 Testing, testing, okay, we're good. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a real pleasure to welcome all of you to Carnegie. My name is Changmin Lee, a senior fellow here at the HR program. And today I'm really excited that we are launching our second report since last year on a particular aspect of Korean unification. I'm sure all of you have copies of the report. So let me just begin by introducing our panel and then I'll spend about five or so minutes going over the key aspects of the report that Katie and I, the research analyst that I work closely with co-authored. And so let me just go down from my right. This has nothing to do with her political inclinations. So Kathy Stevens is very on the far right. She is, as you know, president of KEI, former ambassador to Korea, and acting ambassador to India, which is why she's wearing orange today. But no, she has been one of the most, I guess. No politics there. There's an election in India. She has been one of the most, I guess, supportive friends over the years. And as I always say, in Miami-Lapidia, and Kathy was the best ambassador that the US had in Korea. So welcome and thank you again. Marcus Nolan, who is right across the street from a small think tank called Peterson Institute for International Economics. But size doesn't matter because it is perhaps the most premier international economic think tank in the world. And he's been executive vice president, director of studies for a long time, and he's been in and out of Peterson since 1985. And one of the most, I guess, critical watchers of the North Korean economy that I know of. So amongst all of us political stalwarts, Marcus, you stand out because you are the only and best economist in the panel. Gil Rosman, who is very well known to all of us in the academic world, is professor of emeritus at Princeton University where he taught for over three decades. He authored more books than I have in my fingers. He is one of the very few, not the only scholar that I know that reads original sources in Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean. Have I missed anything else? Well, yes, English too. So the other day when we were having lunch several months back and Gil was working on one of his articles, he's also the editor of the ASEAN Forum, the best e-journal on Asian issues. And he said, well, you know, John, what are you working on? So I felt kind of good. So I said, well, you know, I'm putting revisions on my book on North Korea. And he was just writing an article and he said, you know, I just finished reading 30 articles in Russian. I said, okay, next topic. So obviously Gil outshines the rest of us. Last but not least, Patrick Cronin who is an old old friend, seriously, we've go back 20, 30 years. Long time. Long time. And he was, as you know, formerly at various places, including as he is now the inaugural chair of the HR chair at the Hudson Institute that began in January of this year. He has been a long time observer as well as participant on US policy in Asia. And so I could not think of a better person to talk about the policy links on Korean unification and what the US may or may not do. So without further ado, let me just spend some time going over some of the key core concepts of this. And so when Katie and I sat down and thought about what are we going to do? One of the key issues here is in Washington I thought that there was a big absence about studies on unification. That is because most people are concerned about rightly on the North Korean nuclear issue. And unification is like thinking about car insurance. It's there, it's important. You may want to change your insurance, you know, once in a blue moon, but unless something bad happens, nobody really pays much attention to it. But I still think it is critical because in my opinion, unification as it is, I guess, informed in South Korea and the two Koreas as you can see from the report is a highly emotional political issue for both Koreas and rightly so. And it is perhaps the end goal of the two Koreas. The key issue is what type of unified Korea do you want? I see a lot of young professionals here in the front row. May I ask where you're from just out of curiosity? I see okay. From KEI, you're here because your boss told you to come here. And I think because when unification happens, it'll be in your charge. It'll be your generation, both here in Washington and Seoul will think about these issues as real core political agendas. And so thus far, unification in South Korea has been perceived since 87 through the Korean Commonwealth policy. And this policy basically says there are phased integration so that once you have a number of interactions, economic, social, political, and you overcome outstanding political military issues, then you have some type of an interim, I guess, state where the two Koreas have some type of modus vivendi and then ultimately you'll have a unified Korean state. It's a phased introduction. But the problem is how do you go from phase one to phase two to phase three? And if you look at how companies do M&As, I'm asking myself if Samsung were to merge with Apple, what would happen? Will there be like this huge company called Apple slash Samsung or the Converse? And will there be two CEOs? Will there be three cell phones? I mean, we're talking about magnitudes that are even unimaginable. So the challenges that the two Koreas face, even in the best of scenarios I would argue is going to be very, very difficult. So rather than approaching this from a traditional scenario-based study, whether it's collapse or peaceful unification by negotiation, which is the preferred model or unification by conflict, KD and I chose stabilization, which has a very strong military connotation here in the US over the last 20 years. But we focused on this because we believe that North Korea, however you cut it, is still a fairly fragile state. And she's going to confront a number of challenges even in a peaceful negotiated scenario. And here, I would argue, there are like five aspects of stabilization. We're talking about stabilization in terms of like civil security, law and order, providing humanitarian assistance. Of the longer term, what you want to have is also inclusive institutions, governance and the rule of law. It may not be all in that order, but you're really talking about how do you go from this period of uncertainty with immense challenges into the next phases? And that's something that I think people don't really think about. In essence, I believe that as good as Korea's unification policy is, it is in many respects not all that realistic because we're talking about huge gaps in the policy. When you talk about integration of the two Koreas, what are you talking about? Economic integration, social integration, cultural integration, military integration. But these are all the issues that we cover. And most of the issues that we cover are in the front phases of unification. And that is where I believe that the US has the greatest contribution. And again, if you are a Korean and you think about unification, it is a highly emotional, politically charged issue. And what we don't want are the participation of the great powers or historical reasons. And that, of course, I understand as Korean. But realistically, the US will be involved because of WMD, making sure that the Korean people's armies be mobilized peacefully. You also have taken into consideration what will happen if other countries intervene, i.e. China. And that's the big girl in the room. How do you deal with China that has its own interests on the Korean Peninsula? And I think one last comment before I ask my panelists is if you think about German unification and Korea, and we cover, for example, how the East Germans basically dissolved their army. The big difference, in my view, is that when German unification occurred, it occurred at the nadir of Soviet power. The Soviets were basically on their knees. Whereas when Korean unification occurs from now until whenever it occurs, it'll happen at the apex of Chinese power. And when US influence overall is ebbing. And so the key question is, how much leverage will the US have as you go into potentially a very volatile and turbulent era in the earlier phases of unification? I am not advocating that that's the way to go. All I am saying is we have to rethink how we conceptualize unification because when the day comes, I guarantee you, especially the younger generation here, we will not have the wherewithal to sit down for 30, 40 hours beforehand and pre-planned all of this. So let me just stop there and you can look at the report in its entirety. I'm just going to go down the line starting with Cathy. And you served as ambassador, Cathy, and you have observed Korea for a long time. Now you're back on stage as head of KEI. What are your thoughts on unification and the US? Well, thank you, it was an easy one. Well, first of all, I mean, thank you very much for inviting me with this very distinguished panel and great to see so many familiar and some of the familiar faces here. And I do want to congratulate you and Katie for this report. I have read it. I think it's terrific. I think it's going to be of lasting value and certainly prompted me to think, if I can say at least for me