KCN-eh? November’s Other North Korean Developments

Andrea Berger 0:05

You're listening to the Arms Control Wong podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. My name is Andrea Berger, and I'm a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. And I'm joined today for this month's podcast on the developments in North Korea by a good friend of mine, John Hemmings, who's the director of the Asia Studies Center at the Henry Jackson Society here in London.

Thanks for joining me, John.

John Hemmings 0:35

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Andrea 0:38

So we're a little late recording the November podcast this month, and that's totally my fault because I was away in Japan all of last week eating my body weight in Japanese food. But I'm really glad we found some time to review what has been another really busy month of policy developments and technical developments in North Korea. I had Adam Cathcart from Leeds University on the pod for the October edition.

And we were remarking actually how things had been so quiet and we're hoping that it kind of stayed that way. And then November has gone back to being so much North Korea news. So yeah, we've got a lot to talk about. And I put to you questions on what you thought the sort of biggest and most interesting stories of the month were.

So I would love to hear your thoughts on What was the biggest story in your mind from November on DPRK news?

John 1:37

Absolutely. I think, of course, there was so much to talk about in November. I had a little bit of difficulty initially narrowing it down. But eventually, I decided to maybe start talking about the personal side of this. I think North Korea is an issue, such a big geostrategic issue. It's a very technical issue when it comes to talking about Nuclear nonproliferation or the technicalities of where they are on nuclear weapons.

And this story, I thought I'd start with the North Korean soldier who crossed over the border. Yes. And yeah, essentially, he, you know, the kind of lone individual, Oh Chung-sung, who I think is a 24-year-old soldier, crossed the border, you know, shot multiple times. And it become a little bit of a darling of the South Korean media.

Andrea 2:36

Yeah, he has. And I mean, I think the stories coming out from the doctors as well, the doctors have been in the media a lot and talking about, you know, how he had parasites in his stomach and all of this sort of thing. And that really seems to have been gripping South Korean, you know, front pages for a few weeks now since that happened.

I found the Actually, the video that was released of his defection because the UN command at the border released this video of him sort of driving this truck over to the border and then scrambling amid gunshots over to the South Korean side. And that for me, there was something about that that actually really hit home, not least because I'd sort of I've walked that path on the DPRK side where where he.

Yeah. Defected from, like from that bridge over around by the Kim Il-sung Monument and down. And, you know, just the sprint that kind of he made across was, in my mind, really kind of, you know, compelling about what he would have had to go through just because of how heavily secured that area is.

John 3:50

If I remember correctly, I think you and I were also there going into the Blue Hut, which is about 20 feet away from where he lay wounded. So yeah, there's the personal side to it for us as individuals and also for him. And I guess what I suppose why I thought it was interesting is, of course, as all of us who are desperate to know what are the conditions in North Korea, everyone's been trying to extrapolate.

What does this mean? What does his health mean for the state of the army in North Korea? What does it mean that he's got hepatitis? So everyone's trying, maybe too much, who knows. But we're all trying to extrapolate from this single story what we can from it. I'm sure that he is going to be debriefed heavily by South Korean intelligence before he's sent to the kind of defectors rehabilitation, reintroduction to society center.

So the question, of course, is, is he a sign of things crumbling inside the system? Do you have any? Did you have any thoughts on that, Andrea?

Andrea 5:02

I always feel like there's this temptation to take single cases like this as being representative of a broader trend. And since the beginning of the Kim Jong-un period, basically everyone has been asking every time there's a significant defection whether this means that stuff is falling apart in the DPRK. And during Kim Jong-un's period, there have been other defections across the border at Panmunjom as well.

This is not the first one. So I'm quite reluctant to take this as being an illustrative case. I think you're right that we'll learn a lot more in the debrief, or at least the South Koreans will learn a lot more in the debrief. And certainly then after that process is finished, we'll probably hear much more from him firsthand.

But until that happens, I'm not really convinced that we can take too much from this one incident.

John 5:57

Yeah, I agree. The interesting points are that he is apparently the son of a senior official. So that's of interest. And then the other thing I think he mentioned to the doctor was that he was fully familiar with American and South Korea TV dramas, that they're popular, suggesting a longstanding story that I'm sure you followed as well, which is the continual access that people inside North Korea do have to, I guess, USB sticks from China with lots of You know, Beverly Hills, Housewives or whatever it is that is big right now.

So that's that was interesting that he also admitted, you know, fairly early on that he was fully familiarized with American and South Korean TV shows. So interesting, interesting story. But as you say, you have to be cautious in what we extrapolate.

Andrea 6:52

While I was in Hiroshima, I was reading a book by another North Korean defector, and the book is called Dear Reader. It's by Chan Jin-sung, and that's his pen name. But he was in counterintelligence on the DPRK side and basically got tasked with putting himself in the position of South Koreans and writing as if he was a South Korean author, these sort of epic poems praising the North Korean leadership.

And In his story about his defection, there was a few things that made me think about this recent case. And one of the ones was, so he defected across the northern border to China. And when he was actually sprinting across the river, he remarked that he had no gunshots after him and was later told that the North Korean soldiers on the North Korean side of the Chinese border are not allowed to fire in the direction of China.

