North Korean Sanctions and Shellfish

Andrea Berger 0:02

You think, oh, gosh, we're going to be running around the world now monitoring whether countries are importing mollusks or other aquatic invertebrates from North Korea. And that's something I just can't get excited about.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:20

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.

Andrea 0:36

And I'm Andrea Berger, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Jeffrey 0:42

Ah, I'm so tired of talking about North Korean missiles, Andrea.

Andrea 0:47

You and me both. It's been a big, big couple weeks. But we have to do it.

Jeffrey 0:52

Maybe we can talk about non-missily parts of the North Korea situation since I've been so neglectful of things like sanctions and alliance reassurance issues.

Andrea 1:05

Yeah, and there's been lots happening on both those fronts, and I'm not very good at missile tech, so that sounds like a good plan to me.

Jeffrey 1:12

Yes, but you are the world's leading expert on Korean sanctions, so...

Andrea 1:20

There's so many coming down the pipeline that it's actually just hard to keep up with them, so maybe let's start there. We've had two rounds of new sanctions at different levels in the past two weeks. The The first was a set came out of Congress in a bundle with Russia sanctions and other things that the president started tweeting about.

And then there was, of course, the completely consensus-based decision-making in the UN Security Council that gave us UN Security Council 2371 on the 5th of August.

Jeffrey 1:54

Right. So U.S. sanctions and then UN sanctions. I've been so focused on the Russia piece and particularly the arms control related sanctions, which probably deserve their own pod separately, that I actually haven't looked closely at the North Korea sanctions. What's in them?

Andrea 2:16

So the first thing to note is that there's a number of North Korea related sanctions initiatives in Congress right now. So there's some bills, for example, that propose Coordination mechanisms for sanctions implementation in certain regions. There's other ideas floating around on new sanctions measures. And this one that got signed into law by the president basically updates and adds to some sanctions that were passed by Congress last year in February, 2016.

And, and, These measures cover a whole bunch of ground. They bring things in line with Security Council resolutions that got passed a few days later. So to include tighter restrictions on a certain mineral trade with North Korea and tighter sanctions on North Korean migrant labor. But really, you know, Congress picked a whole bunch of targets in this one and kind of is finding its mojo a little bit in the same way that they started to take on a much bigger semi-independent role for sanctions design and development as they did in the Iran case.

So, yeah, it covers a whole bunch of areas. And we can lay out kind of what a few of those are as well.

Jeffrey 3:44

I mean, I guess my observation from just looking at them briefly, which is kind of always an interesting... The emphasis in the sanctions, which I think is interesting from a public education perspective, is the sanctions seem to be about... Hurting the economic well-being of the regime. In other words, they're to punish the North Koreans in the hopes they'll make different decisions.

I often find that people I talk to who don't know much about sanctions assume that the sanctions are somehow targeted in a way that they impede the missile or the nuclear programs. But that's not what we're looking at here, right? We're looking at trying to change the regime's calculation by making them ever so slightly poorer, right?

Andrea 4:31

Yeah, that very kind of proliferation-focused objective for the sanctions regime is so 2006. That's the design focus that was laid out in reaction to North Korea's testing of its first nuclear weapon, and that approach kind of stuck around for about 10 years as the central aim. But really, after... The Iranian case seemed to show to U.S. policymakers that significant blunt pressure being exerted on the Iranian economy in general brought them back to the negotiating table, that that might be a strategy that if you applied it in the North Korean case could yield results too.

That thinking seems to have really started to prevail since 2016. This is what we're seeing right now. We're seeing attempts by Congress, by U.S. State Department in what it's pushing at the multilateral level to come up with sanctions that target North Korean export commodities in particular, in general. It doesn't matter. Coal, iron, you name it. If it's a major North Korean revenue stream, we want to put it in the crosshairs.

It's kind of the thinking coming out of Washington right now.

Jeffrey 5:49

So I think that that's going to backfire. And I'm kind of curious if you think that those sanctions are effective in terms of the calculation that the administration and its, I shouldn't say its friends in Congress, because it was supported pretty overwhelmingly.

Andrea 6:06

That's right.