and some kind of new ways about some of these issues. So I can't ask you a big question, but maybe I could say something from the point of view of someone who has sort of been around Korea for quite a long time and secondly, as someone who is in the US government for a long time. One, I mean, in terms of, I don't know what I think about unification. I mean, I remember learning the word unification if you want to be really evocative in 1975, walking a little kind of muddy village in Chungcheongnam-do when all the students in my boys' middle school had little hats and the hats that had said them, you may remember, you're probably too young, either said Bangong, which men destroy communes and more they said Tongil, unification. And if they saw a teacher on the street, they had to salute and say one or the other. And they were kind of synonymous, right? So that's how I learned unification, Tongil. Now, what do those little boys think? What do they think now as middle-aged men? It's complicated. I'm thinking of another time when I was serving actually in Portugal and I went to see the great Meso Soprano, Sumi Jo and she gave a great, we're not talking about opera here, but great performance. But then she did something kind of a side show, if you like. And I think every Korean on the Iberian Peninsula came. This was in 2001. And she's saying, you know, beautiful German and European works, the world. And then she sang a song called Korean Gungangsan. I'm longing to see the Diamond Mountains. It's about the desire for unification. And the audience is a very sophisticated cosmopolitan. As some years ago, Koreans were all weeping at the end. I was too, it was a beautiful song. One of the things your report has, and certainly I've seen myself, is a lot that reflects polling data, both statistical and kind of qualitative on attitudes towards unification in South Korea is complicated. It's changed over many years. I understand that. I guess my coming away from all those stories is, I think as an American, and I would base this also on my experience in other parts of the world where I think we Americans said, oh, that history is behind us, whether it's in the Balkans or Northern Ireland or Iraq, Darius, or any place. It comes back in different ways. And I would not underestimate, and I think you make this point, the national and historical complexity and impulse that behind the sense of national identity. So just, I don't have anything really profound to say about unification, except that I think we have to be very aware that it's not a static concept, but something that I think as outsiders, we have to be very sensitive to. The second thing about your report, which I really did like, was this focus on the lens of stabilization. And as you say, stabilization within the American context does have a kind of a military ring to it. But over the years, when the US has been involved in other parts of the world, I'm more familiar with Bosnia than anywhere else. Certainly in Iraq, there were parts of the US government where we started to think about this concept of stabilization in a more sophisticated way. Some of them, frankly, in the US government is a matter of resources. The US VOD Department of Defense famously has more military planners and there are American diplomats. So there's a lot of planning. It was true. Well, they also have more musicians and all those things too, but not more lawyers. But there's a lot of planning that takes place in the US military and over the years, I have seen some of the themes that you draw out kind of teased out, more than teased out, but pondered in military circles. But it needs to be a broader look as we found in other parts of the world. And I also think that's true with respect to Korea and sort of it's never too early. It's never too early to start thinking about this. So I think that's very, very useful. And related to that, I guess my final point would be, and this is a little bit of a pitch for, actually a speaker we had at KEI recently, but I don't remember his name, but I listened to podcasts yesterday. We had a speaker who talked about the different ways in which South Korean scholars and American scholars think and write about issues related to North Korea. What's his name? Jeff Robertson, there he is, sorry. It's a good podcast, I'm sorry. But, and again, I won't try to summarize all that he says, but maybe not surprisingly, the things that South Korean scholars focus on, and then it obviously informs then government thinking, elite thinking about these issues and American scholars focus on are quite different. And also the methods they use are quite different because of differing language abilities and different, I guess, kind of scholarly protocols. So I think that's worth thinking about too, because I think there are some, not exactly gaps to be bridged, but gaps to be made aware of and some opportunities to bring some people together for really useful conversations coming out of your report. Well, thanks so much, Cathy. Turning to you, Marcus, I know you have your own thoughts on this topic, which you're more than welcome to share with us, but I just wanted to tease you out as a long-term observer of economic issues on the Korean Peninsula, do you believe that sustained economic exchange between the two Koreas is going to result in political change? But just keep that in mind and I'll come back to you, but please go ahead. Okay. Let me talk a bit about the report and then let me come back to that because that's a really important question and I think it's a really important question for South Korea today. So in terms of the report, if you read the report, economic development comes at the end. So if we were doing this panel, like the report, I would be the last speaker and that's not unreasonable. The report makes the argument that we should avoid specific sort of scenario analysis, which is fine, but to have anything to say, you have to have certain assumptions about how this all came to pass. And so I'm gonna make a few comments in which I assume that the way that we got here looks more like German unification and less like a nuclear exchange. And I don't mean that as a joke. I mean, if you can get to this through mass violence and military action, at which point the issues are a lot different. If you get to it through some kind of process that avoids that, then there's a set of economics issues. And the first thing is, and why I would sort of go last and the report has me at the end, you know, or has my topic at the end, is the first thing is you have to establish civil order. If you don't establish civil order, you're not gonna have economic development. So again, that's just the basic kind of, somehow we have to get to a system for a situation where there's not mass violence. There's basically rough law and order. Then from an economic standpoint, the key issue that Koreans will face is the clarification of property rights. And the reason that's the key issue is if you don't have clear property rights, you're not going to get investment. And if you don't get investment, you're not gonna get economic development and rehabilitation. And there's different ways you can get investment. There's different channels. But if you don't get the property rights clarified, none of this is gonna happen. So in terms of South Korea and the United States, there are things that we can do in advance that are relatively scenario independent. And they're just sort of good things to do in preparation for whatever way this unfolds. And then there are things you're gonna have to do in the moment. So in terms of the property rights issue, for example, South Korea can make it clear that either people in South Korean citizens with claims on assets in the North will either not be compensated or they will be compensated, but it will be in the form of financial compensation and not the restoration or restitution of that specific asset. We can't have people coming into North Korea and saying my grandfather owned this building or my grandfather owned that farm. That will gum up this process of clarification of property rights. Those assets will be under dispute and there will be no investment. And if you don't get investment, you're not gonna get recovery. You can do other things like basically, say, have a land to the tiller policy with respect to the agricultural co-ops. That would have the advantage of giving the farmers both direct incentives to improve productivity on the land that they will now own. It will also encourage them to stay on the farm and not migrate to the urban areas. So it's a sort of twofer. And I can go into a lot more detail on that sort of issue. Another thing, and if you work through the sort of models of this stuff, you find that a successful process of economic integration between North and South Korea would have the effect of dramatically reducing poverty and raising incomes in the northern part of the peninsula and accelerate the peninsular growth rate. It may or may not accelerate the South Korean growth rate, but the peninsula taken as a whole growth rate will accelerate. That's the good news, right? There's a real upside to all of this. The bad news is that the amount of capital investment needed to make all this happen is probably well over