Now, I don't know that that's true, but that clearly wasn't the case here. Obviously, he had sort of 40, 50 shots fired at him as he crossed Panmunjom. But the other interesting thing that I took from this second sort of defector story was the debrief period. So you were talking about the fact that once he's out of hospital, he'll go through this debriefing process.

That, for this other fellow, was eight months long.

John 8:18

So very long.

Andrea 8:20

Quite long, yeah. So it could be a while, actually, before we start hearing the firsthand stories from who defected this month.

John 8:31

Yeah. So, yeah, that was the first main story. And as I said, the temptation would be to extrapolate too much from it, but also the danger is that we don't read into it in anything at all. I think the fact that he was so malnourished, had hepatitis, tuberculosis, some of those things plus the huge parasites that they found in him.

I mean can we – should we or can we think of that as being representative of the military? I mean was he stationed near the border when he made his run? So obviously if he was stationed near the border, then he's one of the supposedly elite. Units, troops, all the best troops are basically by the border. And if this is a representative of the elite troops, I suppose what we'll be asking ourselves is, gosh, if this is the elites, what can we expect from troops on the northern borders or the regular round-the-mill guys?

Andrea 9:34

The thing that's probably also worth noting is what the South Koreans have done with this story, which is start putting it in the form of loudspeaker broadcasts across the border. This is one thing that's fairly recent in terms of South Korean action vis-a-vis the DPRK. It started in 2015 when there was an incident at the border again.

The South Koreans in retaliation restarted these loudspeaker broadcasts that had been stopped for some time. And I think then they started playing K-pop and the DPRK, The tensions pretty dramatically de-escalated when they started to play K-pop across the border.

John 10:16

You expect they would have surrendered.

Andrea 10:19

It was a good example of sort of creative de-escalation, if you can call it that, in a Korean Peninsula crisis scenario. But they've continued those loudspeaker broadcasts now and are broadcasting specifically in Some of the details about this defection across the border, which I'm sure is not making the North Koreans very happy.

John 10:43

That's very interesting. Do you think, you know, is that to balance some of the perceptions of the Moon Jae-in administration, that it's perhaps too dovish or too soft in the sense of the sunshine policy direction that it initially had before it came in? It's hard to know which way the Moon Jae-in administration is going to go in its North Korea policy.

Of course, they've been They're weary of the Trump administration pushing very hard on North Korea, but they also, on the other hand, have backed away from the sunshine policy. Certainly, from what I've heard, they are open to the Chinese negotiating gambit of freeze, freeze. I think it's fascinating to see the Moon Jae-in administration try to balance itself between all these different actors.

Andrea 11:37

This is actually maybe a good segue to what I had for the biggest story of the month. And it's a bit of a cheat because Jeffrey and Aaron and Scott already did a whole podcast on it. But obviously, I have to say that the Hwasong-15 launch was the biggest story of the month. And some of the immediate reactions to it.

So, you know, one of the things I think has been really interesting about the immediate reactions has been some of the Differences in messaging out of the Trump administration in particular. So in reaction to the launch, you know, there's this whole policy discussion that's cropping up because the North Koreans put out this statement about saying that they had completed some aspects of the nuclear force.

And, you know, many people are reading that as, oh, well, is this an opportunity for diplomacy? And, you know, Aaron and Jeffrey talked about that on their pod a little bit towards the end already so I won't dwell on it too much longer but I took a close look at the statement out of State Department about the launch and I have to admit I really wasn't a fan of it I'm not a huge fan of several of the statements that State Department has made on different aspects of the DPRK issue but this one I really didn't like so Bear with me for a sec here.

I'll read out to you some of the relevant sections. The US and Canada have jointly announced that they're going to host a ministerial meeting from a group of countries in early 2018 at some point to discuss the North Korea crisis. The Canadians painted this as we need to find peaceful, Diplomatic solutions to this crisis and want to convene kind of relevant parties to discuss that.

The State Department, Tillerson, put it this way. The United States, in partnership with Canada, will convene a meeting of the United Nations Command sending states to include the Republic of Korea and Japan and other key affected countries to discuss how the global community can counter North Korea's threat to international peace. Diplomatic options remain viable and open. For now.

And there's several parts to this I really don't like. The first is that idea that diplomatic options only remain viable and open for now. None of these statements where the Trump administration keeps reiterating this idea that there's a temporary window for diplomacy, very few of them actually characterize Open for what? What objective is it that we're trying to get here?

Is it about preventing further development? Is there no diplomatic prospect for anything else that we should be talking about? Is it only kind of that singular focus on preventing, if that's even possible, North Korea from being able to strike the continental United States with a nuclear weapon? So that's my first issue. I'd love your thoughts on what you think about that kind of framing of Diplomatic potential is a window that has a very short, you know, chance to remain open.

John 14:58

Well, of course, at the risk of going too much into U.S. domestic politics, which we won't, but, you know, obviously we can't mention Tillerson without mentioning the rumor mill and how the, you know, that has been that he wouldn't be in post much longer. Now, obviously that relates to if you're North Korea.

Andrea 15:14

By the time Scott edits this, he might not be around anymore. Who knows?

