North Korea’s KN-11 Goes Kablooie

Jeffrey Lewis 0:09

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control disarmament and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California.

Aaron Stein 0:25

And I'm Aaron Stein. I'm a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafiq Career Center for the Middle East and a contributor to the Arms Control Wonk blog. And we're recording two podcasts in a row, Aaron. I know. I know. It's really back this time. I'm officially out of semi-retirement. I think people probably didn't believe us last week.

I know. I know. It's not just an aberration or a one-shot deal. North Korea, still interesting. I know. And building your little OSINT Jedi empire over there in sometimes sunny Monterey. You know, it's sunny right now.

Jeffrey 0:59

It was raining this morning, but I can see the sun glinting on the water out my office window.

Aaron 1:06

Does your team just sort of like – Anxiously await North Korean YouTube videos?

Jeffrey 1:12

Yes, actually. Dave Schmerler, who's one of the people who helped us on our latest analysis of this apparently failed submarine launch ballistic missile test, Dave has notifications set up for all the North Korean YouTube accounts. And he crazily persuaded me to do the same thing. And so I get like 10 email notifications a day. Basically, every time Kim Jong-un takes a dump, it gets posted online and I get a notification of the video.

Aaron 1:51

IPhone goes ding.

Jeffrey 1:53

Yeah, I think I'm going to turn them off pretty soon. It's a lot of North Korean propaganda.

Aaron 2:01

I mean, I think this last video, I mean, obviously sent you guys down the path of everything that we do here on the Arms Control Wong podcast and inside your team. OSINT analysis, looking at videos, missiles, nukes, and North Korea.

Jeffrey 2:15

Yeah, it's pretty fun. And we got to use the whole team. So we had Dave Schmerler doing a bunch of geolocation. We had Bo Kim using her Korean skills. Melissa and I were doing whatever it is that Melissa and I do. But the really kind of interesting and special part was Catherine Dill, who has these incredible video editing skills.

Broke apart the footage that the North Koreans released frame by frame. And we'll talk about it. But basically, the North Koreans had mashed up all this footage. And, you know, she took it all apart and put it back together again in order. And some interesting things emerged.

Aaron 3:00

Yeah, I mean, let's just go right into it. I mean, what did the video purport to show? And I mean, how did it fit into the stuff that you guys were doing?

Jeffrey 3:07

Yeah, so the North Koreans released this footage on, I guess it was the 8th of January? Yeah, January. So it was sometime before that, and Kim Jong-un was all bundled up in a coat and a hat, so presumably in the winter, showing the launch of a submarine-launched ballistic missile. It gets ejected out of the water, and it ignites and apparently soars into the heavens.

But it was weird. It was really weird because they showed the launch three different times, all from basically the same angle, but using different cameras. And they had manipulated it and cut it up. And so the actual launch sequence was just a few seconds long. It was really, really short. And so they showed it like over and over and over again.

And so what Catherine did And poor Catherine had us in her office all the time while she was doing this. And we put this up online so that people can see it. But she took every clip. And then the North Koreans had jerked around the timing of the launches. So some of them seemed to launch fast and some launched slow.

And so she normalized the time for all of them and then put them – All against one another so you could watch them. And it turns out it was the same launch, just presented three times slightly differently.

Aaron 4:39

Right, and the video purports to show the ejection of an SLBM, the ignition of its engines, and then it sort of cuts at the end to it soaring into the heavens, as you said.

Jeffrey 4:50

Right, but, and do you mind if I use a technical term?

Aaron 4:53

No. It went kablooey. It went kablooey, right. And so you were able to tell that from – or at least Catherine and the team was able to tell that from sort of the way that she manipulated the video, correct?

Jeffrey 5:04

Yeah, exactly. And we can talk about some of this a little bit later. But a lot of people noticed from the get-go that the footage showing the missile flying into the sky was actually an old video of a scud. But what was really interesting was the North Koreans let one of the sequences go on, Catherine says, two frames too long.

And once you look at it really closely and you put it next to a successful Soviet launch, it's pretty clear that this was not a normal launch. Well, it did ignite, but it ignited and then catastrophically exploded.