a trillion dollars, which is to say roughly equal to South Korea's annual output. What that simple tyranny of mathematics tells you is that we're going to have to consider money from basically all sources. In terms of the United States, the United States can encourage multilateral agencies like the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and so on to participate in a robust way in this process. The United States may, depending on its own fiscal situation, make some direct transfers, but importantly, whether it be the United States, South Korea, or whomever, private investment is gonna have to play a key role. There's simply not going to be enough public capital available. And that goes also, again, to the issue of clarifying property rights. So you have to have a framework to get private investment in. That points to two policies that South Korea could sort of adopt in advance, in preparation for these developments. First of all, I would recommend that South Korea run an unusually conservative fiscal policy. Basically, you want to be accumulating reserves for a rainy day, because there is this big contingent liability out there called the DPRK. And so you wanna run an unusually conservative fiscal policy and sort of prepare for that. Interestingly enough, work I've done with the Treasury suggests the US Treasury understands this. And so in its discussions with its Korean counterparts, it has some understanding that Korea may have to rely more on monetary policy for stabilization today, South Korea does, than what you might expect. And the exchange rate issues today are a little more complicated than you might expect, because there's a real justification for taking a certain amount of fiscal policy off the table for this North Korean contingency. Second thing that comes up in the report, and I would underscore it, is that the obvious mechanism for South Korean private investment in North Korea are the table. They've got the, they've literally got the blueprints. They know what products that can be produced there. And they have the worldwide distribution network, marketing and distribution networks to turn this kind of latent Korean potential into products that the rest of the world wants to buy. The problem is, is that South Korea, that business government relations in South Korea is a perennial issue. And if you're asking the chaebol to go into North Korea and rehabilitate North Korea, the chaebol will certainly have some sort of quid pro quo. One of the lessons from the German experience was that when those East German assets came up for sale, and the vast majority, roughly 95% of East German assets ended up in West German hands, many of the German firms who bought East German factories shut them down. They were shutting down competitors and they simply turned those factories into sort of local sales offices. You have to strengthen the Korean fair trade commission to try to ensure that in this eventuality, the chaebol or other South Korean investors don't act in anti-competitive fashion when they're in the North. Marcus, can I ask you to just hold up on you since I wanted others to go on the first run and I'll come back right to you. So Gil, you have watched this issue from the perspective of geopolitics in the region more than anyone that I know over the last several decades even. But anyways, what are your thoughts on how the regional countries look at the prospects for unification and the US ROK role? Well, I found this report to sort of lay the groundwork for thinking big about a lot of issues. And so I'm delighted to try to respond to it, particularly with the notion of the region as the perspective. I really came to Korean studies two decades ago with three kinds of big questions, having worked on areas around Korea, leaving Korea as kind of the hole in the donut and recognizing the shortcomings of that approach. One was to try to understand these great power rivalries and how the great power dynamics would affect the outcome on the Korean peninsula. And it's often seemed kind of an overreach to me how Seoul tries to put itself in the driver's seat, to shape the region, whether as a balancer or with a Northeast Asian peace and cooperation initiative or Northern policy and New Southern policy and so on. There's always a sense somehow Seoul can drive things when the great power dynamics in this very troubled neighborhood and North Korea make this very difficult. So that's one way to come at this. A second perspective that I brought to this theme is national identities. Kathy raised the issue of national identities. I see North Korean, South Korea sharing a Korean historical identity. But if you look at identities in multiple dimensions, there are so many other dimensions where their identities clash dramatically and where China and Russia can claim affinity to North Korea and play on identity issues that will steer things in a different direction. And the third issue brought up in this report is social networks and the effect of the chaebol going into the North and trying to link up apart from just trying to hire workers. And I don't see the networking as favoring South Korea so much because China and Russia have so many historical ties to North Korea and the Chinese have this much longer border and much longer history of linkages. So it's not clear what kinds of networks could be constructed that would enable Seoul to have the edge apart from the language advantage it has and this historical memory advantage. But let me talk more specifically about the great power issue that you focused on, Chungming. It seems to me that not only is China at the apex and the US somewhat diminished as a force in the Northeast Asian region, but that China has very strong motivations about what it wants to accomplish in the Korean peninsula. And although in the report, China keeps coming up. Here and there it's said, well, and we have to think about China and maybe China will be a problem and so on. But there's no systematic way of saying what is the Chinese strategy? What is how serious does South Korea have to take China's potential role in stabilization in what is, in my mind, not so much unification as process of integrating North Korea into a wider framework? I mean, whether it's a peaceful outcome negotiated with North Korean leaders who have very strong interest in making sure that South Korea doesn't really take over or it's a collapse scenario where many factions are involved or it's some kind of conflict scenario where the great powers are likely to be intervening in different ways, particularly the US with its primary concern about weapons of mass destruction and maybe quite a secondary concern about how South Korea takes control of the integration of the peninsula and maybe more likely to make a deal with China which tends to cease the Korean Peninsula as an arena where China and the US can strike a deal, a big deal. And South Korea is really not very important in that process. So I would see the Chinese impact as shaping all aspects of this with more money, a sense of a core interest, a reluctance to allow South Korea to dictate the terms but an effort to oblige South Korea to accept Chinese terms which would be favorable for not only China's presence in the North during a transition but also influence South Korean foreign policy. So again, I think that looking at the Korean Peninsula in the context of the region is essential. And finally, there's sort of a throwaway line at the end of the report. Well, North Korea and South Korea and so on don't really want Japan much involved but I can't see a scenario that favors South Korea that doesn't give Japan a big role. Japan's money, Japan's interest, the US-Japan relationship sort of playing along with China and North Korea and marginalizing Japan, I don't think will be in the interest of stabilization. Thank you, Gil. You know, as you think about this issue, how high is unification in the realm of the American policy community? Is this something that you come across or I'm sure you have your own on take on the report but I just wanted to just get your sense of how important will this be in the US conscience? Well, certainly thinking back at the end of the Cold War and the sudden German unification example, I think there was an acceleration of thinking and a heightened sense of thinking in the 90s and then that ebbed and flowed over time. It's ebbed and flowed to this day. One of the great contributions of this tremendous report and it's really well illustrated as well as laid out and written, is that it tries to offer a framework that could bring together two communities that have not really planned together on unification. And that's ironically the US ROK Alliance where they're doing great O-plan planning for war contingencies. But when it comes to trying to lash up with the Ministry of Unification or Kinu, their think tank, there's no real counterpart. And it begs the question, is the problem methodological or is it more political and bureaucratic and a conflict of interest? And I suspect it's the latter more than the former but that's all right. It's still very useful and I agree with Kathy Stevens that this is gonna be a very useful framework. So when Americans do elevate the issue from time to time in the South Koreans are