Jeffrey 6:07

I get the sense that the, I know my sense is that the Washington consensus is wrong. And that these sanctions will not actually change regime behavior. But I'm curious, I'm curious what you think both because you're more familiar with the details of the sanctions and, and honestly, I mean, Of the two of us, right, you're the more astute Kumsusanologist.

So what the hell do you think?

Andrea 6:40

Well, for sanctions to work in that way, for the blunt export revenue-focused sanctions to make sense from a strategic perspective, you have to believe that North Korea's calculation over the costs and benefits of its nuclear program can be affected in such a way that the scales tip towards Kim Jong-un one day waking up and realizing that his nuclear program isn't worth it and he should at least negotiate some sort of constraint on them.

And while I think there's a greater than zero chance that that's true, I'm not Persuaded that there's a very high chance that that's the case in Pyongyang. So I'm doubtful that the revenue generation type sanctions are going to be significant from a strategic perspective. But at the same time, let's be honest about this. Part of the reason that Congress The White House is pushing for this stuff is because it's probably the easiest of a set of difficult policy options.

So there's a certain element of that, too. And they do want to show that North Korea's destabilizing actions, military programs come with costs.

Jeffrey 8:04

Yeah, my feeling about sanctions has always been that they are popular, not because there is any data that suggests that they work, and whenever people defend them, there tends to be a kind of anecdotal approach, but really because they serve this bureaucratic satisficing role. Like, there are people who want to be super, super tough, but they can't get their preferred policy, so they have to settle for sanctions.

And then there are people who don't want to go to war, And it's better to be, you can't beat something with nothing. So you got to beat something with something else. And sanctions are always that something else. So I feel like these are, you know, there's a strong bureaucratic or political preference for sanctions, even though they're probably nobody's first choice for a policy.

And frankly, I'm pretty skeptical on the data. I don't know.

Andrea 8:54

So I think I've got to emphasize...

Jeffrey 8:56

I'm going to be sanctions jackass for this whole pod.

Andrea 9:01

One thing worth reiterating is that even if you don't think that high-level objective of changing Kim Jong-un's mind is realistic, we need sanctions for a number of other things, at least some sanctions for a number of other things, to restrict North Korea's ability in particular to trade in sensitive commodities, to gain access to the types of finance that it needs for those programs.

And we've got to make sure we don't undermine consensus on sanctions that do those things in the process of talking about how they might not fix the really big problem. So that's one important element. But I also wanted to flag a few of the interesting things in the bill that Congress passed, because I read it with interest and noticed that there's a couple things that Congress has done.

One, they seem to have restricted in certain ways the president's ability to Decide on a lot of points. They mandate a lot more than they request or recommend. There's a lot of reporting built into this. So the Secretary of State has to report back on a whole bunch of stuff from the nature of the Iran-North Korea relationship to ports internationally that aren't, you know, sufficiently screening for North Korea-related trade to the Giving Congress a report of all North Korean military customers overseas and basically putting me out of a job.

So there's all of that sort of thing.

Jeffrey 10:37

You will never be out of a job at the Middlebury Institute, Andrea.

Andrea 10:41

Maybe. So that's in the bill in a really interesting way. But also there's a huge emphasis put on secondary sanctions, particularly as it relates to finance. And here what I mean is the U.S. is trying to leverage its influence on The entities and individuals that do business with North Korea overseas. So rather than trying to pressure North Korean entities and individuals directly, they're starting to build an approach that takes greater aim at the business partners.

So this was particularly prominent in the finance space in the bill where they're leveraging the U.S.'s continued role as one of the major global financiers. Financial centers and the role of the U.S. dollar as a very prominent international currency.

Jeffrey 11:37

I want to ask you about that because, I mean, this gets to, like I said, I'm just going to be sanctions troll for this whole thing. One of the concerns I have about the way that we do sanctions, and in particular the way that we do financial sanctions, is sanctions are great if that pain can then be traded for better behavior.

But financial sanctions, particularly as we found out in the Banco Delta Asia case where, you know, a Treasury press release basically caused a bank run. Yeah. That... They're actually really hard to turn off. And so, you know, we got to the Banco Delta Asia case with the North Koreans were like, OK, OK, OK, we give, you know, we'll we'll we'll show up at the meeting.