Aaron 5:49

I think we should back up a little bit. I think the third SLBM Test that you guys have looked into since May, is it?

Jeffrey 6:00

Right. It's the third, yes, it's the third announcement or the third event that we know about that we can scrutinize. I guess in 2014, if memory serves me, there were reports that the US intelligence community had seen a submarine in North Korea with launch tubes. Which is pretty interesting. And a bunch of us scrambled to try to find that.

And the problem was back then, I love saying this, it's 2014, but back then the quality of commercial satellite images was not quite good enough that even if you saw the even if you had seen the submarine you just couldn't make out the tubes. Right. But eventually, decent enough pictures emerged where there was something that was kind of blurry that looked like a tube.

And then in May 2015, the North Koreans released what they said was footage of an ejection test and the missile launching.

Aaron 7:01

Right. And then this sent off a whole other previous round of OSINT analysis about whether or not this actually came from the subs. Did it come from something else? What was the test? Was the test successful? Et cetera, et cetera.

Jeffrey 7:13

Yeah, I think the first thing is it looked to us like it was an animation, not a real launch. The press reports that involved leaks from U.S. intelligence said it was an ejection test, but that it didn't ignite. Or if it did ignite, it didn't fly very far. And this showed the missile flying really far, but it just looked – I mean, it was so pretty and so clean.

And the name of the missile was oriented exactly at the camera.

Aaron 7:47

It was a well-placed camera if it was actually real.

Jeffrey 7:51

It just really – it just doesn't look real. And we did this analysis of this movie called The Country I Saw, which is a North Korean – What would you call it? It's a propaganda film and the title is very instructive, right? It's how you are supposed to see North Korea as a foreigner.

Aaron 8:09

We talked about it last week.

Jeffrey 8:10

Yeah. Oh, we did. Okay, great. So it's got animation of one of their missile launches in it. And honestly, the May 2015 video looks more like the animation in the country I saw. Then it does an actual film or video of a – what do we call it now? Because we don't use film or video. A moving image?

A digital moving image? Yeah, right. Then it – yeah, it doesn't look like it's a movie of – Of, of a real launch. So one thing is we're pretty sure that they doctored it. And then the question was what they, what they did. And we, especially Dave Schmerler, Dave's got an eagle eye for this stuff. He noticed that just off a camera and occasionally poking into the scene, there was a boat that we thought might be a tugboat.

And so Dave speculated that that might have been launched from an underwater submersible – or from a submersible barge rather than an actual submarine.

Aaron 9:23

Which wouldn't be all that surprising in the development of an SLBM program, correct? Correct.

Jeffrey 9:28

That's exactly right. I mean, the reason that we were able to make that hypothesis is because that's how everybody does it. And in fact, Dave ended up finding in a satellite image the submersible launch platform parked next to the submarine with the tubes.

Aaron 9:43

Yeah, I remember the picture. They weren't far away from each other.

Jeffrey 9:46

No, no. I mean they're all – it's like that's their little pen for their developmental assets and the test stand on land that they've been using is a couple hundred meters away. It's not very far. So that was a weird conversation though because I give Dave a lot of credit for spotting that tugboat and then – Figuring out what the Russian one looks like, which I think is called a TULP.

It's an acronym, which I don't remember what it stands for right now. And if it did, it would be in Russian. And in true arms control fashion, we would murder the name. That's right. But I think people reacted strangely to that because we kind of looked at it as – Oh, the North Koreans aren't stupid. They're doing barge tests and then they're going to do submarine tests.

And that's a reasonable, sensible way to carry out a missile development program. But it kind of got reported like because this thing looked like an animation and because there was a barge and the North Koreans had implied through editing that it was a submarine, that it was all fake. Right. We were like, actually, the barge is, from a North Korean perspective, a sign that it's actually real.

Aaron 11:14

Right. It's a hurdle on a developmental ladder, which brings us to the more recent stuff, which is reports in November and then up until the digital thing that we had in December, right? Yeah.