John 15:18

Yeah. I mean, if you're Perhaps thinking of negotiating with the United States and you're getting very strong messaging from different actors within the system. Now, obviously, smart states, states that have strong negotiating cultures like North Korea will know that mixed messages is sometimes deliberate. It's an attempt to strong arm a country to the negotiating table. But in this case, when you hear that the other guy may not even have a job by the end of the month, who are you talking to and who are you listening to?

So that's the first one. In terms of the messaging, there is to some extent, I think, a really big gap between the North Koreans and the Americans. It's such a big gap that it's hard to know how they can get started, which is why the Chinese and I think Moon Jae-in are supportive of the freeze-freeze, both of them Argue that it doesn't mean anything it's just a first step even the south koreans i've heard are getting quite favorable towards it although i think the south korean military would not be favoring a freeze of so the freeze freeze for people who are listening would be freeze for u.s rock exercises and a freeze for you know missile tests and nuclear tests and and in all cases i've always heard it explained as just a first step it doesn't you know doesn't mean anything But the problem with the gap is that if you are the United States and your end goal is to essentially negotiate non-nuclear status, the North Koreans have told people in Sweden and Stockholm in February of 2017, American non-government officials admittedly, but back channels nonetheless, former US government people, people from the Bush

Administration, who worked on North Korea and the intelligence community, basically told them that the negotiating is about you accepting us and perhaps talking about a peace treaty or we fight more or less in those three blocks, accept the status. For the North Koreans, there is no negotiation outside of acceptance. For the Americans, there's no negotiation outside of at least putting that on the table.

So I think, you know, when it comes to the signals that we're getting through all the lens and the chaff of Tillerson domestic politics stuff is that there's this great gulf between the two. And they can't really talk clearly about what they want without admitting that in the first instance, you know, the Americans won't sit down to the table and say, OK, so how can we talk about accepting your nuclear weapon status in a way that disarms you?

Because the North Koreans won't sit down. That's absolutely right. And also, even though I hate to be a defender of this administration, I don't mean to be, but there is also, of course, they're not going to say what their positions are. I think any time in the past when U.S. administrations have attempted to use a transparent approach in negotiations, they've always been outmaneuvered.

Sure. Yeah.

Andrea 18:39

Yeah, I completely take that point. I think the challenge I have with the analogy that there's sort of this window that's closing is that diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula can only serve a single purpose. And, you know, the Trump administration has a quite narrow view of what that purpose is. And it frames the other options aside from diplomacy as being pressure oriented and includes diplomacy.

In a very big way in its rhetoric, the potential for military options. And this comes to the part of the other reason why I don't like that statement from Tillerson is in describing the countries that the United States wants to see participate in this ministerial meeting in 2018, he describes them as beating the United Nations command sending states.

So basically the troop contributing countries from the Korean War. And so it gets framed as this sort of almost, well, is it actually, you know, is what you want out of this meeting something that's focused on exploiting diplomatic options? Or, you know, if you're sending or bringing along the UN command states, is this actually more about those who are, have a stake in this from a military perspective?

And that's, you know, something I didn't like. I also read it against, The backdrop of what Trump had been saying in South Korea when he was there. And, and his description of diplomacy on the Korean peninsula was that, of course, you know, we've heard this from, from Trump before that time and time again, one after the other diplomacy, diplomatic avenues that have been pursued with North Korea have let the United States down.

And that he wasn't going to allow for that anymore. And then he goes on to say that, you know, We're prepared to discuss this brighter path for North Korea, but only under specific circumstances. And one of those circumstances that he mentioned is verifiable and total denuclearization. And so he frames that as the precondition for even discussing this.

So I agree with you. It's not like we should expect the US to lay out what it's willing to negotiate and in what terms in its public statements. But equally, I think there's a more helpful way to discuss this or to certain ways that we shouldn't talk about diplomatic options. And I don't think we should talk about them as being fleeting and temporary.

We should be thinking of diplomacy as a much more cross-cutting element of policy towards the Korean Peninsula.

John 21:25

I don't even know what would we... Get the North Koreans to agree to. I mean, if you think back to 1994 with the agreed framework, you know, you could argue that the Bush administration thwarted it, or at least Congress did in 2000. But even then, there's some who alleged that they had a duplicated, was it uranium program, that they weren't completely in good faith, which is definitely arguable.

2007, the six-party talks. I mean, it's hard to know, really, like, The two sides are so estranged from each other's perspectives that even, you know, I wonder what you think of this, Andrea, is like, even if you did freeze for freeze, say you did freeze for freeze, like where do you go from there? Where do you go?

You know, the North Koreans would assume that a peace treaty has to be signed, but of course they're not going to sign one with the South Koreans because that's an illegitimate state. And so the Americans can't even do that really without, you know, some level of, of, Just shadowboxing going on. I wonder if really what this is about, and I've always wondered this, is that his focus on China has been, to some extent, unprecedented.

I'm not going to say it will succeed, but that unlike other previous American presidents, the last three, he's looked at this like a business He's just a businessman. He's Trump. He has no background on the Korean Peninsula. But he says, what are the revenues in and what are the revenues out? Where's their income coming from? And almost immediately, anyone who briefs him and anyone who knows anything about North Korea will say, well, 90% of their economic activity is on their northern border with China.

