 Hello everyone. Thank you very much for joining us for this event on Peace Building on the Korean Peninsula, US and European perspectives. An event jointly organized by the US Institute of Peace and the Brussels School of Governance, its Center for Security, Diplomation and Strategy, plus the Korea Chair that belongs to the center. My name is Ramón Pacheco Pardo. I hold the KFUB Korea Chair and I will be your host today. Before we begin, just to let you know that we're going to be collecting questions for the second half of the session today. So feel free to add them in the chat function and the speakers will be answering them. For the first half, we're going to have a discussion among the speakers. I will start by introducing our four panelists today, and then we'll move straight to the discussion. So, firstly, we have Frank Ohm, who is a senior expert on North Korea at the USTIP. He used to work for government. So from 2010 to 2017, he worked at the Department of Defense, including as a special counsel to the Army General Counsel, a special assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security first, and also senior advisor on North Korea in the office of the Secretary of Defense. Previously, he used to work in the private sector as a corporate attorney, and he was a full right scholar in Jeju Island of all places and not a bad place actually to spend a year or two. And then we have with us in the panel as well, and my colleague, Dr. Tom Fikim, who is a senior researcher at the KFUB Korea Chair. He's also an assistant professor of international affairs at the Brussels School of Governance, and he has a PhD in political science from Ohio State University. He has taught in the US, in Australia, and also in Germany before moving to Belgium. And he's a specialist on alliances, including with his book, The Supply Side of Security, a Market Theory of Military Alliances. And we also have another of my colleagues, Ms. Linda Desmele, who is a PhD researcher at the KFUB Korea Chair, also the Brussels School of Governance. She has a master's in European studies from Loyven University and from Seoul National University. And our Belgian viewers might remember her. She was a commentator during the recent US election, spending all night explaining to Belgian viewers the victory from President Joe Biden. And last but certainly not least, we have Ambassador Joseph June, who is a senior advisor to the Asia program of the US Institute of Peace, USIP. He is a former US Special Representative for North Korea policy. And during his time, 33 year diplomatic service, during his time with the US Department of State, he also served as US Ambassador to Malaysia and also Deputy Assistant Secretary for Station and Pacific Affairs between 2011 and 2013. And further ado, I'll go ahead with the first question, which is actually for you, Ambassador June. You had this role as former Special Representative for North Korea policy and also long career as a diplomat. So you had had a front row. Korea during this time. In your view, have there been any common threats across different administrations regarding the role that the US could play in supporting peace building in the Korean Peninsula? Well, thank you very much. I'm very delighted to be here. It's a very rare occasion that we have exchanged with our European counterparts. So I'm very happy to be here. And thank you for including me. You know, this is a North Korean issue has been festering for such long, long time. And as you noted, I've dealt with it for a while, much too long for me to really think about it. But there are really three items I wanted to point out where I do think Americans in general have been misguided. The first is the assessment. We have always had not quite the realistic assessment of North Korea. Let me give you a couple of examples. You know, one was happened in mid 90s. I was also working on Korea issues at that time. And this was the death of Kim Il-sung. When Kim Il-sung died, you know, Americans really thought that his successor Kim Jong-il would not survive. And that misapprehension lasted for a long time, despite real hardship North Korea went through in the second half of 90s. And I would say we made a similar mistake when Kim Jong-un came to power. This was what, early 2011. You know, we regarded him. We didn't know about him. You know, he was 26-year-old, you know, a little bit pudgy and with not a very good haircut. And so it was almost a caricature. And we make those mistakes, caricatures of what North Korea, that's the first one. Second one is the real politicization of North Korea diplomacy in Washington, as well as, you know, the second most important country, which is South Korea. In Washington, we've been having fights between hawks and engages, between realists and between ideologues. And, you know, examples of those that policy has suffered, you know, John Bolton is certainly one. And then the list goes on, you know, Paul Wolfowitz being the other and then politicians like John Kyle and so on. So that has made diplomacy very difficult. Politicization is even worse in South Korea where elections, electoral outcomes, who is in power, completely depends on how you view North Korea. And you see that division, you know, U.S. and South Korea must work together on this issue. And yet you see the serious degradation of our engagement efforts because of politicization in South Korea as well as politicization in the U.S. And we've suffered from that. And the last one, and there are many I would point to is for the negotiators. When I talk to North Koreans, there is such what I call a symmetry between, you know, the overwhelming interests of North Koreans and for U.S. negotiators who, you know, North Korea is important, but it's not a matter of life and death struggle. So for North Koreans, they are desperate. They must do completely what is wanted by their bosses. There is zero element of open discussion. And that has really hampered our view of North Korea and what we can do. So we get stuck on what I call lowest possible equilibrium and very hard to move away from that. So I'm hoping that as we learn these lessons and especially we learn the lesson, I believe, from the Biden administration that we can take some of these and really move on where our policy and our assessment become more realistic. So why don't I stop there and then hear what others have to say. Thank you very much. Thanks to you and Jordan mentioned the Biden administration. Of course, we have the policy review coming out in the coming days. So we'll be discussing this later in the panel today. I want to move on to Mr. Rahm who spent, as I said, seven years at the Department of Defense working on issues related to the Korean Peninsula. Can you tell us how would you characterize the views of the US military regarding its role in any potential peace building process in the Korean Peninsula? Thanks for my friend. It's great to be working with you and the