Jeffrey 11:26

Right, so the one useful thing that came out of the May 2015 video is that we could look at the rockets Or the purported rocket. And we could say that it was familiar looking, right? Basically, it looks like the R-27, aka the SS-N-6, this Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missile that we think the North Koreans got in the 90s, and which we think is the basis of this thing called the Musudan that they have paraded, and which we think they sold to Iran.

Aaron 12:08

Right, exactly. I was going to bring in the Iran connection as well, but I think that's for a different podcast.

Jeffrey 12:14

Definitely, but the point is, the shape of the submarine-launched ballistic missile is consistent with this story we had had about this missile that shows up in North Korea that's the Musudan, which looks like kind of a stretched SS-N-6. So naturally, the question was, is it really an SS-N-6? It seems like it could be, but there's only kind of circumstantial evidence.

So at least the animation of the North Korean submarine-launched ballistic missile, which we call the KN—we don't, but other people call it the KN-11? Right. And so we were like, okay, that's an R-27.

Aaron 12:59

Right. So for listeners at home, the R-27 is basically the same as the SS-N-6, and the North Korean designation is KN-11. Right.

Jeffrey 13:07

Or I think in this case, I've never been able to figure it out, but I think the KN is the South Korean designation for North Korean missiles.

Aaron 13:15

I don't know that, though. It's a working hypothesis.

Jeffrey 13:20

It's a guess. I don't know why. People get squirrely about sharing their missile designators.

Aaron 13:25

So have they helped you out with like being able to, to, to identify it both, you know, sort of been parading it around and then you know, it's sort of subsequent videos that have been released about it, or at least open source reporting.

Jeffrey 13:35

Well, right. Even if it's an animation, it's an animation that conveys certain technical information. And then, and then you can, you can check that technical information. So the big debate Actually, I shouldn't call it a debate because among my nerdy community, we just have these endless discussions.

Aaron 13:55

Right, exactly. Anybody who reads Arms Control Walk knows about the post on JetBand.

Jeffrey 13:59

Yeah, that's right. Well, so Mike Elliman and Joseph Dempsey at IISS, they're not alone in this, have this suspicion that— That the North Korean version of the SS-N-6 may not use, I don't want to call it fancy, but basically the advantage of the R-27 or SS-N-6, let's just call it the R-27, the advantage of the R-27 over a Scud is it has better fuel.

Not amazingly great, unbelievable fuel, but just like Soviet 60s fuel instead of like Soviet 50s fuel.

Aaron 14:45

Right, so it gets more power out of the thrust.

Jeffrey 14:48

Yeah, it's just a better engine. Element and Dempsey speculate that maybe they're using scud fuel instead of the slightly nicer stuff.

Aaron 15:03

This comes back in your latest video editing, which we'll get to.

Jeffrey 15:08

Yeah, I'm previewing it, Aaron. You're foreshadowing. But so the point is, you know, like we can see the shape of this missile in May. And it's like, oh, that looks like an R-27. And then we have this kind of discussion of like, well, is it really an R-27? Because, you know, they have this thing called the Musudan, which looks like a stretched R-27, but they've never flight tested any of it.

And it's like, why is that? And, and, and then there's this kind of discussion like, well, you know, maybe, you know, maybe they're, maybe they're fussing around with the fuel. So that brings us to the fall, right? So we, it's like, okay, we got an animation. We think maybe they popped it up out of the water and then slapped an animation on top of it.

Or maybe they taught popped a I guess it's called a Sabo. I, when you, when you have like a, like a, It's not even a dummy because it doesn't look anything like a missile, but it's a thing that you can put in the canister and you can just practice popping it out.

Aaron 16:11

Yeah, I didn't even know that.

Jeffrey 16:12

Yeah, there's a nice picture of Dwight David Eisenhower watching an early ejection test. But anyway, so we think that whatever. They tested something to do an ejection test and slapped the animation over it in May. But then in November, there were reports that there was a failed ejection test from a submarine that damaged the submarine.

Aaron 16:37

Right. So it wasn't from a barge but from an actual submarine.