And that in 2016, their economy grew by 3.6%, which is jolly healthy. If we had a growth rate of 3.6%, I think we'd be pretty happy. So he's, I mean, all I can see is I can see pressure on China to do something about it. But I'm not sure what he expects the Chinese to do. And I'm not really sure what's all this pressure supposed to be going towards.

So in that way, I agree with you. The only thing I've thought is that he just wants to get them to the table. Because at the moment, as we said from the back channels, You know, they won't go to the table unless it's just to discuss acceptance. So maybe his plan, if you can call it that, his strategy is just to get them to the table, to be open to negotiate denuclearization, and then start talking, how much do you want?

How much can we give you? What do you want out of this?

Andrea 24:07

Yeah, I see a lot of policy being articulated, and I still am kind of grappling with whether or not there's a strategy behind Behind all of this.

John 24:17

Yeah, I agree.

Andrea 24:19

I'm not totally convinced of that yet. I don't know if you are, but I think we're trying to find out whether or not there is a strategic thread running through all of this.

John 24:29

The one thing I can say, the China one, that's definitely a continual, you know, they beat on that. And it's something, to be fair, that the Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations never did. I mean, I had high hopes for the Obama administration, to be fair. After the leap year agreement, I thought that there was a kind of, that was the moment in a sense when the North Koreans kind of never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

That was the administration that wanted a deal really badly. And they gave them low hanging fruit, we'll return to giving aid if you just do a freeze for the moment. And then of course the satellite test two, three months later, I think in March of that year, You know, and then unfortunately, the Obama administration walked away from the issue from then on.

I think that's, you know, that's where we're at. So, yeah, but even experts out there, like if people could say, like, what should we do? Is there really anything that hasn't been tried? You know, sunshine policy has been tried. Kaesong has been tried. Negotiations have been tried. You know, do we just accept them as a North Korean nuclear power?

And if so, what would be the regional and global consequences?

Andrea 25:45

Yeah, it seems to me that what might be happening is that the administration has kind of set its approach and, you know, realizes that there's probably low chances of getting the North Koreans to capitulate, because I do think that's what they want. So they want to do this kind of multi-prong pressure Approach in order to get the North Koreans to, you know, I think in Trump's mind, buckle and come to the table to talk about something.

I agree. And then, you know, the question is, would they also, I think there's probably at least in some corners of the administration, you know, if that doesn't work and if this instead creates internal ruptures in the DPRK, Destabilizes the regime in some way, if we're talking about moving towards a fuller, you know, trade embargo on the DPRK, would that just be a happy corollary?

And I think there are some that wouldn't be unhappy with that outcome either. So they're going down this road because, you know, while they can't entirely predict the outcomes of it, from their perspective, it's at least not worse. And I don't know maybe if that's too crude a characterization, but I fear that that might be at least the thinking in some parts.

John 27:08

Yeah, I agree with you. There's also, as you said, I think a bit of a punitive element to this, which is to say that if you know Kim Jong-un's policy platform for what it is, it's basically that North Korea will be a prosperous nuclear status country. And so essentially, if there is a strategy to what Trump is saying, is that you can have one, but you can't have the other.

And that if you go down this route, we'll Essentially make sure that you don't prosper. But then, of course, the real danger is that if everyone leans on this regime that has nuclear weapons, how does that look in a proliferation sense? And I think you and I have discussed whether that they would try to develop a black market system, a way of getting hard currency using these capabilities, of course.

So you're just putting one problem further down the road, unfortunately.

Andrea 28:04

Yeah, and I would hope that if there were any negotiations that get started at some stage, that one of the first things that we would talk about is trying to address the onward proliferation threat. I feel like that's at least one that garners a lot of international consensus where the threat assessment is broadly comparable. Countries want to prevent that from happening, whether that's China or Russia or anyone else.

And You know, we should try to make sure that those really immediate concerns are addressed in the course of a conversation. They were open to discussing that in the late 1990s, early 2000s. I think under the last days of the Clinton administration, they were fairly close to getting a ballistic missile deal that included as part of that reference to prohibiting onward proliferation.

I don't think we should lose sight of that being a part of this issue as well. Yeah. That brings me actually to what I thought was one of the more interesting developments of the month, perhaps not surprising, which was the US designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. And again, I don't think that was surprising.

Basically, Congress was pushing the administration really hard to make a call on that. They passed legislation, I think, in August. That said that the administration had to come to a decision, if I recall, 90 days after the legislation was passed, so end of October. And while State Department overshot that deadline, they did eventually in mid-November come out and announce that they would redesignate North Korea as a state sponsor of terror because specifically of the assassination of Kim Jong-nam.

Which I believe was one of the things you had flagged that story as being one that was particularly interesting.

John 30:03

Yeah, we can go into that later. That's definitely on my list going back to that. But yeah, this designation of the terrorism one is interesting because we were talking about it earlier to the show. And I still can't figure out whether it has a domestic component to it, that it's about organizing – The bureaucracy around, you know, within the Washington system, within the Beltway to make, you know, a kind of whole of government approach towards North Korea easier and easier from the tools of sanctions.

What did you find on that?