Brussels School of Governments. I wish we were there in person in Brussels rather than where I'm at right now, sort of a raining day in Virginia. But you know, let me first I have a few follow up points to Ambassador first and then I'll get to the question about the military role. I agree 100% with everything that Joe said. One thing I would add is that so one of the problems is that the US for a very long time basically had no interest in peace building on the Korean Peninsula. And instead, its primary focus was on using deterrence and defense to maintain peace and prevent North Korean aggression. But I think maintaining peace and basically the absence of violence isn't the same thing as peace building, right? A second issue was that the US also felt that it was basically up to the two Koreas to reach a peace. Now, of course, I think that's true that two Koreas do need to work together to establish peaceful coexistence. But I think this ignores the fact that North Korea has always viewed the US as the bigger threat and the main source of its problems whether it's, you know, US military capabilities or the US role in global sanctions. When the US finally did start engaging with North Korea at senior levels, this was in the early 1990s, it was to seek North Korea's denuclearization first, and then only after that it would address serious peace building. So ultimately, I think the US has overall had a very passive and somewhat ambivalent approach to peace building on the Korean Peninsula that focus more on deterrence over peace building and its own interests rather than, you know, thinking about mutual interests. Now getting to the question about the military role. So the US military's primary goal has been to ensure that it's prepared and that it's ready to deter and if necessary defend against any North Korean aggression. And this all stems from the military's main objective of keeping the US and its people safe, as well as our commitment to the US South Korea Mutual Defense Treaty to protect the Korean people. So I think this perspective can be summarized as peace through deterrence. So our force presence on the Korean Peninsula, all our significant military capabilities that we bring to bear from both off and on the peninsula, our commitment to mutual defense, combined with South Korea's military capabilities, their significant size, and our ability to train and prepare for various contingency, all of this deters North Korean aggression. And then it's this environment of stability and relatively low tensions that creates the opportunity in which our societies and our economies can flourish and prosper. As the last 60 years I've shown. Also, deterrence creates the type of environment in which negotiations can take place and diplomacy can hopefully succeed as well. But I think there becomes a point where the military's presence and activities can raise tensions and impede trust and peace building. So going to what you know people in the political science refer to as the security dilemma, right, which is that, you know, one states starts taking actions to improve its own security. But then these actions are viewed as threatening by another, causing that state to improve its own security, which leads to a vicious cycle. So in the Korea context, you know, we had North Korea attack the South Korea that led to the Korean War, and then US South Korea the UN responds with a force build up North Korea in turn develops nuclear weapons and missiles. Then the US South Korea Alliance introduces missile defense systems, North Korea builds bigger nuclear weapons that can reach the continental United States and then so on and so forth right. And the question is, how do we break this cycle how do we start a process of trust and confidence building so that we turn this vicious cycle into a virtuous cycle of tension reduction. I think one potential model would be for, you know, one country to begin the process by taking unilateral conciliatory measures up front, and then ask the other side to reciprocate. We've seen successful examples of this type of approach, even on the Korean Peninsula, I would point to the comprehensive peace plan that was proposed by South Korean President Moon starting in 2017, which led to the process of inter Korean and US DPR engagement in 2018. I would also note that this period of engagement included military confidence building measures, such as the suspension of US South Korea joint military exercises in August 2018, as well as the inter Korean comprehensive military agreement that was agreed to in September 2018 Thank you very much and then we will have time probably later on to discuss this cooperation obviously with with with with South Korean is it that South Korea may have as well, but now I want to move to Europe and I'm going to move to my colleague Dr King. What about the European Union. What has been Europe's approach towards North Korea in recent years, and also especially in terms of supporting peace building in the Korean Peninsula. I'm going to be very simplistic and probably offensive or rude to some people, but I believe that from the perspective of the European Union, the road to Pyongyang from Brussels should go through Washington DC. This is only natural because European states are geographically far from the Korean Peninsula, and they have relatively little economic and military interests at stake. European states have a very close tie with the United States, and frankly that transatlantic relationship is so much more important than their relationship with the two Koreas. Obviously, this doesn't mean that the European Union's approach to North Korea will be identical with that of the United States, because the United States has a very different capability and also a different role as a geopolitical actor in East Asia. But it still does mean that the European Union will not spend their precious political capital to influence US policy toward the Korean Peninsula. So what does it mean in terms of the actual EU policy toward North Korea? After the Clinton administration signed the agreed framework with North Korea in 1994, the EU policy was characterized by positive engagement with Pyongyang. Clinton asked the EU to join the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, KEDO, and the EU joined it as an executive board member in 1997. And the member states of the European Union actually at that point had already begun financial contribution to KEDO even before the European Union joined the organization KEDO. And the European Union also financially contributed to the heavy fuel oil supplies to North Korea, about 20% of the cost. UDPLK, EU-North Korea political dialogue began in 1998, and many Western European states which didn't have a diplomatic relation with North Korea in the past began to have such diplomatic ties around 2000 and 2001. And in 2001, the Swedish Prime Minister at the time visited Pyongyang in his capacity as the president of the Council of