Jeffrey 16:40

Right. And Joe Bermudez, who everybody adores because he's great – Eventually got satellite pictures of the main North Korean site at Shinpo. Yeah, the pen. Yeah, the pen that showed the submarine was tarped up. Right. Which would be consistent with like, oh, well, maybe it really had been damaged and they were working on it.

Aaron 17:13

Yeah. Not definitive, but certainly sort of when built upon the open source reporting in November makes you raise an eyebrow, perhaps it's true.

Jeffrey 17:21

Yeah. And, and I have to say, I think we had an earlier conversation about this. You know, I'm still proud that still proud that Sean O'Connor at Janes and I ID'd There was a visit by Kim Jong-un to Shinpo. And when the story about like, oh, there's a submarine with tubes on it came out, Sean and I found this visit that Kim Jong-un had done to Shinpo.

And we were like, that's where the submarine is going to be. Because they weren't explicit about why he was visiting, but it was kind of implied. We were pretty proud of that. But then Joe came along and spotted the missile test stand and the submarine itself and basically everything but the Tulp. So we had this like, oh, maybe it didn't work in November.

And then in December there were reports that there had been a successful ejection.

Aaron 18:18

Right, exactly, which leads us to the present, which is our foreshadowed conversation at the beginning. And then the video comes out.

Jeffrey 18:26

Right, because what happens is there's this leak that says the U.S. intelligence community thinks they did an ejection test, but we don't know whether it ignited. And then the North Koreans release the video saying, yes, it ignited. And we come along and saying, yeah, it really ignited. I mean, it went – Well, I won't say max. I'll say kablooey again.

Aaron 18:47

Yeah, like kablooey. Yeah. Right.

Jeffrey 18:49

Yeah, it exploded.

Aaron 18:51

Right, and so this is where Catherine did the video editing. It used the video editing software, and it went two frames too long because the team was able to identify some pretty hanky stuff in the video.

Jeffrey 19:02

Yeah, so it's really funny because we were scratching our heads for the longest time. So we had these three launch sequences. And the North Koreans did this weird thing, which is they showed the missile come up out of the water with Kim Jong-un kind of in the foreground. And then they cut to a clean shot of the missile.

And so that was kind of shown as event one, but it was actually two different cameras. Right. And then they showed it again, which we called for a while. So we ended up calling the first thing Event 1 and 2, even though it was shown as a single thing. And then we had Event 3 and Event 4.

But they were all at different speeds. And Event 4 is actually a mirrored image of Event 3.

Aaron 19:54

Right. So there's three shots, but three and four are the same, just mirrored one another.

Jeffrey 19:59

Right. So we flipped around number four, so it was oriented the same way as everything else. By the way, to make sure, how do we know that it wasn't everything else that was turned around, we used the flunky next to Kim Jong-un had a pin. So we knew which side the pin had to be on, and so that became our reference for the whole analysis.

Aaron 20:21

That's cool. What was the pin up?

Jeffrey 20:24

Oh, every North Korean has a Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il pin. I mean, sorry, a Kim Il-sung pin.

Aaron 20:33

Right, and at Pugwash, those were like hot commodities because everybody wants to get their hands on that pin from the North Korean delegation. Can you do like a pin swap? They won't give them away, but it's always the big thing about who would Pugwash.

Jeffrey 20:46

Would you get them drunk and take it off them? People try.

Aaron 20:54

I'll get back to this as we wrap up the conversation, but even at Pugwash, we treat the North Koreans as if they're zoo animals. It's something to look at and marvel at rather than serious people who are trying to do something here.

Jeffrey 21:04

Well, that is where we really want to end because I wrote a Washington Post column and spoiler alert that the big concept behind the Washington Post column is consistent with the kind of narrow implication of the technical analysis. But to go back to the technical analysis, so once we put all of the videos in order or at least put them side by side and put them on the same speed so that they matched frame for frame, And we turned the fourth video around so it wasn't a mirror image anymore.

Once we did all that, it became clear it was the same event filmed from the same angle.

Aaron 21:51

Right. Was it two different cameras?

Jeffrey 21:53

We think three different cameras. Three different cameras. Because there were... There was the person standing on the deck with Kim Jong-un holding a camera. And Kim Jong-un is in that film. Smiling. So that can only be one of the four, right? It can't be any of the others because Kim's fat butt is in the way. There's – yeah, I – whatever.