more open to trying to plan together. Planning is everything. The plan is nothing, said Eisenhower. Well, in this case, if the US and South Korea can actually plan together, it doesn't really matter that we don't know the scenario. The fact that we can actually go through this process together is going to put us in a better position to be less taken by surprise than we're going to be anyhow because there's so many imponderables. So here's another question. And that's that, is the United States more interested in preserving the alliance and its position than it is unification? And I suspect in general, probably. Is it more interested in preventing a nuclear war, certainly, than unification? That's true with every power, including I think South and North Korea even. But I think the United States will be seized with the importance of this once a crisis occurs. And that's a reminder that you use the stabilization framework that's used in Iraq and Afghanistan and other stabilization operations. But those operations were largely reinvented with new people and new processes each time. Even though there was great lessons learned repository out there, it still had to be re-ingested. It had to be put together bureaucratically. New people put in charge. And as you put in your report, sometimes no agency in charge. So as a headless horseman kind of trying to organize what was actually going on the ground, we had a whole of government approach in theory. But in practice, we had lots of different approaches that were happening without coordination sometimes. I remember being in the White House before the Iraq intervention and being told by senior officials who said, look, you're at the US agency for international development. We're gonna plan this war this way. You're gonna work in your lane. You're gonna do a ministry in a box. So you're gonna education, you do education in a box. When we tell you we want education in Iraq after we break things, you bring in education. That is not the way to do intelligent stabilization operations, whatever one thinks of that intervention. So you could see the problems. You have to think of this holistically of the high politics. I think the geopolitics are huge here. And maybe if anything, understated in this report, I think the human element is key. And I mean, I think Marcus is sort of getting at that in terms of the economic side. You mentioned raw emotion and so on, but I mean, I think it's even more than that. I think the human element here is just gonna be tremendous. And I think the Americans will rely so heavily on the South Koreans for that, but I think even the South Koreans will be taken by surprise when we deal with the human element of trying to merge with North Korea, whatever that means. Marcus, going back to your initial point, you were about to expand on your argument. Does economic integration lead to more political, I guess, comfort between South and North Korea? So I think this may be the key issue facing South Korea today. I mean, maybe second to nuclear war. So basically, the reason I say that is this, about 10 years ago, I did a survey of South Korean businesses operating in North Korea and interviewed about half of the universe of South Korean businesses. There were about 400 and I interviewed 200 of them. And we could break out those businesses by the ones that were doing processing on commission trade, the ones that were doing what we call arms length transactions. They were actually largely in the natural resource sector. They were just going in and doing deals with some sort of North Korean counterparty and then the firm's operating case on industrial complex. That survey is dated, but I think it gives you a reasonably good snapshot of what things looked like and the practices that were being followed when essentially everything came apart with sanctions so that if we were to restart, where would we be restarting from? And we asked them lots of questions but I wrote a whole section of the survey on industrial relations and the results were eye-opening. Basically, North Korea sees engagement with South Korea as a Trojan horse and it has largely successfully insulated North Korea from South Korean economic influence. So for example, when you ask the firms that were operating case on if they knew how much their employees were being paid because remember, the money was not being paid directly to employees. It was being paid to the North Korean government which was then taking the dollar transfer and then paying the workers in North Korean won. When you ask them, do you know how much your workers are getting paid? Only one in five firms said yes. 80% of the firms operating case on didn't know how much their employees were getting paid. These are South Korean firms. South Korean firms. And you can just go on and on and on from there. The North Koreans, the sort of socialization, exposure to new practices, exposure to new managerial techniques, all that kind of stuff that you would hope would have an effect on the North Koreans either North Korean policy makers or North Korean managers or even North Korean workers, it basically was not occurring. Even the sort of what we call backwards and forwards linkages. Where South Korean firms purchasing inputs from North Korean enterprises to use in their operation, largely not happening. The North Korean, what you would see in other kind of, especially economic zones or enclaves around the world, you would have somebody working at a IBM factory or working at a Samsung factory and a local guy and he would say, wow, this is how it's done. And he would literally, I mean, I knew cases of this, take the manual home with him and then set up his own firm. That kind of transfer of technology broadly defined, stimulation of entrepreneurship wasn't happening. So I think that economic engagement with North Korea can be beneficial. It can have a transformative effect that will both promote economic development in North Korea and temper North Korea's instincts towards belligerency through a variety of channels. I think that can occur, but it has to be purposeful. We have to structure that engagement in a way that will have those desirable effects. And there are a variety of hooks you could use to do that. Recognizing North Koreans may not want to be going along. This is going to be a negotiation. But what I fear right now is, instead of having that negotiation to get us to a kind of purposeful engagement that will have transformative effects, we're basically settling for engagement for engagement's sake. And that's going to be a big issue with reopening of KSAN and other initiatives under the current South Korean government. If you want me to go on in more detail about the kinds of hooks you can use, but that's basically the issue. Do we have a purpose for engagement? Cathy, you mentioned national identity and it is a very powerful issue, both in North and South Korea. But I just wanted to throw away a curve ball to you. Is there a nationalistic component to this from an American perspective? In other words, should you prefer the South Koreans hitting the lead on unification for all the reasons that you and I are clear about? Having democracy and a free market and whatever. Or who takes care of, for example, the interests of quote, unquote, the North Koreans? Well, I think that however the future unfolds is important for the US at a rhetorical level, but also at a policy level to make clear that it sees this as a Korean Peninsula question, as a question for the Korean people. But we have to be clear-minded about, as Gil pointed out, the fact that we are one of the great powers that's going to have an influence here. And I would say that the US should also take a position that we have a particular role because of our history in the peninsula. So that's where we need to be positioned. And I think that's what needs to inform our policy. So our predilection is to say, the Republic of Korea and South Korea represents the kind of modern national identity of what we think the Korean state should look like. But at the same time, be understanding and accommodating to the extent that we can of Seoul's preferences. It's democratically elected government, knowing that that changes over time as our governments change sometimes in carrying out what is a national task. I believe that myself, and I think that's important from a point of view of policy to emphasize. So I don't, yeah, I mean with respect to, I think it's also important that we understand more about again the history and the role of China. Because I do, if I can kind of pivot to that a little bit, I think Gil, as I read this report too, I think as we all, sometimes do in these discussions, say China's really, really important, we can't forget that. But then we have trouble thinking through exactly how that's going to play out. With respect to the kind of economic projects that Marcus is talking about, one thing that actually kind of concerns me is, I mean, not only the often mentioned sort of Chinese economic influence and inroads, but also the fact that China does seem to be making a more concerted effort to demonstrate not only to North Korea, but to others of its, shall we say, more authoritarian partners, how you can combine economic development with social