it they achieved only less than one kiloton of explosion so what we can say is that it was successful in the sense that bomb it you know went off it was not successful in the sense that it failed to achieve the expected explosion yield what were the North Korea's objectives and outcomes one of them was obtaining economic and energy assistance from international community which you know was fairly successful because North Korea succeeded in obtaining provision of five hundred thousand tons of heavy fuel oil after the consigning of agreed framework in 1994 and it was you know obtaining this amount of heavy fuel oil annually until 2002 I think 102 I think too and then but they failed to obtain light water reactor because light water reactor was under construction well under construction based on the 1994 agreed framework but when it was revealed that North Korea was constructing a secret uranium based nuclear program in 2002 the provision of the light water reactor was frozen so they are still sitting half constructed in in North Korea North Korea also tried to normalize relations between with the United States and Japan and it could have been more successful because toward the end of 2000 then President Clinton was thinking of visiting Pyongyang to improve US relationship with North Korea but decided not to because he was choosing between you know addressing the Middle East peace process or its normalization process with North Korea and he chose the Middle East and also Prime Minister Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi visited North Korea in 2002 in an attempt to normalize relations with the North Korea and it was the deal was the Japanese government was suggesting a package deal in which North Korea will address nuclear missile and Japanese abductees issue while Japan would normalize relations with diplomatic relations with North Korea and provide a pretty significant economic assistance package ranging between five to ten billion dollars if it happens but never successfully it didn't succeed and I didn't normalization process failed and North Korea decided you know try to pursue a peace agreement with the US but unsuccessfully during this period North Korea's policy objectives were minimalist in the sense that its most important objectives was a regime survival it was not talking about overthrowing South Korean government anymore it was not talking about withdraw forcing the US to withdraw its forces from South Korea so it was not talking about you know out compete South Korea anymore it was the survival was the key so North Korean actions were defensive in nature and I would say moderately successful but they were negative consequences for example because North Korea are repeatedly engaged in development of nuclear weapons and even tested conducted the test economic sanctions or financial sanctions were imposed on the country and also because North Korea conducted the actual nuclear test plausible deniability of them not possess coming up with actual nuclear weapon was gone so before that first nuclear test we could kind of argue well North Korea might have nuclear weapons but by not therefore we might be able to come up with some kind of diplomatic deal in which North Korea decide to freeze the development while we provide some you know assistance or improve relations with ship with the country but now they have clearly possess nuclear weapons it'd be very difficult for government such as Japanese and US government South Korean government to to say that we should normalize relationship relations with North Korea finally last phase Kim Jong Un era from 19 2009 why 2009 because in the summer of 2008 Kim Jong Un suffered a stroke and he got basically ill and hospitalized for a while and he when he you know came back he decided in a way he was pretty responsible and kind of thoughtful leader in the sense because he's you know realized that his days were numbered and he had to undertake power front you know power transition process as soon as possible and he did it's kind of difficult you know meant psychologically difficult to somebody to implement a policies set of policies based on the assumption that he will or she will die soon right but he did interesting and he picked Kim Jong as a his successor and started the process and in 2009 as a part of I would say as a part of this process North Korea launched long range another long range missile what we call Teppodon 2 and what they call Una 2 quite successfully it flew more than 3,000 kilometers and impacted in the West Pacific Ocean and North Korea then conducted the second nuclear test in the same more or less in the same area in the northeastern coast of North Korea in the underground test site second test which achieved a few kilotons of explosion yield which was better than the first one and I would say because the first one was not too successful North Korea must have used the more or less the same device in the same test and it achieved two three when they were talking about four kilotons of explosion it was quite successful and then in 2010 North Korea undertook a two very provocative actions one was thinking of South Korean Corvette named Cheonan in the Yellow Sea and also sharing North Korea shelled the offshore South Korea's offshore island named Yongpyeong killing 46 people South Korean sailors in the case of Cheonan and the four South Korean citizens in the case of sharing of Yongpyeong Island in 2012 North Korea launched longer range biosec missile what they called UNA-3 twice one failed another the other succeeded and they even succeeded in putting a satellite into orbit and actually this satellite is still rotating around the globe and also in 2013 North Korea conducted its third nuclear test which achieved several kilotons and that this is a pretty bad kind of ominous development because and after the the test North Korean authority declared that they used a more powerful and lighter and smaller version of atomic bomb that means that the device probably was miniaturized so the other results our estimate is that now North Korea will probably be able to is able to kind of made nuclear weapons with at least medium range biosec missile such as Nodon which can attack Japan and in 2014 in there was another interesting development in which North Korea launched two Nodon missiles from North Western part of North Korea into the Sea of Japan which was new because in the past North Korea was launching these missiles from the east coast of North Korea but now they are launching them from a deeper inside its territory that means it'd be very difficult for Japan to take on these missiles before they launched so I would say the pattern of their missile launching is becoming more realistic and operational