Just give us the money back. And then we were like, yeah, we don't actually know how to do that now. And I mean, one of the things that struck me about the way that this bill was described, although, you know, you you would be better positioned than I am to comment on it, is it's described as being harder for the president to waive.

Andrea 12:42

Yeah, well...

Jeffrey 12:43

So if the North Koreans give, can we turn these off?

Andrea 12:47

Oh, this is a big problem that we should... Maybe let's come back to this after we talk about UN sanctions, too, because I think it relates to that as well. But my main concern, actually, is that we're traveling down a road where we're making massive sanctions in terms of the on-paper design. And if we don't see an improvement in North Korean behavior in any respect, we're going to be stuck implementing them for a long time.

And they're pretty complicated. And especially, you know, for countries overseas that have far less capacity than the US, they must be looking at them and going, Oh, crap, we're going to be doing this for decades.

Jeffrey 13:23

Okay, so then let's talk about that. Because, I mean, as I understand it, it's the threat of secondary sanctions in the U.S. that helps build the political will to get the sanctions in the U.N., but we haven't talked about the sanctions in the U.N. That's right, yeah. So fill dumb me in so I can go back to being sanctions troll.

Andrea 13:42

Part of, allegedly, the approach that the U.S. took to getting the Chinese to agree to a new U.N. Security Council resolution, Was to threaten to take stronger action against Chinese entities doing business with North Korea. So again, this secondary approach.

Jeffrey 13:56

That and they put them on notice.

Andrea 13:58

Yes. Well, they put everyone on notice. So the world is on notice over North Korea sanctions implementation.

Scott LaFoy 14:07

Yeah.

Andrea 14:09

But the sanctions that they... Actually, they weren't sanctions. They were fines that the U.S. has levied against a single North Korean government Bank a few months ago, Bank of Dandong. And that kind of was a warning shot to the Chinese that the US is willing to take action against Chinese financial institutions that facilitate North Korean business and particularly North Korean access to finance further field.

They made clear when they took that action that Bank of Dandong was a small bank. This wasn't, you know, Something directed at major Chinese state banks. But, you know, the implicit kind of note was don't cooperate and we'll do more of this. So that's the backdrop to a new UN Security Council resolution, which got passed on the 5th of August and takes a lot of the previous momentum on revenue export, revenue, Focused sanctions further.

So again, targeting North Korean export commodities that make money for the regime. So there's complete or capped trading requirements for coal, iron ore, lead, seafood, and North Korean migrant labor. All of those are either fully banned as exports or capped. So it's a pretty substantial shift for some of those commodities, which were previously under UN Security Council sanctions, part of like a messy framework where countries had to report what their monthly imports of coal were.

And then the UN would ascribe them a market value and then post them on the website and monitor progress towards a Cap measured in volume and values, like a really complicated, ugly system. And by turning those into full bans, you basically do away with that, which is nice on the one hand, because from a monitoring perspective, it's way easier.

But then when they put bans on things like seafood, you think, oh, gosh, we're going to be running around the world now monitoring whether countries are importing Mollusks or other aquatic invertebrates from North Korea, and that's something I just can't get excited about.

Jeffrey 16:50

You don't want to be the director of shellfish monitoring?

Andrea 16:56

No, but Jeffrey, I think there's scope. If you want to become the world's foremost expert in North Korean aquatic invertebrates, there's a market for one of those experts now. So think about it. Yeah, no. I'm from rural Illinois.

Jeffrey 17:14

I've only recently begun to like seafood.

Andrea 17:19

Yeah, I don't know. Seafood. I get the logic.

Jeffrey 17:24

Yeah, but that's because you're from the peg.

Andrea 17:28

Well, really landlocked.

Jeffrey 17:30

I mean, by the time seafood gets to the peg, it's... Not fresh. So, okay. So this is my... To go back, my two big questions that I still don't know about these sanctions resolutions, or at least about the strategy behind the sanctions resolutions... Is if the North Koreans comply, can we turn them off? And then I have a broader concern about whether sanctions resolutions actually end up strengthening the hand of the people we like the least.

But I know, I'm worried we can't turn these things off.