Andrea 30:39

Yeah, I think that's probably part of it, but I would assume not the major component of it. I think there were some who just felt it was nonsensical for North Korea to not be on that list. And for others, it's the signal that was particularly desirable. If you can, in your messaging to countries overseas about why they need to take this threat seriously, if you can put in there that North Korea is a state sponsor of terrorism, that helps kind of build your case.

Because in terms of the practical effects of designating North Korea in this way, the state sponsor of terrorism designation opens up the possibility to prohibit Certain arms trade to that country or take economic measures against them. And those things are all already in place against the DPRK in the form of UN sanctions or unilateral sanctions at the US level.

So it's not like we were opening the door to a whole bunch of new authorities that didn't exist previously in terms of sanctioning. Those were all there. I think the biggest part of this is the messaging. And that's unsurprising. Given the broader direction of the Trump policy on DPRK, that they would want to put the marker down and declare North Korea to be a state sponsor of terrorism.

John 32:02

I wonder if it's, this is something I was curious about. It also relates to the Kim Jong-nam story, the airport assassination, of course, which we'll get to in just a moment. But also to, you know, after the assassination, the Malaysian-North Korean bilateral just fell apart. What was quite surprising for a lot of people in the regular media was how close the relationship was.

There was this sense that, yes, the United Nations has sanctioned certain parts of North Korea's, very specific parts of North Korea's military community, particularly those working on the missile program and the nuclear program, but that in general, there were huge parts of North Korea Inc business out there in the world. Particularly labor. You had this kind of wandering labor force, large numbers of North Koreans being kind of rented out to Russia, to China, and they were cutting wood in Siberia.

Apparently in Malaysia, they were mining, doing a lot of the difficult, dirty jobs that Malaysians didn't want to do. And so I also wondered to what extent, in a way that the international community, I mean, referred in, I'm not sure if it's Dubai or one of the Gulf states was also using North Korean labor. Is this international approach, if you target them as a terrorist state, what does that do to their ability to gain hard currency in these other ways that are typically kind of ignored, but are actually quite important to Pyongyang for getting that money and getting that legitimacy that they crave?

Andrea 33:42

Again, this is just my take on it, but I don't think the state sponsor of terrorism designation materially changes that. UN Security Council resolutions, yes, different story. And I totally agree with you there. So now that there's a greater focus in those resolutions on curbing countries' use of North Korean migrant labor, that'll be a focus, especially because the US is coupling that UN sanction with such active outreach.

That applies to other forms of sanctions as well, where countries are really having their Attention steered to what is going on in terms of DPRK activity within their borders. So, you know, do you have North Korean nationals? Do you have a North Korean business community? How big is the North Korean embassy on your soil? Is it too big for the level of actual interaction that your two countries have?

What else might they be doing on the side? Those are the kinds of questions that I think the UN sanctions regime, together with the Growing number of countries that are doing active outreach to promote the implementation of that sanctions regime but that's really having, that's the effect so this kind of is one more thing to add to it, the, the terrorism designation, but I think we would have been able to generate that same effect. Indeed, it was already in motion, you know, without this, this latest action.

John 35:12

It strikes me, even as someone who, in my writing, I'm quite critical of North Korea, it is an odd designation, though. It's not, to my mind, we haven't had any aircraft blown up. We haven't had any real attacks on members of the public. Yes, Kim Jong-nam was assassinated at an airport in a very public way. Was it an act of terror, say, in the way that, for example, al-Qaeda or ISIS might carry out within the West?

So it strikes me as well that even people within the West who are critical of North Korea are having difficulty digesting it, given, I suppose, that the types of things that we tend to think of as being terrorism-related, North Korea has done in the past, but hasn't done very recently at all. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Do you think in a way it's counter-effective? Well, so...

Andrea 36:10

The argument I've heard about why it might be counterproductive was actually where people thought that the missile testing lull that we were seeing this autumn, you know, because we didn't see North Korean missile launches in October, we had this kind of extended period where there was no activity until the Hwasong-15 launch. And so I think those who were Really suggesting that this designation was unhelpful were also those people who thought that there was an opportunity created by that lull in provocation that should be seized upon and that this would just provoke a return to provocation.

And I'm quite skeptical that that was actually the situation that was at hand previously. To me, the North Korean missile testing law is primarily a seasonal one. One of my colleagues has shown that fairly clearly. So I'm not convinced that this changed that one way or the other. But there is a very vague characterization of what terrorism might be for the purposes of these designations.

I think we can have a conversation about whether or not that single assassination of Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia is sufficient to have put North Korea back on the list. I mean, you know, there's a whole bucket of other things that people have considered as part of this decision, you know, North Korean weapons supposedly making their way to Palestinian resistance organizations or whatnot, you know, There's a lot of debate that needs to be had around those points.

But the trigger for the Trump administration to redesignate seems to have been Kim Jong-nam. Is that reasonable? Should other countries, therefore, by the same metric, be on this list?

John 38:11

That's a very, yeah.

Andrea 38:12

Is that, you know, discuss?

John 38:15

Absolutely. Yeah, the question of that, of course, you know, with even, you know, someone mentioning U.S. allies like Pakistan or, Countries that are more supportive of non-state actors in the Middle East, like Iran, not being on that list also makes it somewhat problematic. But yeah, the murder of King Jamnam was interesting.