and in this year North Korea started it froze the operation of 5 megawatt reactor nuclear reactor in North Western part of North Korea called Nyeonbyung in from to in 2007 but now it resumed the operation and I don't know what the country is trying to do with that they seems to before likely objectives that North Korea has in doing this and that in the recent years one is certainly to consolidate Kim Jong-un's domestic position it seems to be quite successful in the sense that he is still there and that he's keep promoting and demoting some of his close a's at will and two is certainly to enhance its strategic military capabilities such as longer range missiles, ballistic missiles and nuclear forces and it's been quite successful and the third one was to take a revenge for earlier South Korean actions which namely the 1999 you know victory one-sided victory of South Korea over North Korea in the Battle of Nyeonbyung and yeah so and the fourth North objective would be to normalize relations with the US and Japan because Japan and North Korea are still engaged in dialogue and you know Japanese Japanese government is telling North Korea to address the issue of abduction abductees but North Korea is not really forthcoming unfortunately and North Korea is telling the Americans to come back to the table to discuss normalization or improvement of relations but the US government is not forthcoming so it's not going anywhere but North Korea is still trying but North Korea's actions during this period have been quite you know not necessarily focused on diplomatic you know diplomacy certainly North Korea seems to be trying to improve its relationship with Japan and the US possibly their focus still seems to be on largely on domestic issues and so the characteristics of North Korean actions is that it's kind of interesting that they've been testing different assets such as you know longer-range ballistic missiles nuclear weapons you know submarine launched by sick missiles and new multiple long you know much multiple rocket launchers and things like that so it's quite diverse and interesting and North Korea seems to be really serious in developing its nuclear missile capabilities and it was quite impressive to me when North Korea decided to launch a longer-range biasing missile just before April the 15th of 2012 which was the 100th anniversary of Kim Il-sung which is who is the founder of North Korea his birthday so he was you know North Korea is gearing up to celebrate this 100th anniversary so the failure was not an option right politically but still North Korea decided to go ahead and launch this missile which it was testing kind of for the first time so it failed as a result but I was quite impressed how determined North Korean leaders were to develop longer-range biasing missiles and so my you know kind of in question that I have right now is whether and when North Korea might be coming back to a more traditional diplomacy that we are seeing during Kim Jong-un's Kim Jong-il's era we don't know you know I they are kind of science they talk about you know peace agreement they talk of you know they have resumed operation of five mega reactors but you know partly because the US is not reacting very positively North Korean attempt is seems to be going nowhere finally let me talk a little bit about the future prospects me speak skip some things a North Korea is playing the same game but now interesting change is taking place which is North Korea's relationship with China seems to be kind of undergoing some changes and also you know under a new leader it's kind of trying to come up with a new way of handling things both domestically and internationally so we have to you know we are kind of keeping our eyes on what North Korea is up to but in terms of the policy options that we have I think we have two policy options neither of them is attractive but we have to pick one and the one is I would say neglect policy benign neglect policy or what you know the US government calls it calls it a strategic patience strategy and there is a upside and downside positive size is that this policy option is cheap because we are doing nothing basically ignoring North Korea so it's not expensive and also may best encourage North Korea's open door reformist policy because I mean you know left to its own devices they have to find their own way to change the situation and improve the situation so they cannot rely on outside assistance you know they a lot of assistance was coming from South Korea under Kim Dae-joon administration and the normal human administration administration it's not coming any more downside of this approach is that North Korea will continue to develop nuclear and missile capabilities and actually may allow this kind of strategy man allow North Korea to go under the Chinese expanding Chinese fear of inference another choice is engagement policy and down upside of its is that it might be able to freeze or delay the North Korea's nuclear and missile development and although early dismantlement of these programs is not necessary realistic and that this kind of policy will be able to maintain inference because we are to engage with North Korea over and interactions with the North Korean leadership which can be useful in case North Korea collapsed or something bad happened in North Korea downside of this policy is that it's going to be quite costly because they are not going to do good things free of charge we have to do something you know pay something and involves therefore involves moral hazard and hard that kind of policy will be hard to obtain popular support in the United States South Korea or in Japan that's it thank you very much I think so because when it happened we asked the North Korean government to confirm well you know it's asked about this North Koreans denied it that there was no such a person but then in 2002 when President Prime Minister Koizumi visited Pyongyang they acknowledged that there was a you know that person who taught Japanese to Kim Hyun-hee who was a just this South North Korean operative was there has been kidnapped although she was dead but by then but we don't know whether she was really dead or not so we are still asking the abduction issue is is an interesting one North Korea has admitted to it so it's not like they are still denying that they have done it and so I'm wondering what your assessment is of why the North Koreans continue to be reluctant to have a full accounting of that to improve its relationship with Japan perhaps presumably to receive some economic aid and finally settling it or in fact do the North Koreans really have no interest in settling this and that they have more to gain by maintaining a hostile relationship domestically with Japan and