the European Union at the time, and the European Union established a diplomatic tie with North Korea. So, and during this positive engagement phase, EU member states provided financial and technological assistance to North Korea, and European humanitarian organizations also began a lot of projects on the ground in North Korea. But with George W. Bush coming to the White House in 2001, the US policy toward North Korea shifted to a more hawkish direction, and the EU policy toward North Korea also began to shift. After North Korea announced its uranium-based nuclear weapons program in 2002, many states stopped their aid to North Korea. And from around 2003, the EU's policy reduced its positive engagement element, and the EU also aligned its policy with the headline policy of the United States. And now this approach is known as critical engagement. The United States hasn't gone back to the Clinton era engagement with North Korea after that, so it's not surprising that the European Union continues to have this more critical approach toward North Korea. And we should also keep in mind that North Korea's nuclear weapons program has advanced a lot. So the EU has more reason of its own to worry about the nuclear proliferation. And President Trump's shift to a less confrontational policy toward Kim Jong-un didn't require the softening of the EU stance toward North Korea. So that's another reason why the EU stance still remains to be more critical toward North Korea. I guess I will stop here. Thank you. And it's interesting because you mentioned the US factor in EU policy. And I think the next question, Mr. Smelly, I think I want to ask you about this, actually. How do you think that the EU can play a supporting role? What role can we play in actually supporting the US policy towards North Korea? Yes, thank you. So good morning or good afternoon, everybody. I think first to start, I really want to copy everything that was said by Dr. Kim. I think that really provided some very much needed background for the discussion if we kind of shift the discussion to today. And as was already mentioned, so the EU for several years follow the policy of critical engagement towards North Korea. And so in then answering the question, I do want to start by emphasizing that the critical engagement policy has three goals. And I will go back to why that's important in just a minute. So first, the EU wants to uphold the international non-qualification regime. Secondly, it wants to improve the human rights situation in North Korea. So the living conditions of ordinary North Koreans, if you will. And then it wants to thirdly support a lasting diminution of tensions on the Korean Peninsula, which really links back to the theme of today more the peace building theme, I guess. And so it's my impression that for many years the nuclear issue has really overshadowed any discussions on human rights or reducing tensions. This was the case in the United States, and it kind of trickled down also to European debates. And of course, at this nuclear issue is important. It's very important. Policymakers have very good reasons to be worried about this. But I do think that somewhat of an unfortunate consequence of this preoccupation really with the nuclear issue is that sometimes in the European debate, it seems that North Korea, it's just all about nukes. And while this non-proliferation aspect is one of three goals of the EU, it's a very important one, but it's one of three. And so I think that going forward, if we don't think about the EU's agenda on the Korean Peninsula and the prospect of transatlantic cooperation, perhaps it's easy to think of a glass half empty. We of course have to be careful in speculating too much about the Biden administration, but it does seem unlikely to put it, Frank, that the Biden administration will all of a sudden manage to achieve what so many have tried and have not succeeded in, which is to achieve the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But I do think that despite this step in contrast to the Trump administration, the Biden administration does really have, there's two important differences there that I do think might open up a window of opportunity for the United States and the EU to work together. Obviously in consultation with South Korea, when it comes to those other two goals, so human rights and then peace building. Because first, when it comes to the human rights issue, in contrast to the Trump administration, human rights and broader even democracy, it's really one of the main themes that the Biden administration is trying to profile itself on. And if it really wants to put its money where its mouth is, so to speak, it will also have to address that question in a North Korean context. Vice President Kamala Harris has also already mentioned that she would actually consider targeted sanctions relief if that could improve the lives of ordinary North Koreans in exchange for some serious steps to roll back the nuclear program. But I do think obviously very difficult exercise, but I do think it is telling that Harris really speaks here about the lives of ordinary North Koreans. She doesn't speak about economic development or something in an abstract sense, but I do think her language kind of reveals some of her sensitivities and her priorities in this regard. And this is the case also for the U.S. Department of State, more broadly, who have recently set out statements really showing their concern with North Korea's network of political prisons, labor camps, use of forced labor and so on. And so, of course, making any sort of sanctions relief a very targeted exercise. So really targeting those sectors that could improve the lives of ordinary North Koreans will be technically, politically all very important. But I do think that we are now in a political climate where we can at least have this discussion. And actually, even without sanctions removal, there is already some room of maneuver for the EU to focus. It's to really advance this human rights agenda, if you will, because the EU could, for example, increase its humanitarian assistance to North Korea. Therefore, there's no sanctions removal needed. And if then partial sanctions relief would somehow be put on the table, I do think that an obvious starting point there has to be anything that has to do with food production and so on. And I think that Europeans can play a supporting role there, so not only governments, but also NGOs on the ground that can help gathering information about the situation in North Korea and really distribute humanitarian assistance and get a good view of the needs. So with Biden in Washington, I do think that there is some room of maneuver there that perhaps wasn't there under a Trump administration. Of course, the other side of the equation, once you start talking about sanctions, the steps to roll back the North Korean nuclear program. There's, of course, as we all know, a profound lack of trust between