Andrea 38:39

I don't know if you... Yeah, so tell me about your story that you had on this one, because I know that was one you'd flagged.

John 38:44

This is fascinating. I mean, it's a bit of a repeat of the story that we saw already. We saw in October the Malaysian court, which is trying... The two women, unwitting assassins. It was Doan Thi Hoang of Vietnam and Siti Isai of Indonesia. So they went to the airport and essentially reenacted and went to the kiosk where they smeared VX on Kim Jong-un's face, first his eyes, then his mouth.

And this month, we've learned, of course, this is a bizarre and very sad Bit of news is that essentially he was carrying the anecdote to VX atropine in his backpack. It's very sad that he essentially, if it wasn't so horrific and terrifying that there's a comedy of errors element to it, two unwitting assassins who don't know they're killing someone, a man who has the actual anecdote in his backpack, but instead of just Getting it out immediately, taking, I think he had 12 pills on him or something like this.

He wandered first to the bathroom. He looked like he was going to go to the bathroom and wash it off, which may have saved his life, but instead detoured towards information. So he was probably muddled and confused. And the slightly bored airport person just directed him to the clinic where he went and sat down and waited. But even as he was walking, It's quite sad.

You can watch the video. You can see his limbs are already starting to get jerky. The VX works very, very quickly on him, and they say a drop can kill you. And, of course, they smeared quite a significant amount on his eyes and mouth. So it's just a kind of very sad story. It is, to some extent, a little bit timely in the sense that it's a reminder – With all the missile tests and the kind of geopolitical issues, geostrategic issues, China versus US, US rock, rock China, you know, that there's this personal level to it.

And also, I think it speaks very much to the nature of the regime that here's a guy who knew that they were going to assassinate him so much that he carried around, you know, entropine on him. And apparently, the story also revealed that he had begged for his life In a private letter to Kim Jong-un in 2012.

So what does that tell us? You know, it's pretty horrific. It tells us that he knew how they were going to kill him and he knew that they were going to kill him, you know.

Andrea 41:30

Which is extraordinary, actually, and is a really huge detail in this case that he did have some idea that Not only was he being targeted, but that he would be targeted specifically in this way. The fact that he's carrying the antidote on him at the time of his death and by quite an unusual means of assassination is really, I still find astonishing.

I think the The case also, so the court hearings also have revealed that he was carrying, was it 100,000 US dollar notes on him? Which is probably part of his personal finance as well, that there was some flow of money to sustain his lifestyle or business activities.

John 42:23

Do we know what his business lifestyle was? I mean, there's still some extent.

Andrea 42:29

Yeah, good question. I had read previously that he did have business and corporate activity at home, but I don't know what those look like. And I haven't seen any good reporting on specifically what that was. There was some suggestion earlier after his assassination that he had gone to Malaysia specifically to do some form of business dealing related to DPRK activity.

But I don't know what You know, whether that's been confirmed a hundred thousand dollars is a pretty significant amount. So either that was meant to keep him afloat for a while, or that was for some sort of business that he was engaged in.

John 43:16

The nature of the attack as well, you know, recalls to mine the, you know, assassination in London, you had you know, the, the, the, the Japanese tea shop, the, the Russians Assassinating, I've forgotten his name at the moment, but I think you know who I'm talking about, who, again, a very public way of showing we have killed this person.

You had this during the Cold War with a famous Hungarian defector who was shot in the leg with an umbrella pellet. It does seem weird that people talk about the Cold War coming back in a sense, or at least sides, geopolitical chaos.

Andrea 43:59

Recalling the kind of cold war and here we have a a very it strikes me as a very cold war style killing you know it is it's very much in the kind of vein of the litmanenko killing yeah which is i think what you were referring to yeah and again you know extraordinary effort being taken to kill this person on foreign soil question is of course is you know does this impact

John 44:29

North Korea's ability to have bilateral relationships with other Asian states, you know, if I remember correctly. I would hope so. Yeah, I mean, one hopes. I mean, I know that there was a severe deterioration in the two. And I was shocked to realize that they had a visa fee program between the two countries so that Malaysians and North Koreans could come and go.

They could just arrive and essentially they didn't need visas. So, you know, obviously that program must have been undone. I'm not sure if their ambassador who is declared personal non-grad has been replaced. Just because you declare an ambassador personal non-grad, it doesn't mean that you've undone the embassy. It just means that that particular ambassador has to leave.

Andrea 45:12

Yeah, there's been a good bit of propaganda tweaking from the U.S. on that because the U.S. likes to spew off lists now of the countries that have... Restricted or downgraded their diplomatic relations with North Korea and includes on that list countries that have declared the ambassador persona non grata. And as you say, that doesn't mean actually a downgrading in relations.

All that means is that the specific person is being sent home and I assume will eventually be replaced.

John 45:42

Do you think we'll see any of that closer to home? Because we're both based here in the UK. There's a very strong North Korean presence here. Of course, we occasionally, even our embassy here Is in the news as we had a very infamous defection last year, I think it was, or was it the year before actually? So do you think, you know, do you have any sense of whether the UK will go down that route or should we just see what happens?

It strikes me that I don't see the UK moving that direction at all, but. Have you heard anything?