control, and that there are more and more refined methods of doing that. So I think the kind of project that Marcus describes is made even more complicated and challenging by that. But so I'm interested in his ideas about that. I'll just throw out one other thing, which is a little bit away from the question, but balancing out that national feeling in Korea and how we view it. If you try to think of ways to keep this, I think a kind of a Korea-centric project, but at the same time take into account the interests and the influence of the other powers in the region. Our international institutions are flawed, but they're kind of what we have. And one we have is the United Nations. Now United Nations carries a lot of baggage in Korea, North and South. But to be really provocative, I mean there was something called a trusteeship, which is again kind of her verboten word when you think about the division of Korea and the creation of a trusteeship. But there are perhaps international mechanisms that don't even have to be reinvented, but might be adapted to try to balance some of those sort of national impulses in the role of South Korea with the involvement of the other powers. Cathy, I want to come back to you a little later on as a long-term foreign service officer. How do you then basically find a sweet spot between Korean nationalistic concerns, the interests of the great powers and making this work at an operational level? But Gil, you mentioned a very important point, which is I don't think that Katie and I advocated that Japan should have no role in unification. I think I'm much more open to that than perhaps many other scholars. But the key issue here is there is a lot of resistance within South Korea and of course North Korea too on any involvement of the great powers. But you mentioned the fact that China and Russia and of course the US and Japan will have a critical role. That's something that's unavoidable, right? So then how do you circle the square? Well, you start off I think by asking what China and Russia will try to accomplish. And then you look for some way to get a multilateral process going where Japan is in there for many purposes, including balancing. I think the UN is likely to be involved and there you've got China and Russia with their veto power saying this is what we can accept and this is who we can't. I think we have to assume that China will regard North Korea as a kind of a priority almost beyond any other country it deals with. That this is an alliance, this is where China sacrificed so much in the war. This is the way they look at the history of the peninsula from Goguryeo on that they've really been telling Pyongyang repeatedly we've got a model you can follow. That model may change to have more social control as we've just heard. But the idea is that China will know what it wants. It will have a strategy and the only way to sort of try to keep it at some distance is to have a broader range of actors and with money as well and so therefore the Japan's role is pretty important in that context to create a multilateral framework which China and Russia would wanna hijack for a geopolitical purpose to weaken alliances and to use North Korea to make South Korea a different kind of country than it is today. But if you could just imagine for a moment you were Putin and Xi, although you may not want to imagine. But if you did, for conceptual reasons. We have to. What are Xi Jinping's core interests on the Korean Peninsula, especially as it relates to unification? I think those interests go beyond what most people suggest. I think it's beyond controlling nuclear weapons and peace and stability and the sort of the terms that are often used. Sometimes it's been referred to as avoiding spillover into Northeast China with refugees. I think this is a strategic goal beyond almost any other to transform the Korean Peninsula. I think they see South Korea as a swing country that can be reshaped and that the US alliance system can be damaged. I think that's a shared goal of Russia and China. So I don't know how to overcome that in any of the scenarios that deal with North Korea because the North Koreans will realize they are getting a more appealing offer to remain in power for individuals to keep controlling assets that they now control. Nothing to do with democracy, rather boosting an established elite by enticing them to go closer to China and Russia. You know, Pat, one of the key issues that we try to cover in the report, but perhaps not in such detail, is if you want to preserve the US ROK Alliance into and beyond unification, that's something that of course we will have to see when the day comes. But from the US perspective, does it make sense for America to sustain the US ROK Alliance post unification? And if the answer is yes, how do you get there? Well, I know this is a question you've also looked at since at least the 90s, gentlemen. One way you get there is not post unification, but there's no landing. I mean, so the interests of major powers here conflict so much potentially because I think I agree with Gil in terms of China's growing interests on the peninsula. It's historic, but it's also, I think, growing under Xi Jinping, his ambitions for 2035, 2049. It's even more a part and parcel of the CCP policy, I think, out of Beijing these days that they cannot countenance having anything but a growing influence on Asia and over Asia. And I think that means they're gonna insist on it. So if you wanna avoid that conflict, you have no landing. You don't allow this tender process. Now, let's say we get to unification anyhow because it can happen in so many different ways. But if you do, certainly the United States is gonna be fighting under most governments I can imagine, but not all. Most governments I can imagine that the United States is gonna be fighting to keep a very strong presence if for no other reason that the entire regional security architecture since World War II is predicated on these strong relations with two democratic market democracies in South Korea and Japan. And to change that fundamentally really undercuts any strategic influence as well as the entire system. So the US will be under most circumstances be fighting to try to do this. How we do this exactly? Well, compromise. And so when you look at that, for instance, the nuclear map on page 41. And you think about all those installations and the WMD installations in Korea. It's not just China and maybe Russia. It's not just South Korea as you have in the recommendation bringing South Korea into planning. It's probably allowing this internationalization of some of these issues that could be core red line issues at a minimum to deal with unsatisfied China so that you can still try to preserve a reduced perhaps and a more outward looking alliance for the USRK but one that doesn't cross the threshold of being unacceptable to Beijing. Marcus, you know, one of the key issues that is I think very important in the future of the Korean Peninsula is the Sino-North Korean economic linkage. And that's something that I think people outside of Korea don't really understand, but it is a very important drive, isn't it? So from your perspective as an economist, what are the upsides or the downsides of very strong Sino-North Korean economic linkage and how that might impact unification prospects? Well, the upside is that, well, let me step back. The current situation is really anomalous. Economists have statistical models that predict trade among countries and the model doesn't fit North Korea to say the least. If North Korea traded like a normal country, its volume of trade would be enormously more than it is today and the direction of trade, its natural trade partner in South Korea. And so today's situation where it's so heavily dependent on China relative to any other country is strange and it's really strange if you compare it to the counterfactual of what the country would look like if it was quote a normal country. So how this plays out given there is some, the past matters, there is something called hysteresis and so it is not going to just snap into a position where it looks like a normal country. You're always gonna have this heavy Chinese influence. The upside of that is that North Korea is a really poor country and a lot of North Koreans are really poor. And so regardless of kind of the practices and the lack of transparency and all the other stuff the Chinese bring, just the fact that Chinese are in there trading and investing is actually a good thing because the counterfactual, if they weren't there, things would be even worse than they are. The bad part of it is that when the Chinese trade with the North Koreans, they are not socializing the North Koreans into the sort of transparent norms that they would get from the World Bank. They're getting socialized into Chinese business practices which are non-transparent, corrupt. And as Kathy has pointed out, you've got a second order effect where as the North Koreans get more wealthy and they're exposed to the Chinese, they certainly are going to be adopting or be a shock to me if they also didn't start adopting as they get wealthier and more able to, Chinese methods of social control, facial recognition software and all that kind of stuff. So China is a kind of