the US and North Korea, but perhaps, and this has been mentioned before, Europeans could play a role here in any sort of a verification role. Countries like France, which is a nuclear power, also have the necessary expertise to do so. So I do think the bottom line is that the political climate has changed and that there seems to be an opening to put human rights back on the table with or without sanctions relief. And then secondly, I also think there's a shift with the Biden administration in really emphasizing multilateral diplomacy, working with allies in its foreign policy. And there I do once again think there might be some increased room to work on some bottom-up confidence-building measures in the Korean context. And once again, I think Europeans could play a role. They could organize host meetings as they have done in the past, but perhaps in a more structured, long-term, organized manner. And they can also start talking, I think, to the North Koreans as the EU, as an actor, which is not the case at the moment. And I think any additional line of communication can then also perhaps be used to back-channel between Pyongyang and Washington at times when there are certain political reasons not to do this out in the open. And bringing the Europeans into the equation might also be appealing to North Korea. North Koreans are interested in European cash, but perhaps a bit less cynical, multilateralizing the process might also add credibility to it. Because as was mentioned by Ambassador Yoon, the North Korea issue is very often politicized in different contexts, in different political and different domestic contexts. And by multilateralizing, you might input some more stability there. So here as well, I do think that the political climate seems to be right for the EU to start maneuvering a bit more without being afraid of immediate backlash and immediate retaliation on the part of the United States. And perhaps to just wrap up, I also think it's important to emphasize that the United States is obviously a very powerful actor. President Biden is also in a difficult political situation when it comes to North Korea, because on the one hand he wants to underline differences with his predecessor by emphasizing human rights by working with allies. But he also has an interest in making sure that he doesn't revert into an Obama-era strategic patience approach. So, which builds on the assumption that basically very harsh sanctions will just pressure the North Koreans to come to the table eventually, which obviously didn't work in the past. So I think that either the Biden administration can resort to the classic US playbook and confine the debates to a conversation about sanctions and nukes to put it bluntly, and try to broaden it debates and prove in a sense that it really cares about human rights and peace on the Korean Peninsula by looking at those issues partly but not solely as a function of any nuclear talks and progress. But if the US really opens up somewhat some space for that, that the EU should really support that and even encourage that and can also show that it is a player in East Asia which EU has been desperate to show for such a long time. But now it's perhaps it has the opportunity to do so. And I think I will stop there. Thank you. Thank you very much. It has been interesting to hear more about how they could cooperate with with the US in a Korean Peninsula context. I remember to our audience that you can add your questions to the chat function and we'll be having a round of questions from the from the audience in a bit. But first we're going to discuss the US ROK relationship and alliance in the context of Korean Peninsula peace building. I think I want to begin with you. What role do you think that this alliance can play in in peace building in the Korean Peninsula alliance between the ROK and the United States. And as Mr. Om Adir mentioned, historically the US South Korea Alliance has played an important role in deterring North Korea from aggression. And South Korea's conventional military capabilities are now much superior to those of North Korea. But this deterrence element of the alliance still shouldn't be dismissed because North Korea possesses nuclear weapons and South Korea doesn't. So this narrative is very popular and also has merits. But when we look back at the origin of the US South Korea Alliance and more recent history, I say especially after the first North Korean nuclear crisis of 1993 to 1994, we also see another important role of the alliance in the Korean Peninsula peace building. First of all, the 1953 mutual defense treaty between the United States and South Korea was signed initially more for the purpose of restraining South Korea than for the purpose of deterring North Korea. The South Korean president at the time, Lee Sun-man, was sabotaging the negotiations for the armistice and Dwight Eisenhower accepted these demand for a mutual defense treaty in exchange for his cooperation to stop the Korean war. Alliances are typically understood as tools for fighting war or intimidate other states, but academic research on alliances has actually shown that military alliances also play an important role in restraining the members of alliances from taking risky or offensive actions. Starting with the 1993-1994 nuclear crisis, South Korea has had to worry about the possibility of a second Korean war initiated not by North Korea but by the United States for the purpose of nuclear nonproliferation. Before then, the alliance dynamic had been mostly about South Korea worrying about being abandoned by the United States and the United States worrying about being entangled in a war to protect South Korea. But in a situation where the United States is no longer necessarily committed to the status quo of the Korean Peninsula and wants to reverse the nuclear weapons development of North Korea, South Korea has to worry about the risk of war initiated by the United States. When we think about South Korean government's policy toward the U.S. ROK alliance, especially those of progressive residents like Noh Mu-hyun and Moon Jae-in, they try to please the United States not just to avoid abandonment by the United States. They also make concessions to the United States so that they have voice in U.S. policy toward North Korea and avoid South Korea's entanglement in a U.S. war against North Korea. By the way, even in recent years, it has not been just South Korea restraining the United States from taking a risky action. For example, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote in his memoir that South Korean President Lee Min-bak initially wanted to retaliate against North Korea's shelling of Yongpyeong Island in 2010 in a disproportionately aggressive manner. But the U.S. side restrained the president and the crisis was resolved in a much less violent way. So the restraining works both ways. And in that sense, I would say that the U.S. ROK alliance can continue to serve