Did you see I got the Washington Post to print the phrase, gracing Kim's ample posterior with a gentle peck? I did. I did. What the hell is wrong with journalism? Nothing. So there's the one camera, which is a handheld camera, where Kim is in the shot. And that can't be any of the other pictures. There's a – when he's filming Kim – The flunky also manages to briefly film a tripod with a camera on it.

That's funny. Right? So that's – so we know now that there are at least two cameras. And there is one shot – and I have to go back and talk to Catherine. Catherine is – Really convinced that of the kind of remaining three shots there were just, there were differences that she doesn't ascribe to to processing. And so she thinks the, the other three shots that has to be at least two cameras.

So that's, that's her best guess. I say at least two cameras, she says at least three shots. But I thought it was kind of fun that we could figure that out, you know?

Aaron 23:50

Right. With the, with the pin is, is, is fun and all of that. Right. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's part of the fun of all this stuff.

Jeffrey 23:55

So once you start going through it frame by frame it just looks strange because the initially, well, here's what we really couldn't figure out. We couldn't understand why the missile, when it got ejected, went so high. When the R-27 gets ejected, it gets above the water and then lights immediately.

Aaron 24:24

Right, because there are tests of R-27 on YouTube.

Jeffrey 24:27

Right. We were trying to normalize these. We have all these videos of R-27 tests, and we're trying to line them up frame by frame. And it just never works. It just doesn't make any sense.

Aaron 24:39

Yeah.

Jeffrey 24:40

Yeah. The timing wasn't right. And then we kind of are like, why isn't the timing working out? And we start to notice these little things. Like in one of the frames that went on too long, you can see ejecta, debris coming off the missile.

Aaron 24:54

Right.

Jeffrey 24:56

That's not right. No. And then we kind of noticed, you know, the plume, the funny thing about the plume is it really looks more like an explosion than a plume. Yeah. And the, and the explosions don't happen in quite the same place. And so then we started really looking at it and we, and once we slowed it down and got everything lined up, it became clear what happened.

And we've put this up on the blog with stills, but basically what happens is the, We lined up the R-27 test with the KN-11 test. So we had the missile poke out of the water at the same time, and then we had the back end come out of the water at the same time, since they're about the same size.

We know that the timing is kind of close if we do that, right? It may not be perfect, but it's in the same neighborhood. So the R-27 lights...

Aaron 25:49

Right, and it starts to go. Immediately.

Jeffrey 25:51

Yeah. And we realize that what's happened is that the KN-11 doesn't light. Right? It's supposed to light. Yeah. It doesn't. And then a frame or two later, as the R-27 is really, like the plume becomes very visible. I mean, it's visible before, but now it's like a distinct, nice kind of plume. The KN-11 belches black smoke.

Aaron 26:16

Right, which gets back to one of our earlier conversations, right?

Jeffrey 26:19

Yeah, like it's not supposed to be belching black smoke.

Aaron 26:21

No, no, no.

Jeffrey 26:23

And then it does ignite. So now it's igniting after the R-27, which is like well underway. Yeah. But the ignition, which does look like a nice clean ignition – Is immediately followed by an explosion. And once you're looking at the R-27 plume and the ignition, you're like, oh, that's not ignition. That's an explosion. And then there are three separate distinct explosions that happen in different places.

So it's like one colleague called it popcorn, right? It pops. So it belches black smoke, it ignites, and then it explodes, explodes, explodes. And then in the final last couple of frames, which they had cut out of most of the other launches but not the last one, you really see that basically the flames are engulfing where the missile was.

Aaron 27:14

I have the frames open on my thing. The missile sort of looks off kilter in a way that the R-27 does not.

Jeffrey 27:20

Yeah, that's right. And so one of the questions we had was, well, is there some reason that it would do it like this or – And ultimately, it's one of these things that, it's funny how your brain works. So we had tried to work through all of the things that could be happening. Like, well, maybe it's just lighting a little differently.