dual sword. I mean, it's good in the sense that if it wasn't there, things would be even worse but it's bad in that the sorts of practices and institutions it reinforces in North Korea are not the ones that we would wanna see. That's why when we engage with the North Koreans, we want to push them in the direction of greater transparency, a greater rule of law, all of that kind of stuff because that's the kind of institutional fight for the heart of the North Korean economy that is going to play out. And my great fear is that South Korea is just gonna drop the ball on this, that they're just going to essentially take whatever the North Koreans offer in terms of business practices within North Korea. And so South Korean engagement won't have the transformative effect or at least the counterbalancing effect to what the way the economy will develop with such a heavy emphasis on DPRK-China relations. Cathy, can you just take that a little bit further? In other words, imagine that you are in some type of a multilateral process. Maybe it's a reconfigured six-party talks leading towards unification. And what type of leverage do you think the US would have in that system, vis-a-vis, for example, China and Russia? Yeah, well, I mean, one thing that actually worries me is that the US leverage for a whole number of reasons, maybe we don't need to articulate right now is in relative decline. And I think we need to recognize that. But I think that does argue then even more, in a sense, for thinking about a kind of robust multilateral approach. I would answer that in part by going back to Gil and Patrick's comments about the role of China. I mean, I actually, I'm not sure that Xi Jinping sees Korea as his biggest issue right now. But I think, and I think he sees it as more of a problem. Certainly Chinese leaders over recent decades have seen it as more of a problem if you like them an opportunity. And I think that whatever the long-term ambitions he might have for the influence of China in the region, China does not want to have. I mean, they said they don't want to nuclear in North Korea, and we've got that. They may want other things less. But they also don't want a really obstreperous rebellious at unified Korea. I mean, they've already got a few obstreperous or worse rebellious states within the Chinese sphere. So I mean, and not to always go back to the question of national identity, but I think in China, they should be thinking a little bit more about that because I think the thing that would actually unify Koreans would be the sense of an overbearing neighbor called China, much more than an overbearing far away partner or called the United States. So I think that China would welcome a sort of a neutralized unified Korea. If you got into a multilateral negotiation about this, I think that your report points out a few areas where it would be natural for China, Russia, and the United States to try to work together as not only as permanent members of the Security Council, but also as nuclear weapons holding states. We haven't really talked about nuclear weapons. Your report does, which I think is an important thing. And I think it does reflect the sort of standard thinking as I understand it within the US government that in the event of a stabilization operation in whatever scenario that you outline, it would be the United States as the nuclear power state within the NPT that would do the, if you like, the denuclearization. Now if the scenario, we're not using the word scenario, if the expectation is that the process of fully and verifiably ridding of the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons is a complex and probably multi-year project, the question of how that's done is also something I think would come up in this multilateral setting with perhaps China or perhaps Russia thinking it should have a role. I think the United States should be prepared to think about that in advance and to consult. But that also leads then to the other question that would come up in the multilateral setting, which as you mentioned earlier is the future of the alliance and what that would look like. And again, within the context of denuclearizing Korean Peninsula in the context of some of the other stabilization operations that you talk about, I think that there'd be, the US has both, I mean, I guess leverage and also interest in thinking through what does an alliance look like if North Korea is not the threat? Is there a values-based partnership? Does it include troops on the peninsula or is that something that the US is ready to adjust? And again, I think there may sound like a cliche, but I don't think we should have troops who are not wanted. So I think, again, the views of in particular soul and that sort of multilateral process would weigh very heavily. Before I continue, Katie, we're on till 12, right? Okay, I wanted to think about what you think was the most important take from the report. Yeah, now, so Pad, if I want to just hit on that a little bit more, if you look at how the US has done Asia policy particularly under this administration. And so ever since you have the fifth Asia under Clinton and then, excuse me, under Obama, excuse me, for you to slip, and then you have a sort of Asia policy that I really don't know what's happening here under the current administration. Very open in the Pacific. Right, so if you look into, regardless of who is in charge in the Oval Office, is there a bandwidth within the US government that will be able to take care of this issue as a very important policy issue? It will gravitate resulting from a crisis. I mean, they will have to create this in order to deal with it. The bandwidth is much more limited than what we're talking about, the scope of the unification process. And just if I can just add your response to Kathy Stevens on China's ambitions, I'm thinking if this unification process is moving forward, which it's not necessarily right now, so things change. But under those circumstances, I think we see China's real ambitions rise and are revealed in that process. I think they don't have to play a bigger role right now from my perspective. But we're going to have to mobilize around this kind of scenario. I've been in touch certainly with the administration from the beginning of these negotiations talking about in-states. And I think the preparation for these in-states, this report could be included probably as one input into administration and general community thinking, there's still a lot more to be done because this is logical, but then we're dealing with North Korea. We're dealing with geopolitics, we're dealing with passions, we're dealing with politics, and we're dealing with economic interests. So all of those interests are much less rational or they're much more emotional and infused with conflict than a logical trajectory or linear trajectory. So there's going to have to be a huge mobilization. And a lot of this is more diplomatic and economic talent that we don't really have in the government. It's going to have to come from experts outside who are somehow harnessed and consultants or some way brought into a process. And that's why also there has to be a multilateral process as well because the US talent pool will be limited on this issue and even South Korea will be taxed. When you just think about the civil security issue on here, the KPA plus all the other security forces, there's nothing of the size has ever been done before. The nuclear issue, nothing of the size as you pointed out in that chart on page 36, nothing like this has ever been done before. There's so many elements here that have never done before unprecedented. So there's no reason to think that we're ready for that kind of bandwidth problem. But I think we would be ready to have a White House led process overseeing in interagency, but you'd have to make some strong augmentations in terms of people. They'd have to be working with outsiders. They'd have to be working with allies and others. That's why you need Japan. That's why ultimately you're going to China brought in constructively to some extent on this more than we want probably because China will insist on it. And those compromises are gonna have to go up to the top and be made at the White House level and the Blue House level. You know, Gil, one of the key questions that I see emerging is in the current mood of US-China relations where you have dispute over trade or the South China Sea, et cetera, can you still cooperate with China in the midst of these tensions? In other words, regardless of whether who's in the White House, if the US-China competition continues, how can they agree on a viable outcome on the Korean Peninsula that addresses not only the Koreans' issues, but of course the interests of both the US and China? I think for a quarter century, we've been trying to separate the Korea issue from other issues that we deal with with China. We've often pretended that there's not linkage to Taiwan to other things. Right now, the linkages look more and more obvious. And if there is an extended downturn in trade relations, and we have nothing really to fall back on as the Sino-US cooperation agenda, I would assume that China will be less cooperative on North Korea, more seepage in the sanctions process. But even