as an institutional mechanism where the United States and South Korea can restrain each other from taking a risky or offensive action. The U.S. South Korea alliance plays an important role in relation to other countries like China and Japan, but I think that discussion will be just too complicated and take too much time. So I just stop here for the moment. Thank you. Thanks to you because it's a very complex topic, as you say, and you've been able to summarize it in a few minutes. I want to carry on with this talk about the U.S. ROK cooperation and I want to move to Ambassador June and the current U.S. administration, because of course Ambassador June used to serve under Vice President Biden when he was Vice President of President Obama. And you will know quite a few of the people who have just recently joined his administration to deal with East Asia with the Korean Peninsula. And also with the new Biden administration promising, as we have said, to work with allies, the recent visit by Secretary of State Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin to Korea and of course to Japan as well. How do you think Washington should coordinate with Seoul in in relation? Well, thank you very much. Policy of the Moon government with that clear engagement. Thank you very much. I very much enjoyed and I thought the comments of all the panelists were very, very relevant. You know, there is an old Korean saying, to put your shirt on right, you got to get the first button right, you know, so that the shirt looks great. And so start is very, very important for the Biden administration. And I think they've made a good start. They have, they have tried to engage with North Korea. It's now become clear that they have sent a back channel message number of times to North Koreans. But as of yet, North Korea has not engaged them. And they have made this very important trip to South Korea and Japan. They've met the Chinese in Alaska. And I think the next step should be that Americans should tell North Koreans that they acknowledge the Singapore joint statement that was made in 2018 between Trump and Kim Jong-un. I mean, there is nothing bad about Singapore joint statement. I mean, it mentions completely nuclearization. It mentions peace process. It mentions building relations. There are some objections that the order of this is wrong. But I think, you know, you and I can argue about whether the 10 Commandments have the order right. No, so, so really, I think, I think that if the Americans were to do that, I am almost certain they will get a positive response from North Koreans. Realistically, there is no hope North Koreans going to denuclearize. I completely agree with Linda that you need to prioritize non-proliferation, human rights, peace building. But I also think you need to prioritize absence of war. I think that's very important, you know, to have a situation in which there is stable relations where you is predictable that there is not going to be a war in the near future. To do that, you need a process. So I would hope the third step of Biden administration would be to propose whether it's multilateral format, bilateral format to propose a process that will get us to stabilization. I think, you know, over the next few years, that's the most we can hope for. Thank you. Thanks to you. And I want to ask one last question below what you said to Mr. Aum and then we already have questions from the audience coming in so we can move to them. But Mr. Aum, more broadly speaking, in this process where we have to discuss peace building, denuclearization, human rights, how do you think they relate to each other? How much should the Biden administration prioritize peace building in the Korean Peninsula? Especially visa business, these two other goals, denuclearization and the human rights situation of ordinary North Koreans? Well, that's a great question. I think right now, and I mentioned this earlier, I think that peace building plays a secondary role in Washington's approach, meaning that the U.S. is very passive and not as reactive about peace building. So for the U.S., peace is used as something that comes about as a result of denuclearization rather than being a driver of denuclearization. The U.S. view is so focused on what we want in terms of denuclearization and human rights improvements that we mostly ignore or discount what North Korea has been demanding about its own concerns and security. And we've seen this throughout our policy tours North Korea where we always demand that North Korea take denuclearization steps first before we have any discussions about peace or normalization. And I think this is a problematic approach because it requires North Korea to assume greater risks and costs to its own security first before it starts to see any eventual benefits. And this simply is not a realistic path for North Korea to take. Really, it's the U.S. has the more powerful country that's in a better position to take greater risks for peace. So as I hinted at earlier, I think the U.S. approach needs to elevate peace building as part of the strategy so that it's equal to the goals of denuclearization and security. And I think these goals go hand in hand and are complementary. The Trump administration actually tried this approach somewhat. So President Trump signed the Singapore Declaration as Ambassador Yoon referred to and it listed new U.S. DPRK relations, a lasting stable peace regime as some of the main goals along with complete denuclearization. And the special representative for North Korea policy at the time, Steve Began, he also articulated this approach as well when he said that the U.S. would seek peace and denuclearization simultaneously and in parallel. The problem was that this approach wasn't implemented consistently by the Trump administration. You had Trump and Began on one hand being the good cops while on the other, Secretary Pompeo and John Bolton were the bad cops demanding that North Korea denuclearize completely or at least significantly before the U.S. would take any steps towards peace. And so I think this was a very incoherent approach and North Korea got frustrated. So I think instead of that sort of incoherent approach, what I would recommend is a bold peace offensive by the United States. And under this approach, we would preserve our strong deterrence posture, we would maintain denuclearization as a long term goal. But we would also signal a comprehensive effort to strengthen relations and build peace with North Korea. And this announcement should also include, and I agree with Ambassador Yoon, a reaffirmation of the Singapore Statement and some unilateral confidence building measures up front, such as partial sanctions relief, a unilateral moratorium on U.S. strategic asset deployments to the peninsula, an end to the travel ban to North Korea and perhaps even a willingness to declare an end to the Korean War. Also, I think, you know, recognizing that North Korea is not going to