Andrea 18:15

I think it would be difficult if North Korea didn't Make fairly significant concessions on its nuclear and missile program to undo some of these sanctions at the u.n level or even the ones at the at the national level in the u.s but i mean even like in the iran case right we get it we get a deal with iran it's a deal that we like it's a deal that our european allies like and then you know within 24 hours

Jeffrey 18:45

United Against a Nuclear Iran is taking ads out showing all of the risks that even though sanctions are technically off, right, that there is still this latent sanctions risk trying to actively discourage businesses. So, you know, my worry, and maybe it doesn't matter because all of this stuff goes through China. I don't know. You tell me. But I'm worried about this situation where the North Koreans...

Have the Iranian experience, which is they sign up for the deal. They look around and they're like, okay, so where's the business? And it's like, oh, you're still North Korea, pal.

Andrea 19:22

Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head there with the difference between China and other countries in, let's call it an off-ramp scenario for sanctions.

Jeffrey 19:32

Okay.

Andrea 19:33

Because you would still have that business reputation issue for North Korea. Now, Traders in Liaoning or Jilin province may not care about those reputational issues so much. They may be much more opportunistic and comfortable with business risk, especially because they've been semi-used to that in North Korean trade for a long time. But further afield, and I can't tell you how many times I've had North Korean delegations telling me that I need to start lobbying for European investment in North Korea.

And that's just not going to happen because, you know, The issues aren't only sanctions. It's North Korea's wider, miserable business reputation. And, you know, the fact that the North Koreans still owe like the Swedes a whole bunch of money.

Jeffrey 20:21

Oh, yeah, they owe the Swedes money. What is that from? What is the Swede money from?

Andrea 20:25

That's from the 1970s. I think they allegedly bought a whole bunch of cars, bought and then didn't pay. And the Swedes, I think, politely send them a bill every year for the cars plus interest, which is cute. So, you know, as long as those types of situations continue with North Korea, they're not going to see that wider business improvement, probably.

But this is such a far away hypothetical scenario anyways. I think the bigger question in the near term is if you had limited North Korean progress on the nuclear and missile front. Could you salami slice away sanctions or would you even want to? It's a similar question, actually, to one we've been asking in the Russia sanctions context, where do you have to have a full implementation of the Minsk agreement, for example, to undo some of the Russia sanctions or can you salami slice bits away?

Jeffrey 21:22

Yeah, so that brings me to the other question I have that I'm kicking around in my head. Have I inflicted my Albert Camus objection to sanctions on you yet? I do it all the time. Go. So, did you have to read The Plague? I didn't. Man, nobody reads French existentialists anymore. Do you have a black turtleneck?

Andrea 21:51

I don't have a black turtleneck.

Jeffrey 21:52

Oh my God. You have to like get a black turtleneck and some coffee and maybe a cigarette and sit in a cafe in Paris and feel really badly about yourself. It's fun. Keep that in mind. So, in, so you know, Camus wrote this book, The Plague, La Peste in French, which I can't read in which it's set in Oran, right, in Algeria because his family were colonists, I guess is the, is, is the term. He, he really thought of himself as Algerian. He'd be pissed about that, but.

And Iran, like a country under a sanctions regime, is quarantined, right? Because there's a plague.

Andrea 22:39

Yeah.

Jeffrey 22:40

And, you know, that's an opportunity to explore how human beings react in different situations. But there's one character, and I always think of him when I'm thinking about North Korean sanctions. His name is Kotard, and he's a criminal. And he has the strangest reaction to the quarantine, which is he loves it. Because it... Basically removes the imminent threat of his arrest, and he actually gains social standing, if I recall correctly.

I think he's involved in some smuggling. And the point is, kind of regardless of the details... In a situation like the sanctions regime on North Korea, like when you're putting sanctions on a country, you're basically threatening to destroy certain people's businesses and livelihoods, right, and take away their power. And so then they may be compelled to negotiate.

But once the regime is in place and the country is quarantined, you've created a new set of winners and losers, right? And so the losers lose, but the winners now have an incentive to actually keep those sanctions on. So, you know, if you're running the smuggling network, Like, it's annoying that your country's sanctioned, but you don't have to compete against, like, a proper business.

And so like Cotard is depressed when the quarantine is about to be lifted. And I actually kind of wonder if the Chinese aren't right in this way about how to influence the North Koreans, which is like, how do you get people in the North Korean government who are powerful and important and like vaguely concerned about what you think?