if we are on an uptick in Sino-US relations and we've managed to put the trade war aside for a time at least, despite the growing competition in a lot of ways, I don't think US and China have a very clear common agenda on the Korean Peninsula. That is, we might reach a compromise in a negotiations or in a crisis situation where we can agree on certain steps to be taken, particularly related to weapons of mass destruction, but in terms of the big picture and working out a long-term plan for anything related to unification, I'm very doubtful. Okay, before I go to the audience for questions, Katie, do you want to chip in now? No, Alex is telling me to get on the camera, but I don't know. I just want to say first, thank you all so much for being here. I think this is truly the most interesting panel we've done since we started Carnegie last year and has definitely given me a lot to think about as we expand this concept. I have two questions and things to add. Something that hasn't really been discussed I think is going to be one of the most important elements in unification is how we integrate the North Korean elites into the South Korean government. This was probably with debathification in Iraq, the biggest mistake that we made that was extremely destabilizing and one of the most, if not the most major factors contributing to the insurgency. And it's a very politically difficult thing to accomplish in South Korea. There will be a lot of resistance to any North Korean elites being involved in the government and I think many North Koreans will also have resistance to that, but it's something that's very necessary. And I just want to ask the panelists if you have any idea how we kind of circle that square, especially politically in South Korea. And secondly, one of the most major obstacles this sort of planning is we just don't have really the relationships between the US government and Korean government that establish who will be responsible for what aspect of stabilization and just what the role is in a lot of that is because of the political sensibilities of the US being involved past deescalation of any conflict contingency. And I wonder, I think one of the major things we wanted to do with this report is kind of raise awareness that this is something that needs to be going on. I mean, many of you touched on that, but I wonder if you could comment on how exactly we approach those relationships and open those doors, so. Thank you, Katie. Let me just open up to the floor. Can you identify yourself and drag your questions to the panelists, please, Sir. Thank you, David Maxwell Foundation for Defense and Democracies. I'm really looking forward to reading this report. This panel has been excellent in really outlining it. The question I have, and maybe it's in the report, but nobody really touched on it, but it kind of gets to Katie's question, is the use of refugees, escapees from North Korea in terms of using them as a bridge to do many of the things you've talked about, whether it's national identity, economic integration, contract law, rule of law, and trying to be able to inform the Koreans in the North about what may happen, how things may happen. And so has there any thought been given to the use of refugees, escapees, or some call them defectors? Okay, let me just collect a couple more questions from the audience if there are any. Yes, Sir, over here. Thank you. Joe Bosco formally with the Defense Department. Both Gil and Pat have discussed the role of China and its potential impact on all the issues you're discussing in. And Ambassador Stevens made the statement that China has no interest in a nuclear North Korea. It seems to me if one looks at the history of the entire South Korean nuclear development, you see a role for China in that. The Congressional Research Service report that said that China provided the seed technology for the nuclear program. That's right. Pakistan's AQKON network. And throughout the decades, China has been at the UN protecting North Korea from sanctions, mitigating them, watering them down, and then when they're finally in place undermining them. So I pause at this. That not only is North Korea an important ally of China, but a nuclear North Korea has been an asset to China. It has served as tremendous leverage in all kinds of negotiations with the West. Gil mentioned the linkage between the program and other programs or other issues. Every time an issue comes up with China on human rights, Taiwan, South China Sea, trade, there are always those in the US government and the scholarly community who say, but we can't be too tough with China because, quote, we need them on North Korea. We've needed them on North Korea since the early 90s and they have never produced. Now we come to the conclusion that perhaps China finds a strategic asset in the nuclear program, which can be demonstrated by the fact that Kim and Trump seemed to be establishing a personal relationship, coming close to some kind of agreement before Singapore. And suddenly Xi Jinping summons Kim to Beijing for a meeting and immediately after that, North Korea's tone in the negotiations stifled. Thank you. So may I ask the panel to tackle Katie's question first, Kathy? Yeah, Katie, this question of integrating North Korean elites into South Korea, and I guess I'd say not just the elites, but we're talking about 25 million North Korean citizens, right? I'm gonna quote a South Korean friend of mine a few years ago who said, those of us, and there may be some of the audience who remember how intense the regional rivalries were between Honam and Gyeongsang, for example, and I would say largely dissipated, some of them may disagree. It's still there. But so he said that would be nothing compared to the sorts of regional discrimination, I guess I wouldn't even say rivalries, the discrimination that would be there, because that is kind of a feature, if you like, of historic Korean politics and factionalism, and I think it would be very, very challenging. I think your report does try to look at that issue, and I think there are some lessons, perhaps both positive and more negative, to learn from what not to do, as well as some ideas from elsewhere, but I don't have any sort of magic answers. Maybe I think South Koreans look rightly at whether or not, they've been able to successfully accommodate, I don't wanna say assimilate, maybe, but include, integrate North Koreans who have come and settled in South Korea as a very small, if you like, test case of what the challenges are. Again, I think it's gotten better over time, but there are some lessons there, but as an awareness of the challenges, but I think it's a huge one. Part of it too, I think is, as we've seen in other, if you like, post-conflict situations, is however they come about is the desire for, well included in reconciliation is the idea of justice, and what is justice. Again, I'm not sure that everyone in South Korea over that matter in North Korea is just gonna say, let's let bygones be got bygones, not only on property issues, but on issues of gross abuses of human rights, and gross behavior by the leadership, including the elite. So I'm just restating the problem, I don't really have an answer for it, except to say that if we look at other cases and they're all different, it's a very long process. But clearly, to look at particular elites, and I would say one elite, obviously it's important, is the military related to that, are some of the best brains I have to assume in North Korea who've gone into nuclear engineering and cyber hacking and a lot of other things. They've gotta have some good employment options, I would say, and better employment options, and it's also a resource I think part of. And so, but that's the kind of area where I would hope that in advance, getting to your next question, some serious thought could be given. But how do you do that, and I think we've already kind of talked about within the US government, again, I'd say the Department of Defense is where the resources are and where this kind of planning goes on. I think it's just very hard short of a real crisis to get the State Department, I have to say especially, or USAIDs in their current states is being able to devote any real attention to this. But I hope that your report actually will kind of bring the idea to a certain political level that maybe there will be some effort to bring some outside and inside resources together with South Koreans and also with others to think about these. My final point, I don't want to take all the time on these on I guess both the integration question and the question of the North Koreans who've resettled in the South, defectors, refugees. And again, I've just posed it as kind of something to think about, because I've been thinking about but I don't have any really bright insights, is the majority of these are actually women. A good part of what's going on in terms of the economic changes, I won't call it transformation in North Korea is driven by women. I'm not saying this from some kind of, I don't know, ideological point of view or because I'm the woman here, so I want to say. But I don't think we think about that enough. And I think it does take just a greater understanding of the culture and the economy of the situation to think