denuclearize in the short term or even the medium term, and that North Korea is de facto a nuclear power. We should be doing everything we can to maximize our engagement with North Korea. I'm not talking just about diplomatic engagement, but also military to military engagement, parliamentary engagement, academic and scientific exchanges and humanitarian and people to people ties. And the point of all this of maximizing engagement would be to build mutual understanding and trust. Again, we're talking about two nuclear weapon countries here to build their mutual understanding and trust and reduce any potential for miscalculation or miscommunication. And then one last point on where human rights fits in. So I think, you know, human rights has been tricky past administrations have tended to try to separate the human rights issue from security negotiations because they feel like human rights could complicate or even delay progress on the security side. But it's becoming more and more important that human rights becomes integrated into the security discussion, at least for a couple of reasons. One is, you know, the Biden administration has emphasized that it wants to speak to its values, the US believes in human rights and how human rights advances security for all. So from this moral perspective, we need to address our security, our human rights concerns with North Korea. But I think human rights is also important from a very instrumental political and legal perspective. So then there's a US legislation, the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Handsome Act of 2016, that specifically prohibits sanctions relief, unless North Korea makes progress on human rights. So that from a legal standpoint, we'll have to overcome that if we're going to try to provide sanctions relief. I'm talking about unilateral US sanctions. Also, from a political perspective, it's hard for US politicians to get behind any eventual deal with North Korea, unless there are some advancements on human rights. So I think we have to factor those in as well. The progress doesn't have to be all up front or, you know, very significant right off the bat, it can start with small steps. So for example, North Korea could start taking meetings with human rights officials like the UN special repertoire on North Korean human rights for the eventual US special envoy on human rights. I think that would be a good first step. Also, I think North Korea has been known to engage on some of the issues that were raised in the UN periodic review of North Korean human rights, like the rights of the disabled or the rights of children. So I think if you start with these low hanging fruit, that could be helpful. You know, later, if we want to achieve even bigger human rights advances, then I think we need to start thinking on the scale and scope of something like the health safety process. And of course, I have to raise that since we're talking about the European perspective. But I think if we do something like that, then we really need to think about significant sessions on the US side because as a much broader project where we'd be embarking on. Thanks for that. Thanks for raising the health safety process. I think you have made many Europeans happy on this side of the pond. I would add at one point actually that my experience in dealing with North Korea saying 1.5 to dialogues that they are willing to discuss human rights. As you were saying, sometimes it's the low hanging fruit. Obviously a very different understanding from what you will have in the US, we have in Europe, but they are willing to engage on this matter. I just wanted to add this a small point before we move to the questions from the audience. And I think I'm going to start with an EU question since US finished with the EU and the health safety process. There is this question coming in, a very poignant question actually. How can we restore engagement in the US North Korea policy when there are virtually no European diplomats in Pyongyang? Probably right now there is no European diplomat, step for Russians in Pyongyang. And also the DPRK government rejects even humanitarian aid. So how can we restore engagement at these conditions? Yes, thank you very much for this question, which indeed is a very pertinent one. Perhaps in answering this question, it makes sense to indeed take a step back and I would like to refer to what was been said by Mr. Ahm about what is the purpose of engagement in the end. And by what we try to achieve through engagement, as was said, we try to improve mutual understanding. We try to improve communication to prevent any misunderstandings that could lead to things spiraling out of control and so on and so forth. So I think if we define engagement in such a broad sense that you can do that on a state diplomatic level, but you could also do that perhaps politically easier on a non-diplomatic level. So I think here by really encouraging NGOs also to remain there and perhaps the EU is in general very proud of all its educational exchanges that it organizes and perhaps to really open up more opportunities for indeed exchanges between universities, think-thanks, NGOs and so on that can really at least also help because this risk of caricaturizing North Korea definitely also exists in Europe. So that could already be one step. And perhaps at a more state diplomatic level, I am personally a proponent of opening an EU embassy or representation in Pyongyang. Counterarguments that are often made against this is that on the one hand it would be somewhat of a prize for North Korea because it also wants this and it wants to be recognized on the international scene. But quite frankly, in the last couple of years we've seen summits between North Korea and the United States, North Korea and South Korea, China, Russia. I mean, I don't think it is realistic to still say that they are super isolated, so I don't think that this argument still holds, although I realize that this is a controversial statement to make. And then secondly, another current argument and which is related is that well, North Korea because of its human rights violations and so on and so forth, we shouldn't approve that and this is also an argument made by countries like France. For that reason we don't want to have a delegation there, but quite frankly the EU does have delegations in countries that don't do particularly well when it comes to human rights. I'm thinking about Saudi Arabia, I'm thinking about perhaps Sudan and there they have these delegations, so I do think there's kind of a different standard being applied to North Korea. So my proposal would really to increase communication through a delegation there because it is unclear to me to what extent communicating with your counterpart offers any sort of substantial concession. And as we have arrived in a situation where Kim Jong-un has been traveling around to Singapore, has been traveling around to Hanoi, and so on and so forth. But