Maybe the fuel type is different. Maybe it's oriented differently. Maybe you're a funny angle. But once you see it explode, you can't unsee it, right? I don't know if that makes any sense.

Aaron 27:54

Yeah, yeah. It's like when you find Waldo, all you can do is stare at Waldo.

Jeffrey 28:00

Right, so once that happened, and we were like, oh no, it exploded, then when we went back and watched the video, even at full speed, it seems clear as a bell to us. Right, right. You're like, oh, okay, it's exploding, it's exploding. And then suddenly all the other stuff makes sense, right? Like, why do they cut it where they do?

Because if they let it go any longer, you're going to see even more of the explosion. Why do they stick the scud footage on at the end? Because it didn't work and they want to show that it worked. And my personal favorite, why does the guy on the deck flinch? Schmerler noticed that when it explodes, You see the flunky standing next to Kim.

You see his elbows. You're looking at him from behind. You see his elbows jerk up before they cut it. Do they really? Yeah, and I think he's flinching. I think he – I wouldn't base the whole analysis on that, right? Yeah. But Schmerler early on was like, did he flinch when it ignited? It's like, oh, he flinched when it blew up.

He was seeing it blow up, and he knew that was not what it was supposed to look like. You wouldn't base the whole analysis on that. The analysis is the fact that I've got an image of the thing tearing apart, throwing ejecta out at a point in the launch process where the actual R-27 is soaring skyward. But all of these little weird things that hadn't made sense about the video fell into place.

Aaron 29:38

Right, right. But it sort of then transitions into the, well, what does it all mean type thing. It may have not worked, but it's the latest in sort of a sequential program that they're following a testing schedule. Totally.

Jeffrey 29:57

Yeah, so one thing we're having a discussion about is, and John Schilling joins, I think, Elliman and Dempsey. We're now looking at the color of the explosion to try to guess what the actual fuel type was.

Aaron 30:13

Right, because this is actually really interesting. Yeah. Tell the listeners what you can tell from where the plume looks.

Jeffrey 30:18

Well, so missile rocket fuel are chemicals, and chemicals burn different colors. And so the particular combination for Chinese rocket fuel is bright orange when it explodes. The clouds it releases are bright orange. And so you can tell a solid-fueled rocket from a liquid-fueled one because the plume for a solid-fueled rocket has little bits of metal in it, and so it's – It's a nice big thick cloud, whereas a liquid fuel one should burn pretty clean.

And so you can just kind of eyeball them and tell. And so now we're kind of saying like, oh, well, now that we watch the fuel and the oxidizer explode together – What do we make of the color combination? So we're talking through this. There are still a variety of opinions. I'm trying to collect a reference library of rocket explosions.

That'd be cool. It's spectacular. That would be very cool.

Aaron 31:20

Unbelievable watching enormous rockets explode. Well, I mean just quickly, I mean if it's scud fuel, that sort of suggests something that they're having trouble with. Yeah. Or advanced fuels.

Jeffrey 31:31

Well, and it reduces the – it reduces the – Threat posed by the technology.

Aaron 31:41

I mean... Yeah, the potential range.

Jeffrey 31:43

You know, look, North Korea imported, I think it was two Scud missiles from Egypt in the late 70s, early 80s, and they reverse engineered them, and that's the basis of their rocketry program, including the Nodong and then the Taepodong series. Right. And so the idea or the concern was always that now that they had this better engine with better fuel...

That they would do the same thing. And so the Musudan is kind of the Nodong equivalent, right? The stretched larger version, but that, you know, we would eventually see ICBMs that made use of this, this technology. If they're using the old fuel then, then that doesn't, that doesn't necessarily apply So we're working through it. I don't know.

I'm skeptical. I don't see why the fuel is such a challenging thing. But the other thing is like the big question we have is like why have we never seen a Musudan engine test, right? We've heard reports that there have been static engine tests. We've never seen a flight test of one of these things. Right. Yeah, it all raises questions.

We just saw a flight test and it didn't go so well. Right, but – Admittedly, a more complicated one, but yeah.