about how do we address and perhaps use as an asset, which I don't think we've done successfully in many other situations that fact, it's an important fact. Marcus? I was once talking to a North Korean and he said we'd be happy to have elections on the peninsula. We'll all vote for Kim Jong-un. The South Koreans will vote for all these different people and Kim Jong-un will be president of all of Korea. So, you know, what I like to make is just to reinforce we have only scratched the surface on this. I am not a Korean and I am not a lawyer, but I have sort of read, you know, at least sort of skimmed the ROK constitution. The ROK constitution lays claim to the whole peninsula. It says those people up north, you know, 25 million of them are ROK citizens. And it then goes on to guarantee all sorts of political and economic rights. So depending on how this plays out, you could have a situation that could be really difficult in terms of cross-border migration. Do those people just get to come over? I have yet to meet a South Korean who says they do. But then under what legal process do you block migration? What, you know, how do you have a separate set of labor standards in the North if those people are South Korean or ROK citizens? Do you not let them vote in elections? There's a really deep political socialization. We've had three generations of Stalinism in one family, Japanese emperor worship and the dynasty. I mean, how do you socialize them and get them prepared to participate in a democratic polity? Those are big issues. To pivot to the economics, I want to reinforce something Patrick said about scale. Suppose the way this plays out, we want to demobilize a significant share of the KPA. Our experience in Iraq suggests it would be good to have those guys have something to do. The report makes a vaguely negative comment about, well, these kind of low paying jobs that the table listen. If you could get private investors to set up textile and apparel factories, break lining factories, spark plug factories that can employ say 600,000 demobilized KPA troops, I would think this would be a fantastically positive thing. The scale of this challenge is absolutely enormous. And I have in my remarks today criticized South Korean government. Let me end by criticizing the US government to show that I'm even handed. I think the immediate task at hand is to avoid sole Washington conflicts, at least in the economics sphere, as sole wants to move forward with engagement and Washington, I'm not clear. Well, if any of you understand our policy, please meet me afterwards and explain it to me. I'm not exactly sure what our policy is, but it's important that we try to stay on the same page. Now, if we get to a situation that's sort of envisioned in the report, one last thing, there is a provision of the chorus free trade agreement that the United States could have basically, by executive order, extend those rules to the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. There's a way of doing that. So in a situation where we wanna provide 600,000 people who are coming out of the KPA jobs and we want something to do, letting them export duty-free to the United States might be a way that the United States could help jumpstart the process without putting in a lot of money because by the point we get to this, US government debt will be two trillion in rise. Thank you very good point, Gil. I'll respond to Jill's point. I think it's accurate in saying that China has gained tremendously from the North Korean nuclear program over 25 years. The gains have been far greater than the losses. Sure, it could have benefited economically with a different North Korean regime. It could have benefited in terms of some possible improvement in relations with the United States, Japan, and South Korea, but it's gained so much more by putting pressure on those three countries and insisting that it is essential to a solution to this problem. I think at the same time, China has another goal. It wants to change North Korea. So it's not just an asset, but it's a target of pressure. And China wants also to use North Korea to get some benefits from ties to these other countries, getting them to say, well, we see China as more cooperative than maybe it really is. So I would say that this suggests a deeper strategy than just North Korea as a way of damaging the United States, but that has been a huge goal. And I think the goals probably vary among different groups in China and we don't hear enough from the military forces and security forces and communist identity forces that really think North Korea has been this kind of asset and want to keep using it as an asset. Sure, let me just in reverse because I'll just build a little bit on Gil's answer to Joe Bosco on the China's interests on North Korea, having nuclear weapons. And I agree with Joe's sort of assumption that it's an extension of the counter-intervention strategy that China has. If you have nuclear weapons in Pyongyang, United States is not going to invade. That solves a Chinese problem, but that doesn't settle all the scenarios. And because there are other scenarios, including crisis instability, China would probably like to subscribe to an arms control process. And even this week, they've called for North Korea to set out a roadmap, a realistic roadmap. Whether that's in the U.S. interests or whether that's acceptable to the U.S. or okay, that's another matter. That's not full denuclearization. It could be on the way toward denuclearization. And if you think about the phased implementation most officials are talking about, even within a comprehensive deal, the difference between arms control and phased implementation seems a matter of semantics because that's the reality of where we are. Now back to Katie's two points on inequality, you've actually said in your report that this is overnight in this kind of scenario, the most unequal country in the world, in a sense. And I'm thinking good news for North Korean millennials, not elites. That is for younger people. And I'm going back to Weimar after the Cold War and after German unification. Anybody, any man of my age in former East Germany was out of work, forced out of work. So I don't know whether those were elites or not. Maybe the elites found other jobs, but in any event, it definitely made an impression on me when I saw all these men over 50 or so absolutely wandering the streets or playing chess because they had nothing to do. And it could be the same thing in North Korea, assuming a peaceful scenario. On getting this process rootenized and organized, I mean, this could be part of a USRK discussion in your policy recommendations. If you can actually say, look, RK, US, this kind of stabilization framework provides a basis, then those officials should be sketching out what is the kind of organization we would need if we need to scale this up and who would be in charge? And you could at least think through those things beyond, again, the military planning that's very thorough and very well-established. What needs to be extended here? How do you do that? So you could at least have that ready to go should there be a need and a political will. Thank you. As we wind up, Kathy and all the other panelists, I want your response in 10 seconds. As you speak to the younger generation, because this will be their problem and their challenge as much as it is ours, right? So please give your word of wisdom to the younger generation in this room. What should they do to prepare for this? I'll read the report. I mean, just keep in mind that we're really bad at predicting what's going to happen. And I would just say from an American point of view, it is important to understand the Korean perspective. Marcus? Young South Koreans are understandably daunted by the aging of their population and the fact they're gonna have to pay for a lot of old folks. And so they look at unification of skepticism. I would simply say this is an opportunity to free 25 million of your cousins from an absolutely barbaric system. And yes, it will cost money, but it's only money. You can always make more of it. Gil? We started by talking about how emotional these issues are. I would say the main advice I would give is reduce emotionality. This is not an issue where emotion should dominate. This is an issue where expertise and understanding, not specifically from a South Korean perspective, but from a regional overview should be important. In large, the planning process, don't ignore it, you can't predict the future, may never happen, but be ready for the unpredictable. I couldn't have put it better. So on behalf of Katie and myself, let me also thank Alex and Sean and Paul, all of our great staff here at Carnegie, and to all of our participants who basically came despite your busy schedules. I have not been to all seminars here in Washington, and I don't say this because I'm chairing this, but this was really a great panel. And the reason why it was a great panel was because we had great panelists. So on behalf of Carnegie, please give this great panel a huge, huge applause. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And for your support, congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And this will conclude the rollout of our report. Thank you.