I don't know whether there would be much political support for this proposal quite frankly, but I'm going to put it out there anyways. Thanks a lot. I have another question about human rights with a twist and I want to ask Ambassador Jung about this. A member of the audience is asking whether there are any examples of previous times when prioritizing a focus on human rights abuses had led to positive outcomes and productive engagement with North Korea. So Ambassador Jung if you want to take this question. Thank you very much. One example I can think about is what Koizumi, the Japanese Prime Minister, and I think 2000 or there about 2001 negotiated with Kim Jong-un in North Korea to get accounting of Japanese who have been abducted. And so at that time there was good negotiations initially and a number of abductees actually came back to Japan and some remains came back. However, North Korea was never able to do a full accounting and the remains that they sent back were found to be not the remains of the Japanese citizens who have been abducted. So that issue became even more inflamed issue I would say afterwards. So that's an example. I mean I myself went to Pyongyang to get on a one beer, but then he died soon after coming to US. So initially feel good, but then it backfired on us as well. So human rights protecting citizens is a long story. I would say there has not been much success of trying to make life better for North Koreans who are imprisoned and so on. So that's a tall order. It's a tall order even to get your citizens genuinely accounted for. So it is a very difficult negotiation. Thank you. But thanks for finding these examples as well so we can learn from past experience. Mr. Ohm I want to focus now on the role of Congress because we have three questions actually asking about Congress I'm going to bundle them together if you can tackle them. One of them is what are the foundations of DPRK that Congress must keep in mind when crafting US policy on North Korea. Things that Congress might not have appreciated about the foundations of North Korea. A second related question is whether US Congress can reach bipartisan consensus on a long term policy towards the Korean Peninsula and similar to the commitment against foreign terrorism attacks on the US homeland. And the third question related to Congress as well is how can the US government handle congressional impatience on the North Korean issue. So if you can tackle essentially the role of Congress in dealing with North Korea. Yeah that's a lot of questions there I hope I can address even one of them. I think in general, I feel like you know Congress has the oversight role. And so to the extent that the executive branch can always maintain good communications about its North Korea policy. For example, you know what the status of the policy review is what the executive branch is thinking. That will help to have to enlist Congress as a supporter, rather than an obstacle in our overall North Korea approach. I think when Congress feels like it's left out or it's in the dark about what the executive branch is doing, then it tries to take matters into its own hands, including things like, you know, various legislation like Congress does they legislate right they try to constrain the executive branch, and instead of that we should try to ensure that Congress supports what the White House is doing right. I think in general there's been a strong focus on sanctions recently. And so we've seen that with various legislations over the last decade that enhances the government's power to enforce sanctions or even mandate sanctions on North Korea. That can be restricting right because if you're if the White House hands are tied and it doesn't have the flexibility to engage in this policy because of legislation, then that can be problematic in terms of reaching a deal. Not only that I think you know pressure has shown to be ineffective as a policy approach over the last, not just last 10 years but over the last 70 years right North Korea does not respond well to pressure. In fact, the we've seen that they have implemented lockdowns on its borders and that's had that's had more of an impact than than any international sanctions policy has against North Korea. So, I think we need to be more realistic about what has been effective in bringing North Korea to the table when we engage with North Korea. As we did in the 90s, we've achieved many successes, including shutting down young young for eight years and preventing North Korea from reprocessing his plutonium. According to some estimates that saved us from potentially seeing you know North Korea developing 100 nuclear weapons during that eight year period from 94 to 2002. Conversely, that period from 2012 to 2018, when we did not engage with North Korea, there's the longest period of non engagement with North Korea the last 30 years. There was also when we applied pressure against North Korea. That's when we saw the greatest advances in North Korea's nuclear weapons capabilities for nuclear tests of progressively greater yields over 90 ballistic missile tests including an air continent range. The empirical evidence is clear about what works with North Korea and what doesn't. Thanks for that and I mean it's interesting because we don't appreciate this from outside the US how important Congress is in US foreign policy decisions and including policy towards North Korea. So it's always something to to consider. We have a question about another crucial actor, South Korea, that I would want you Dr. Kim to answer. There's a question asking what would be the impact of the further development of South Korea's conventional deterrence capabilities on the peace building process in the Korean peninsula. I guess I haven't really thought about this to form a strong opinion about it but I think it depends on what kind of capabilities we are talking about. For example, if it is deterrence by punishment and if you, for example, want to increase the South Korean capability to really punish the North Korean regime. And I guess it's extreme form is to be able to execute the attack against the supreme leader. And when you have that kind of thing, it could actually destabilize the strategic situation on the Korean peninsula. But if it is, for example, deterrence capabilities that are more based on, for example, deterrence by denial. And if it is a capability to mitigate the damage North Korea can do, for example, to the Seoul metropolitan area in case of a military conflict. Then that kind of deterrence capabilities could further contribute to the stabilization of the strategic dynamics. So depending on the specific capability we are talking about, I think whether or not this would be harmful or conducive to peace would be different. Thank you. And I should tell our audience that we're going to go a little bit over time since we have a few more questions to tackle. The first of them I think, Mrs. Malay, I want to ask you