And the answer is by like making them real rich and dependent on your trade. Right? So, like, we're, like, break that, cut that off, punish them, but then the problem is, you know, you're, like, you're left with a different group of people making decisions who may actually be worse. I don't know. Is that too... Am I just the sanctions troll?

Andrea 24:39

You know, I think it's a really important thing to think about and not really a discussion that we've been having in the public space with regards to North Korea sanctions design, at least yet. It may be that, you know, that's a very active conversation.

Jeffrey 24:52

That's why I always bring it up.

Andrea 24:53

In the bureaucracy and in the US, but I haven't seen that discussed publicly. So it's definitely something we need to think about. I also think we need to contemplate Some of the practical issues going forward, especially when it comes to outreach to countries we're now going to expect to implement, you know, seafood sanctions and coal bans and iron ore bans and a whole bunch of other stuff, is how do you connect those dots between the things that we're sanctioning, which are increasingly varied and, you know, are very indirectly connected to North Korea's nuclear missile program?

And the grievance that we have with North Korea that resulted in the imposition of sanctions in the first place. So how do you go to a country in Africa who probably hates sanctions as a foreign policy tool in the first place and say, we need you to sanction North Korean mollusk imports because North Korea is developing an ICBM?

Jeffrey 25:57

Yeah. Boy, when you say it like that, it sounds really dumb.

Andrea 26:01

Well, you know, there is a logic behind it. You can connect those dots. But I worry that we're going to lose the narrative battle for implementation when we start to just kind of go whole hog into sanctioning everything we can because North Korea is behaving so badly. So that's kind of a A thing that's in the back of my mind.

And I think we need to work a lot more on the implementation front in order to correct some of those issues or, or fill in those narrative gaps, if you will.

Jeffrey 26:33

Yeah. I mean, I guess the piece, well, the piece that I'm interested in is also the strategic piece because, you know, to go back to my first point, I don't think that there is a strategic decision to pursue sanctions. Again, I think it's satisfying in a political and bureaucratic context. And so, you know, the sanctions are serving different purposes for different people.

And so there isn't, for example, going to be, I don't think, a consensus about when to take them off or how to take them off. And I also think that because they're not data-driven, because they're satisficing-driven, we're walking into this situation where they probably won't work and our response will be just to keep doing more. So I'm a little worried that there's a kind of drift setting in where like we don't basically we don't know what to do.

So sanctions are the thing we do, but they're probably not going to work. So when they don't work, we'll probably just do some more of that. And then, you know, like how long is that a sustainable strategy? That's what freaks me out.

Andrea 27:43

Yeah, I think we're going to approach those questions in a much bigger way because we will keep sanctioning stuff. And I say we referring to broader international community, which is the... Cardinal sin here, but I fully expect there's going to be more UN Security Council resolutions on North Korea sanctions. There's going to be more coming out of Congress.

I'm already hearing stuff from questions from different corners of the hill over whether we can sanction at the UN level, you know, food imports to North Korea, which is actually immoral. I have issues with that one. I'm just going to go ahead and say it.

Jeffrey 28:28

That's actually immoral.

Andrea 28:30

I find it hard to square sanctions that condemn North Korea for humanitarian concerns with sanctioning food imports to North Korea. I don't think you can do those two things in good conscience.

Jeffrey 28:46

It's great. That's the Canadian side of you. The Austrian side of you would be much more blunt.

Andrea 28:52

Maybe. But yeah, I think we've got, you know, we're going to have to assume that there's probably going to continue to be a push for sanctions at the unilateral and multilateral level. There is productive sanctions that we can continue to put in place. There are probably, you know, semi unproductive sanctions that we can put in place as well.

And we need to consider fully what the costs and benefits of all of those are and what What kind of strategy, if anything, they should connect to.

Jeffrey 29:22

I thought you had a 9.45 go.

Andrea 29:26

I have a close to 9.45 go, but before we do that... Because we've got to talk about reassurance. I want to hear your readouts from Tokyo, because one of the things that got missed a lot, I think, in last week's kerfuffle between Trump and Kim Jong-un is what Abe and Moon Jae-in were saying. So let's maybe talk about that briefly.