try to work this issue I'm curious what your thoughts are on North Korea's motivation about the abduction issue in regards to settling it I think I mean at least in 2002 North Korean government was very very interested in normalizing relations with Japan because before Mr. Koizumi's visit you know people are saying even specialists were saying no no no way I mean North Korea would not acknowledge the abduction of Japanese citizens but it did the Kim Jong-il himself said I'm sorry right why because you are was interested in this money you know big economic park assistance package coming from Japan so that's why he acknowledged it and they even returned five of abductees 15 then 15 abductees officially designated as a you know by the Japanese government as a North Korea abductees but then North Korea said well others were dead for you know according to them for various but kind of strange reasons traffic accident gas accident you know draw drawing in the sea so it's like not really that doesn't something things that that don't happen very often in your life you know so it's like really and so why because well maybe some of them are dead but some others might be alive but there must be some reasons why North Korea cannot produce them and my guess is this is my personal guess I might be wrong but North Korea might have used some of them as a part of their espionage activities therefore some of them if that's the case could have been exposed to very sensitive espionage activities which North Korea would never allow to be revealed to the outside world then that might be making it difficult for them to return them and so I don't know that's my guess but we'll see changing well I think China is that trying to strike a good balance between preventing North Korea from taking further provocative destabilizing actions such as developing nuclear and missile issue missile capabilities and taking hostile provocative military actions against South Korea or the United States and maintaining the stability on the Korean Peninsula in you know that means that stable North Korean government right and the most stable North Korean society so it seems that while putting pressure on North Korea by kind of treating the new leadership in a you know kind of off-handed manner and pretty you know unfriendly manner no China seems to be continue to provide necessary assistance to the country by you know means of pipelines you know providing oil and other things energy food so it is trying to maintain a good balance and now that the US Sino-US relationship has become a little bit more tense than before it there are signals or signs that China might be trying to enhance its relationship with North Korea in order to put further flesh pressure on the US South Korea and Japan so we'll see you mentioned that the two policy options with respect to North Korea, how do you see if the US chooses an engagement policy, how China would respond to that? Well China is not necessarily opposed to US and South Korea or even Japanese engagement with North Korea why because China would like to see stable North Korea right and if other countries are willing to a contribute to the effort to maintain stability on the Korean Peninsula China China would welcome it so it's not necessary a bad thing and but from our perspective it can be a bad thing that North Korea really falls into under the influence of China too much and I would one example I would raise here in this context is the fact that in 2009 I think Chinese vessels naval vessels visited made a port call to the to Wonsang after I would say 20 years or so so it was and also North Korea China has come up with a contract with the North Korean government to use so that Chinese commercial companies and you know can use the North Korean port in Najin which is in North Eastern part of North Korea for a long time so if this continued my worries that you know North Korea might end up allowing China to use a part of its country for military purposes namely some of the ports in facing the Sea of Japan I don't know but I don't I don't think it's a good idea for us to kind of make it create a permissive environment in which it might happen so I would like to take you know if I'm in charge I would like to take kind of preventive measures so that this I don't know whether it's how likely this is but this will never happen because if China you start using North Korean ports in in the Sea of Japan that would really complicate our military you know situation you know for defense defense requirements I would say realistically denuclearization is not a realistic policy goal and so it's kind of to me it's unfortunate that while we keep talking about denuclearization and we kind of stick to this policy goal North Korea just keep developing its you know nuclear and missile capabilities so it's like is it working so I would like to see the government of in Washington's Seoul Japan to become a little bit more realistic and start pursuing achievable goals that would you know is more likely to produce better results that's my that's my you know thought any other question please when you look back at the events of the 60s 70s and 80s North Korea did some fairly nasty things to South Korea and the United States and yet there was not much of a response militarily that you might have expected some sort of strikes from South Korea and the United States of course the reason because folks concerned about starting a larger war I wonder if you could talk a little bit to what you think the North Korean assessment of those facts were you know conducting those operations were not risk-free by the North Koreans and they certainly had it because be taking risks to conduct some of those were they to what degree did they believe that they would not get a response based on history and did that figure into their calculations to be perhaps a bit more gutsy in what they did because they felt fairly confident they wouldn't get a response or did they not necessarily think in those terms in regards to their their risk calculations well several things one the you South Koreans did not necessarily not respond actually toward the end of the 1960s South Korean South Koreans were sending secretly they didn't tell the American friends special operation forces into North Korea and undertaking some disruptive activities such as they send was sending you know special operation forces to basically blow up North Korean Army division headquarters with with impunity and without any taking casualties and so now they are kind of retired officers coming out and in South Korea telling what they were doing and they were basically bragging about this but so that was what they did but I mean for after a while the US side Americans find out