about it. Will North Korea accept UN-based international observers or inspectors ever again? What are your views on this? Well, you always have to be very careful in speculating about what Kim Jong-un will basically decide. But I think that depends on what the DPRK thinks it can get in exchange, right? Allowing UN inspectors into North Korea or prohibiting them from entering, it's all part of this negotiation game or bargaining game, if you will, where North Korea tries to get as much leverage as possible. So I do think if instead of when we shift to a more engagement type of atmosphere again, and if perhaps there are certain implicit carrots offered to North Korea for accepting those, and I don't see any reason why they wouldn't do that again, of course they will be very picky on what precisely they show and where these people can go and not. But I think that's all part of a longer cycle of a bargaining game that's ongoing between North Korea and to a large extent in this case, the United States. And of course that touches on Europe as well, right? Because we have friends, 3D inspectors that have already said they could be exploitive, if necessary. Exactly, there are also other... I mean, going through the UN has a more inclusive touch to it, so it's probably also good for the legitimacy of the institution as such. However, even if UN-based international observers are not allowed in, there are other alternatives possible and there are indeed several European countries who have already mentioned their interests or willingness in playing that role. Absolutely. Thank you. We move to Mr. Rahm now with a question about the role that folks not in government can play to support peace. So it's a question about NGOs, organizations such as Women Cross the MCD, the MCD sorry, these type of organizations that want to bring attention to the fact that many Korean people actually want to achieve peace. So what role do these organizations or can these organizations play when it comes to supporting peace in the Korean Peninsula? Thank you. I think that's an excellent question. I'm going to take... I'm going to answer from the perspective of the U.S. although, you know, obviously there's roles to be played by, you know, grassroots citizens across the world. But I think... So these organizations like Women Cross the MCD, other humanitarian grassroots organization, Human Rights, those that focus on remains recovery of U.S. service members that are unaccountable from the Korean War, they all can play a helpful role and it all starts with the ability of U.S. citizens and their right to petition their government, right? Everyone has a right to pass their government for something that they want changed about U.S. policy. We in D.C. tend to be caught in our group thinking our bubble, but not recognizing or underestimating the ability of each U.S. citizen to advocate and lobby for changes in U.S. policy, right? And we've seen that. I think groups like Women Cross the MCD were very effective in advocating for a declaration to end the Korean War. This is House Resolution 152 in the last session of Congress. It got 50 co-sponsors and it was bipartisan. I think there may have been one Republican co-sponsor as well. But that is one sort of tangible step that these organizations can do. Lobby their representatives for a change in government, not just in Congress, but also in the executive branch as well. Another step I think would be very helpful is to have a better understanding of what the U.S. people want, right? It's really unclear how Americans think about peace on the Korean Peninsula. I've seen some surveys, but they're kind of worried in ways that's not helpful. To the extent that there would be better, more accurate surveys about the U.S. people's thinking on peace, on ending the Korean War, on changing our approach to North Korea, I think that would be very effective in trying to persuade the government about what the American people actually want. Thanks for that. And of course, many European NGOs before COVID were in North Korea, for example, right? So they can also play a role, as you were saying, different groups can play different roles, absolutely. We have one last question that I want to ask Ambassador Jun to answer. The question is that there is a fundamental challenge, which is that North Korea is not likely to denuclearize, but the U.S. is also not likely to recognize North Korea as a nuclear power, so as a nuclear state. So are there any ways to get around this challenge to peace-building in the Korean Peninsula? That's a great question. And I would say yes. And that's simply put, that's what diplomacy is about, you know, making sure that what appears to be contradictions can come together. Of course, we don't recognize Pakistan as a nuclear power. We, you know, so it's not as though this is a unique situation. And but it is completely correct. They're not going to denuclearize. We're not going to recognize them as a nuclear weapons power. I think what the discussion has shown today to me is that the United States needs to really broaden its policy aperture. We need to think about broader options, more options than just pressure. And that's the point that Frank has repeatedly made. And that is our traditional policy has been to say Kim Jong-un must know that he's better off without nuclear weapons than with nuclear weapons. That doesn't work because Kim Jong-un will not believe that. His most highest priority goal is regime survival. And he thinks he's way better off with nuclear weapons than without. So by broadening the discussion with them, including peace and security discussions, as well as non-proliferation discussions, we are coming to really beginning to think about what is it that Kim Jong-un wants. So this is a challenge that's been with us. We've failed at it so many times. And now, you know, we have different people coming in, but they are kind of similar, but they have learned their lessons. I worked very closely with Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan during the Obama era. I was also worked in Trump era. So they are coming in with significant lessons learned. And I do believe that it is loud voice, both in Europe and Asia, saying that you've got to think differently. Think about peace building as well as denuclearization. So I think this idea that we're all pressing for, that it's got to be more than one trap. Let's hope we get some traction. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for finishing with those hopeful words actually. So I just want to thank UCIP for partnering with us, the Korea Chair, and the Brussels Club of Governance, and for hosting this event. As Mr. Ahm said, hopefully next time in Brussels, in Washington, or in Jeju Island. Why not in Jeju that we could go there and repeat this event. And thanks to the audience for being with us. I really enjoyed the learned a lot and I hope the audience also enjoyed the event. Thank you very much.