Andrea 46:12

Yeah, I think the Germans came out the other day and said that they are not going to suspend or suspend or cut diplomatic relations with the DPRK. The Germans also have an embassy out there, so do the Swedes and so do the Brits. And I would hope that the UK takes the same approach as the Germans have.

But this comes back to my personal view of the fact that diplomatic relations like In cases like this where you have strong adversarial relations with a country, that shouldn't be a rationale for cutting off those channels of communications that could potentially be so important, either on short notice or further down the line. And think again to the Cold War experience of the importance of having channels of communications open in adversarial relationships.

So I really don't want to see the UK embassy in the DPRK go Nor the German or the Swedish embassy. But I don't rule out the fact that ministers in different countries feel under pressure to demonstrate that they are taking progressively stronger action to punish, demonstrate to the DPRK that there are costs for its behavior and that the UK has a fairly limited toolbox.

And one day a minister might decide that this is the next step to show that the UK is serious about this.

John 47:42

I remember actually during the Cold War, there were occasionally ejections of diplomats, lots of tit-for-tat expulsions. And if I remember correctly, the British did eject quite a large number of Soviet diplomats, something quite significant. Of course, we saw the Obama administration do that with something like 35 Russian diplomats.

Andrea 48:05

And the Russians do that to the Americans not that long ago.

John 48:09

Yeah, that's right. In fact, if I remember, there was 90 Russian diplomats that the British expelled. It always depends, of course, on what you're trying to achieve, whether it's a punishment for a particular subversive act that you think the other side was up to on your soil. But as I agree completely with you, at some point, countries are going to have to be able to talk to North Korea.

And so at least some minimal diplomatic presence is absolutely not just necessary, but vital.

Andrea 48:40

Yeah. So actually, on this kind of point of diplomacy, one of the stories I think that it's worth directing readers' attention to as well, because it may be one that has slipped through on the massive media attention devoted to DPRK, is the story about the North Korean mission in Pakistan, where North Korean officials were caught bootlegging Very large volumes of alcohol, a stash of, I think it was $150,000 worth of bootlegged alcohol was I think stolen.

So not only was that alcohol on the premise of a DPRK controlled residence in Pakistan, but then That residence subsequently got robbed and they stole all the alcohol. And yes, I think that was a pretty good example.

John 49:46

Makes you wonder what the police report was.

Andrea 49:48

Did the North Koreans call the police?

John 49:54

I mean, I can only imagine that it's one of those ideal burglaries where the other side is like, no, no, we weren't burgled. There's no problem. Move on.

Andrea 50:03

So clearly the robbers in this case were actually police officers.

Other voice 50:08

Some police officers.

Andrea 50:10

Yeah, they were. So the robbers were police officers. So someone got wind of the fact, you know, maybe through another investigation that the North Koreans were involved in liquor selling and decided that the thing to do would be to steal that alcohol. Yeah, but one of the, one of the things I thought was Really kind of interesting from the story was the fact that when reporters were doing investigations into the DPRK-Pakistan relationship, they found that there's actually, I think, next to no formal trade, bilateral trade between Pakistan and the DPRK, despite the fact that there was 12 to 14 diplomats, North Korean diplomats stationed in Pakistan.

So the question that these reporters started asking then was, Okay, well, is this a really good example of the size of the embassy being out of proportion to the nature of the bilateral relationship? And what came immediately to my mind is the fact that probably, again, those trade stats are so misleading because I would guess that there is probably a decent amount of North Korea-Pakistan trade, but that it's not flowing directly from the DPRK to Pakistan or vice versa.

It's going through a third country and being reported, therefore, as China-Pakistan trade. And so when we take this conclusion that it's totally out of whack, the stats aren't actually helpful in helping you reach that determination. And this is important because there's so many countries out there that, you know, Point to the formal trade statistics for bilateral trade and say, oh, look, we pretty much don't have a relationship with the DPRK.

So we're not relevant to sanctions, so don't bug us. And that's just not the case, as this incident in Pakistan pretty clearly shows.

John 52:10

Yeah, it's interesting. The Pakistan Central Bank said they ceased all trade since August 2016. And you said there was 14 people there. Question, of course, will always leap to the mind is whether it's illicit controlled substances like class A heroin or things that are more easily acquired from across the border in Afghanistan, whether it's the alcohol in this case, or more worryingly is whether the links between the kind of nuclear materials or missile materials, whether that's in evidence.

Have you seen any Op-eds or analysis that points in that direction? Or are we, hopefully, we're not looking at another big QCon?

Andrea 52:59

Yeah, there's definitely a whole bunch of dodgy stuff happening as this is flagged. And, you know, there hasn't been much concrete put out in the open source that's recent about potential illicit trade in military goods, especially between North Korea and Pakistan. We know that there was a relationship Back in the day, that led to cooperation on missiles and probably quite a bit more.

But there hasn't been much recent. That said, I think, again, it would be a real mistake to assume that there was no other general North Korea-Pakistan trade happening. It's just probably being routed through third countries, which makes it difficult to get visibility on. Again, so much of the research that I've done on Pakistan DPRK kind of presence overseas has shown that they route that trade in a semi-circuitous fashion, which leads or misleads officials locally to believe that they don't have much of a formal North Korean commercial presence on their soil or formal North Korean trading relationship with them.