Jeffrey 29:48

Yeah. I observe that while people are a little bit unnerved, they were way less unnerved than Americans. And I think that's because they've always been dealing with this threat, right? I mean, they've been in range of no-dongs for a long time. And, you know, they had the 1998 Taepodong-1 fly over Japan. And so while they're worried about it, This is just kind of a bigger like this is just one of many crises.

And I think it's a very different reaction than in the United States where, you know, it's been 40 years, depending on how you want to count it, since a country acquired a capability to target the U.S. with a nuclear armed ICBM. And so, like, we kind of forgot. That's right. Forgot what like it's like to go through that recognition of, oh, crap, they can do this.

So I think our reaction here is very different and much more intense than the reaction in Japan, which to me feels like just another iteration of the regular and occasional North Korean crises. I mean, it's a tad bit different, you know, because the details are a little different, but I was really struck that the level of panic was not what it was in the United States.

Andrea 31:09

You know, one of the things I had a really interesting discussion last week on Canadian TV, because while the North Koreans said that if they did missile testing around Guam, that would directly overfly Japan and they laid out the trajectory there. One of the things that came up in the Canadian media questioning was, well, if the North Koreans fire an ICBM at U.S. targets in Korea, You know, depending on the target, it's going to overfly Canada.

And shouldn't Canada therefore be part of ballistic missile defense? The Canadians had debated ballistic missile defense cooperation with the U.S. in the early 2000s.

Jeffrey 31:49

I was in Canada for a lot of those conversations, actually.

Andrea 31:53

Yeah. And, you know, there were protests over it. And the decision at the time was no, Canada was not going to participate in But there are certain people who are pushing for that again. And I thought that was really interesting that that was being raised as something Canada now needs to seriously consider returning to because of the North Korean missile threat on North America.

Jeffrey 32:19

You didn't say which TV program you were on.

Andrea 32:22

This was on CBC.

Jeffrey 32:23

Oh, wasn't the Great White North?

Andrea 32:25

It wasn't well in the great white North, but but with CBC power and politics, you know, the SCTV great white North sketch with Bob and Doug McKenzie. I don't actually, I feel like this is something you're going to send to my inbox immediately after Scott's probably going to drop it in.

Jeffrey 32:42

Yeah.

Andrea 32:43

Yeah. But yeah, I, I think, Canada needs to think very hard about whether ballistic missile defense cooperation is a worthwhile expenditure of its time and money. Not least because when you go, as we say to the Japanese discussion, they're much more kind of calm and rational about the type of threat this is posing and the probability of certain scenarios, it seems.

Jeffrey 33:14

I don't understand why this is such a big debate in Canada, to be completely honest. I mean, I guess I do because it ends up being a proxy for Canada's relationship to the United States. But I would be shocked if North Korea fired a nuclear-armed missile like Canada, the U.S. would shoot it down. I mean, let me rephrase that.

The U.S. would attempt to shoot it down.

Andrea 33:36

Good caveat. Yeah, I basically said the same thing. And I don't want to... Give the sense that this is a big discussion in Canada, but there's a few people bringing it up. So I thought that, I didn't expect that.

Jeffrey 33:49

Yeah, that's really interesting. It's really, this is really a North American crisis.

Andrea 33:54

Did you catch at all some of the statements coming out of Seoul last week on steps that it was going to take?

Jeffrey 34:02

Well, you know, I mean, that's really mostly just talking to South Koreans and reading what they write. I mean, I think, you know, Seoul's politics here are really important. You know, it's hard to emphasize the difference in outlook between, you know, impeached President Park and new President Moon. And I think the way that I always say it is, you know, Moon was a democracy activist, and the left in South Korea are basically people who...

With some reason, looked at Kim Il-sung and Park Chung-hee and said, eh, you're both bloodthirsty dictators, right? And so, you know, I think in America, we tend to imagine this as, you know, one country threatening another. And I think the left in South Korea defaults much more to this kind of model where it's like, no, Korea had two bloodthirsty dictators.

We protested out one. Now we just have to get rid of the other one. So it's a much different set of concerns and reactions. It's a much more kind of... Maybe engagement isn't quite the right word, although I don't think South Koreans would shy away from that, but... Yes, there is a deterrence piece. Moon's not crazy by any means, but I also think that he's mostly interested in how you create the conditions that would lead to the kind of revolution in North Korea that swept South Korea.