that what the South Koreans were doing and get pretty concerned because that might as you said might escalate this you know that this kind of activities might ending wars major wars so Americans were saying no no no no don't use a take a punitive response rather we have to take a defensive response which was about basically strengthening the defense of DMZ and so they with the fences better fences were constructed three-layer defensive systems were constructed you know quick response forces deployed and all that and that was pretty I would say stabilizing and successful mutual response and so North Korean and also North Koreans are basically thinking North Korea really embarked on the major military build-up effort in 1962 after the Cuban missile just after the Cuban missile crisis because they realized that these you know communist big brothers might not be too reliable so after you know eight about seven eight years North Korean military was very strong so they were confident that even if they was another war they can at least defend themselves and maybe win the war so military balance was there and also you know North Korean leaders clearly knew what was going on in Vietnam you know there was no you know willingness in the US or in South Korea to you know start another war on the Korean Peninsula so North Koreans were based you know backed up by this military force and by international environment was very confident that whatever they do the US would not take a really strong response yeah sure yeah well I mean another major activities that they were in the North Korea was engaging was to providing assistance to national people's army in the Philippines and it was going on for quite some time although they stopped it and now I could say that you know partly because terrorist attempt failed disastrously they learned lessons right and it was Kim Jong-il who did the job you know both of Rangoon bombing and bombing of Korean airliner and she learned lessons and paid he paid the price he started to play a pretty sophisticated the bring-bun diplomacy from the 1990s but you have to understand how he learned and had learned lessons in the previous decade so that's one and also I would say this policy changing policy objective was very important because now in order to enhance relationship with the United States I mean getting off the list of terrorists are sponsoring state was you know the most in you know requirement right for them and it actually the Bush administration Joe's W Bush administration toward the end of its term in 2007 8 decided to de-list North Korea as a terrorism sponsoring country and so it was success you know North Koreans succeeded in convincing by not engaging international terrorist activities that the so convinced the US to the US state so it was in that sense successful so now the you know very basic step toward improved US DPRK relations relations has been taken it has been paved it's in girls let me ask one last question and we'll go off script just a little bit since we have the opportunity here to have a top flight Japanese security policy expert here as well to ask you if you would just take a few minutes to comment on the recent changes in Japanese security policy some of the things that Prime Minister Abe has done would be interested in your thoughts as perhaps a closing okay let me then talk a little bit about what it means to the security on the Korean Peninsula before the change let me talk about several things that self-defense Japan self-defense force can do now which it couldn't before the change one is that now self-defense force can protect US vessels US military asset you know operating for the defense of South Korea even before Japan gets attacked right because now Japan can excite the right of collective self-defense so it's a good news that we can start operating together from the early stages of crisis conflict second the self-defense force could not shoot down missiles that North Korea launched you know target to against Hawaii or Guam if they launch missiles toward Hawaii that will fly over northern part of Japan like like here and but and also if they launch missiles toward Guam they will be flying like this but before this change the SDF we have a pretty good biostream missile defense capabilities but we was not able to shoot down you know not technically necessary but legally I could not shoot shoot down these missiles but we it can now but there is another separate technical issue because now that the SDF has two different by BMD systems one is SM3 block 1A which is a sea-based extra atmospheric upper tier system and the other is a land-based Patriot PAK 3 it's a endo-atomospheric lower tier missile system but these missiles are not capable enough to take on kind of intermediate range missiles to be used against Hawaii or Guam so even if we are now take illegally take on North Korea missiles flying toward Hawaii or Guam we might not be able to do the job but if we are now talking about the rope I mean introducing advanced sea-based biostream BMD system called SM3 block 2A which has a better velocity you know accuracy speed and then if these systems this system is deployed then we will be able to take on some of the missiles flying toward Hawaii and Guam so then it will start it matters starts to matter what we can do legally and third finally the self-defense force now would now be able to conduct mind-sweeping operations not only you know in the vicinity of Japan but also in the waters very close to North Korea and probably including North Korean territory waters but this is kind of and that this is very important because in the final phases of the war US Marine Corps will be you know conducting a landing amphibious landing operations right and you know clear mind clearing clear clearing minds would be you know a necessity in order to for the success for amphibious operation so Japan will be taking up a very important role in this but this has been causing some frictions between Japan and South Korea because according to the South Korean Constitution North Korea you know South Korea has a sovereignty over the North Korean territory right which is just fictitious but they say it it says it so South Korea is saying you know you Japan must obtain and those approval by the South Korean government before it starts operating inside North Korean territories but we disagree because we don't recognize sovereignty South Korea's sovereignty over the North Korean territory so there is a kind of discrepancy in views and we have to kind of I think basically we have to play kabuki when it comes to the time when we have to do the job without while maintaining close coordination and cooperation friendship partnership with South Korea okay thank you