Aaron 33:05

Yeah, I mean it's a more complicated one. But I mean just picking up on the last thread before we jumped over to the fuel, it's just – it's similar to the nuclear program in the way I conceptualize it. It's the next step – In a program. Was it Joe who figured out that the land-based test stand and then the sub and the pen and then the barge, those are three things of an actual testing program which suggests that more tests are coming and that they are at least intent upon learning.

Even if the missile did explode, it still matters.

Jeffrey 33:38

My friend John Schilling has written this article where he thinks this test happened from a barge. I I disagree, but whatever the opposite of vehemently is, I don't vehemently disagree. I have just a different thought. But I think it comes down to this big question of perspective, which is probably where we should end. But John saw, as we did, the same tugboat just off screen.

And so – In this latest test. Yes. And so John, I think, quite reasonably observed that if the tugboat is correlated with barge tests, that would be – that would make it slightly more likely that this was a barge test. Right. I – you know, I don't know. I mean I think it's odd that the boat is there.

Yeah. But on the other hand, we have this report that there was this November ejection that was an attempt from a submarine. And we have pictures of the submarine. And so it seems to me that it – whether John is right or not about what the barge signals, I'm concerned that other people are – Not looking at this in the right way, right?

That they are looking at the possibility of a barge, along with our observation that the thing exploded, and saying that this is like all a joke, right? But it's not a joke. This is the stage that you go through to get from having no submarine-launched ballistic missile to get to a stage where you do have one. And so I'm just concerned that some of the people who say it's a barge, and this is definitely not John, but some of the people who say it's a barge and some of the people who point to the fact that it exploded are doing this as a way of sort of saying, like, we have to worry about this problem.

Aaron 35:37

I would worry about this problem because it's married to the nuclear program as well.

Jeffrey 35:41

Well, from my perspective, it's the opposite. It shows that they have this clear intention, right? And that we have a period of time to do something about it, but that if we don't act, then they're going to figure it out. And this has been – I wrote this article for the Washington Post where I made this kind of big point about their nuclear program, but it's equally true of the missile program.

Every time the North Koreans do something like this, if it doesn't work, we kind of laugh at them and pat them on the head. And if it does work, we wring our hands and then say that it's too late. But we always fall into this lethargy afterwards. We seem incapable of coming around to the idea that no matter what capabilities they have now, if we do nothing, those capabilities will grow.

I don't know why we do that. The only thing I can think is that, and this is what I said in the post, that our image of them is so patronizing that That when they say things like, yes, we want to build a thermonuclear weapon, and yes, we want to build an ICBM, and yes, we want to build a submarine-launched ballistic missile, and we want to put those thermonuclear weapons on those missiles, we just laugh.

And it's so adoid, because on the one hand, we think it's absurd, because there's nothing that is more absurd than the juxtaposition of the North Koreans with these technologies. That's precisely why they're doing it. They're doing it because they don't like that we laugh at them.

Aaron 37:26

Right. I think beyond a deep-seated paranoia about the intentions of the United States.

Jeffrey 37:31

Yeah. It's all part of a piece, but the whole point of their propaganda is that these capabilities are what makes them strong and powerful. Even if we realize that they're not strong and powerful... Like the motivation for acquiring these capabilities seems very straightforward to me. It's worth it to me to try to head off some of these programs.

Aaron 37:57

Well, how do you do that with an SLBM program? Perhaps we'll wrap up there with the policy impacts of this. Or do you see the SLBM program as sort of an outgrowth of their nuclear program? So you deal with a nuclear program, and then the SLBM program becomes less threatening.

Jeffrey 38:11

Well, I mean, my advice is boring, right? It's like, eat your vegetables. I have always argued, and this, I think, is what I'm trying to get at with this big, big complaint about how we look at the problem. We don't have much success getting them to give things up. And so the value is in imposing test bans on them.

You know, like for all the horrible things they did with their missile program, there was a relatively long period of several years where we were, you know, if you want to be uncharitable about it, bribing them, but whatever, we got them to observe a test moratorium. And I think getting them to not test their nuclear weapons and getting them to not test their missiles is of enormous value because as we saw with their first test, Nuclear test in 2006, it didn't work.