So I'm sure Pakistan... Has more North Korean activity in general economic areas. So it might be trade in commodities that are sanctioned but non-military, or even trade in commodities that are non-sanctioned, or services. Service is a big one for the North Koreans overseas. So there's certainly some of that too.

John 54:38

I am quite curious what the conversation was like between the North Korean ambassador to Pakistan The foreign, you know, the foreign ministry in Pakistan, you know, exactly what, when he demanded the return of his alcohol that was clearly being sold contrary to the laws of Pakistan. It must have been, I mean, intriguing. Yeah, exactly.

Andrea 55:00

John, did you have any other stories that you wanted to bring up from November?

John 55:05

Yeah, the last story, I suppose, is a very brief one. It's what you may have missed. And this was just on yesterday's news that I could take a Pacific flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong, actually witnessed the Hwasong-15 missile test on the 29th. And I thought, to some extent, it's a little bit of a worry. It's a very small story, but it's the kind of story that you think, well, gosh, if these systems or these tests are occurring near flight routes and that aircraft are within the vicinity to at least visibly see these tests.

To what extent is that a threat to civil aviation? Yeah, we haven't seen any video release, which would have been a lot more dramatic. Of course, video always is. But the fact that this crew of CX-893, I think it was on the 29th, they essentially were looking out the front cockpit and viewed a kind of starburst, which they then reported to Tokyo Air Traffic Control.

Which was basically the closest airport to them. It's a little bit of a scare story, I suppose. It's not one that we should be scared about in itself, but what it means if there is in the future situation as we had with the Malaysian airline that went over Ukraine or something like this, where you have these tests that do have an impact on an aircraft in flight, which would be very, very worrying.

Obviously, there's not been much of a policy side to the story. It's been more of a kind of human interest story. But I think for the sake of policymakers, it might be one that we, you know, there has to be some sort of review program how you relocate air flight during these kind of tests. And surely, I think the North Koreans are sending up warnings, public warnings, and whether those are taken seriously.

On board by the airlines, of course, is all up for grabs.

Andrea 57:12

Yeah, but crucially, the warnings that they issue are vague in general. They used to give formal notifications of splashdown zones and all that. And situations like this make you realize, you know, just how important having those notifications was at the time and would be again if they were given. This is not the first kind of, quote unquote, near miss.

And I acknowledge that It's highly, highly, highly unlikely that there would actually be an airliner hit. But when you don't have the North Koreans giving any indication of where their missiles are going to go when, you do run some risks that we have a much closer call than we had with this flight. And I think there was a flight back in the summer as well that also saw a North Korean missile launch out its window.

John 58:08

Do we, I mean, this is one of the things about the Hwasong test was that it was very much up, but not very much out. In other words, that they were aware that anything fired over Japan or anything towards Squam will be, you know, the Trump administration reacted very forcefully to that. Is there a sense, do you think, that the North Koreans are still thinking about, you know, kind of tests?

A nuclear test out in the Pacific? And if that were to happen, what would be the reaction?

Andrea 58:39

Yeah, I don't know about you. I worry about this a lot. The past year for me has indicated that when the North Koreans make very public declarations about technical steps that they want to take, that they've done that. And they have now, one too many times for my liking, Indicated that they feel for developmental purposes, they need to test a nuclear weapon off a missile.

And I'm really worried about that. I have no idea what the response would be. But I am concerned that it is coming.

John 59:18

No, from what we know, although it was the first test of its type, it did break up. So we don't even know if the North Koreans consider it a success to whatever parameters they were seeking. But It broke up on reentry. So one assumes that they don't think it was, you know, it did not basically splash down in the way that they would have liked in a targeted area.

So that, I think you're right to worry. And I think we should probably all keep an eye on future statements made by the North.

Andrea 59:50

Yeah. Any humorous notes to end on, John?

John 59:53

On North Korea, it's very hard to be humorous. I've got one.

Andrea 59:57

Trump has a new nickname for Kim Jong-un. Is it not Rocketman? So Little Rocketman is his first weird one. But he added to it in November at a rally in the US by calling him a sick puppy, which is just, again, so weird.

John 1:00:19

It's such California speak. It's so casual. Where's the gravitas, you know? These are things that you hear on television programs rather than from the world leader of the free world. Gosh.

Andrea 1:00:35

Yeah. So there you go. The nicknames continue.

John 1:00:41

Well, poor Elton John. I'm sure he's not been too happy about Rocket Man either.

Andrea 1:00:48

Rocket Man being corrupted in that way.

John 1:00:50

Exactly. Yeah.

Andrea 1:00:52

Great, John. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you for having me.

John 1:00:59

It was great.

Andrea 1:01:00

Scott, maybe you've got some suggestions for listeners who might want to join in to the fun that's happening on the Slack channel.

Other voice 1:01:09

I do. If you would like to support the Arms Control Wonk podcast and the research and work we do, you can head over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast.com That's patreon.com slash acwpodcast. And if you kick us $3 a month if you're a student or $5 a month if you're not a student, you also get access to our Slack channel where both we and fans of the show hang around to talk, swap neat documents, talk about recent developments, and just hang around.

It's awesome. It's a great place to be and it's a good group of people. Thanks, Scott. And thank you for listening.