So it's a different idea of pressure.

Andrea 35:49

Yeah, I think that's right. A lot of the statements that he's been putting out in the past few days have emphasized the continued importance of dialogue, and that's something I expected to see from him given his rhetoric on the campaign trail. But buried in some of that rhetoric, I think, was a request that the South Koreans allegedly put to Trump in a phone call last week To again change some of their restrictions on indigenous missiles.

So in particular, the South Koreans have a range cap on their missiles currently at 800 kilometers with a 500 kg payload restriction. And by the sounds of it, they want to increase that allowance on payload, would allow them to possibly strike at More deeply buried targets in North Korea and that sort of thing.

Jeffrey 36:49

Yeah. I mean, I think so. Those range restrictions have always been under incredible pressure. You know, the Obama administration is when they went up to 800 kilometers.

Andrea 37:07

I mean, I was in North Korea in Pyongyang the day that that got announced.

Jeffrey 37:11

Oh, I bet that was very popular.

Andrea 37:14

Oh, yeah, they loved that.

Jeffrey 37:15

Yeah. I mean, my my sense is that that, you know, the South Korean missile program is very advanced. We did a whole podcast on it, much more so than most Americans realize. And I observe that the South Koreans, when they usually show up saying you need to change the restriction, that means that they've got a system that's basically done and that they're in violation of the restriction.

And then it's like now our decision about whether we whether we want to blow things up or whether we want to change it. What I can't tell is whether that's actually about increasing the payload or whether it's about extending the range, because obviously if you arm something with a, with a lighter payload, it's gonna, it's gonna increase the range.

But I, you know, I don't, To kind of go back to the very beginning, I don't think that that's inconsistent with Moon's outlook, because I do think there is a deterrence piece. And there's also an important part of reassuring the populace. And so, you know, that I think will go ahead. We'll see more missile tests. And that's just going to be, I think, part of a South Korean strategy to try to mollify people.

Andrea 38:21

It seems like this is part of an effort, actually, that got steam under Park Geun-hye. To improve South Korea's indigenous military capabilities to allow for some sort of self-reliant defense. And they have a K-3 policy that includes Korean air and missile defense and indigenous missile defense system approaches that would allow to take out North Korean leadership targets.

And, you know, they're starting to expand and elaborate on those policies. And this seems to be part of South Korea's effort to enhance what it can do itself. And actually, Moon, I think last week, stated as much and told a whole bunch of military leaders that they have the task of building self-reliant defense capabilities. And that was urgent.

And, you know, they needed to actually potentially consider complete defense reform.

Jeffrey 39:24

Yeah. Well, and then that's in part because the South Korea's progressive left is, you know, has a fair streak of of anti-Americanism in it. You know, and I think there's a there's a good deal of. Nationalist sentiment you know that argues that I don't know that this is entirely a fair sentiment by the way but that the US was complicit in the Park regime and so it actually I don't think it's as much of an evolution for a progressive like Moon to support greater defense capabilities if those greater defense capabilities can be described as a reduction in dependence on the US you know Yeah, I think that's right.

I mean, hey, Trotsky ran the Red Army. So, you know, just because you're a lefty hippie doesn't mean you don't like blowing shit up.

Andrea 40:13

And part of me, you know, kind of understands this, especially in the era of a US alliance presided over by Trump, who, you know, when I was watching the rhetoric last week, I thought, okay, sure, this has deterrence implications, but it's got to have assurance implications, too, because If these statements are as poorly thought through as they seem to be, or indeed not thought through, then what does it mean every time Trump says in a presser that he's behind Japan 100% or he's behind South Korea 100%?

If you're sitting in Seoul, do you take that seriously from the same president that tweets with his breakfast and Fox and Friends? I don't know.

Jeffrey 40:57

Well, you know, I mean, he's the guy who says they should pay more, right? Yeah. And and that's another part of it. And, you know, there's that famous case with McMaster where Trump says South Korea should pay for that. And, you know, Moon's like, I didn't want that. Go to hell. You know, and then McMaster has to call him up and be like, you're not going to have to pay for that.