As we see with this SLBM test, it didn't work. If we do nothing other than sanction them and write them sternly worded letters and let them keep testing, eventually it will work.

Aaron 39:23

You can see examples of that on the nuclear side. Yeah, absolutely. The latest test is far different than the 2006 test.

Jeffrey 39:30

Yeah. My best guess at this point, and there's still some question about the yield of the last event, but I think when all is said and done, we will have concluded that every test has been larger than the previous one and has been more successful. Yeah. A lot of people say, well, you're just managing the problem. You're just kicking the can down the road.

Aaron 39:52

It's like, yeah.

Jeffrey 39:52

That's worth it to me. It's worth it to me to... Engage with them on this very limited tactical basis if what we're getting out of it is they test nuclear weapons less frequently and they test missiles less frequently. Because I think with no constraints, what we're going to see is what we saw in 2014, which is where the scud footage came from.

This kind of opportunity for them to test these capabilities really intensively And get much better at it. Because, you know, like, yeah, I know they're ridiculous and we laugh at them and we think they're silly. But this is where I ended the post piece. Like, can nuclear arm North Korea? It just isn't all that funny.

Aaron 40:38

I guess the counter to that is, I mean, we don't really have a policy at the moment, if you ask me. But the counter to that is that by agreeing to a test moratorium without them giving anything up is that you're indirectly recognizing a nuclear program.

Jeffrey 40:52

Oh, yeah. I think it's the fundamental challenge of dealing with North Koreans. And I'm actually sympathetic to it. And it's not just recognizing their nuclear program, it's recognizing them. You know, the reason they're developing these capabilities is because we want to accept them as normal, legitimate government. And they're not normal. And it's Really hard to confer legitimacy on a government that treats its citizens that way.

I mean, I often, I teach the missile negotiations the Clinton administration did with North Koreans to my students, and I sort of encourage them to think about, like, just imagine how it looks politically to have a state dinner, a sumptuous state dinner, with one of the Kims while the country starves. You know, it's not... It's not easy.

But I would, you know, I come back to it. I would set against that. The reality is that these are very threatening capabilities. They are threatening capabilities that the North Koreans can successfully develop if they are allowed to keep testing them. And so all of that other stuff aside, we, I think, are better off if we are Finding ways to encourage them, whether it's by pressure or by incentive, and in reality it's probably a little bit of both, to not test these capabilities.

Aaron 42:20

Right. In a way, it comes down to what you're trying to do. If you're trying to manage a problem that already exists in a way that tries to prevent their vertical proliferation, their refinement to the capabilities they already have, Rather than using small-arm tactics of sanctions to try and wait out the regime until it collapses, until you get something better.

It's actually the fundamental thing that you have with the Iranians as well. I think it comes down to what you want to do about this. I think it's a good idea that they have test bans and stuff like that, because it puts a limit on the people that keep using program. It's treating them... It freezes them where they are rather than let them just keep going because they're obviously not going to stop, at least all the open source data points, to just continue testing on both legs, on the missile and the nuclear side.

Jeffrey 43:11

Yeah, and maybe I'm biased because I do China, and I know I say this every week, but my outlook is so fundamentally informed by the fact that the Chinese in the 1950s set this absolutely absurd goal of putting thermonuclear weapons on ICBMs, and then they went and did it. So I feel like if the Chinese in the 50s could set that goal and then get it done, North Korea today can.

The only way to slow that down or head that off, if we're really lucky, is not letting them test things.

Aaron 43:45

This isn't a good way to end the podcast.

Jeffrey 43:47

Well, Aaron, it's your fault. You're supposed to be the cheery one.

Aaron 43:53

Nobody thinks I'm the cheery one. I don't have anything nice to say. I mean, they tested. They continued to test. And, you know, in order to try and freeze it, you have to kind of recognize it.

Jeffrey 44:04

You know what I'm grateful for and what I'm happy about?

Aaron 44:09

North Korean YouTube alerts?

Jeffrey 44:10

No. I'm happy that you joined me on the podcast. That's right. And I'm happy that all of these people download and listen to it.

Aaron 44:19

So thanks to you and thanks to them.