And and then Trump gets wind of that. And it says again, like, no, no, no, they're paying for that. Like. I mean, I don't know how you, regardless of what you think his underlying preferences are, like whether you think he believes this stuff, doesn't believe this stuff, whether he's crazy. It is really hard, I think, to go through an experience like that and not think to yourself, wait, how far is our indigenous missile defense capability?

No, no, let's just do that. Yeah.

Andrea 41:48

Yeah. This probably needs a whole other podcast, but, you know, I think One of the things in future would be worth thinking about is the implications of, you know, if slash when South Korea does acquire more of its own indigenous capabilities that have implications for a potential military scenario with North Korean missile launches and whatnot. What does that do for deterrence?

Is it better than second-center decision-making?

Jeffrey 42:18

That's done. That's done. See, this is because you're in London. We've actually been going through picking out all the missile bases because the South Koreans do a crappy job of hiding them. They've got a really pretty robust conventional decapitation capability that they've put in place. And it's just a question of whether they feel like using it. That's one of the things I'm worried about, actually, is that in a crisis, they're going to decide the U.S. is taking too long.

I don't think Moon is that guy, but... Maybe a less responsible political figure in a crisis might decide the U S was taking too long. And, and then go ahead and do something regrettable.

Andrea 43:05

Well, you always say with Aaron that you've got to end on a happy note. Can you turn that?

Jeffrey 43:11

Maybe they'll get lucky.

Andrea 43:21

Oh, I feel like that's actually the really like depressing finger crossing that everyone's doing about this whole situation.

Jeffrey 43:28

It'll be fine. Just, you know, fire a couple of missiles in there. USA. USA.

Andrea 43:38

Well, I have a feeling we're going to be doing another podcast on all this stuff in the not too distant future as U.S. military exercises kick off next week and inevitable North Korean and Trump chess beating starts to happen or continues to happen, I should say.

Jeffrey 43:58

Well, this is awesome. I hope this means you will be a regular co-host now.

Andrea 44:05

Always. Always happy to.

Jeffrey 44:07

Hey, Scott, how are things going over there at the Slack channel?

Scott 44:10

The Slack channel is awesome and large. We've almost got something like 350 members strong right now. There is lots of discussion going on because, as you very much are aware of, North Korean missiles are the hotness right now, and everyone seems to have their own theories about them. So it's very, I know I'm tired too. It's very active.

And for $5 a month, you can be part of the Slack channel. If you are a student with either a .edu email address or some other means of showing that you are a student, you can get in for $3. Or you can support us at higher levels, like the $15 a month level for nice bonus goodies and the satisfaction of knowing you're funding original research.

Jeffrey 44:58

I got my stickers. Yeah, they're really cool. I've stuck them on my computer and on my desk and my children. It's been pretty awesome.

Scott 45:07

And for listeners who have been subscribing at the $15 a month level, you should keep an eye on your mail. Now that we have the stickers in, I'm sending out some of those to y'all.

Jeffrey 45:16

And this is an opportunity to... Thank Craig Robinson, who designed our beautiful logo.

Scott 45:22

Oh, my God. He's so talented. I know. He's getting some stuff in the mail soon, too. So, yeah, we're also doing a bit of a fundraising drive, trying to reach $2,000 a month on Patreon, at which point we'll be very regularly buying, processing, disseminating, and analyzing satellite imagery on the Slack channel. And for anyone who wants to use it from the Slack channel.

And as well, we're looking into doing advertisements. We asked for listener responses to potentially hosting ads on the podcast, and they were generally fairly positive, overwhelmingly fairly positive. So if you or a loved one is interested in advertising on the Arms Control Wonk podcast, drop us a line at armscontrolwonkpodcast at gmail.com. Just give us a heads up, whether you're a really big advertiser, like Raytheon, or just looking to advertise your own little firm.

It's pretty much open to anybody. If we like products, we're obviously more excited about it. But yeah, drop me a line. Again, that's armscontrolwonkpodcast at gmail.com. And if you are a Slack channel member in the D.C. or greater D.C. area, we are currently planning a meetup for this Saturday. So head to the general channel on Slack, and we're talking about where it's going to be.

Thanks, everybody, for joining me, and thank you for listening.