KCN-eh? February’s Other North Korean Developments

Andrea Berger 0:03

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 by a good friend, Matt Korda, who's with the WMD Center at NATO. And Matt and I have just been spending some time in Canada.

We were at a great conference on North Korea put on by the Canadian International Council and the University of Toronto. And so we've got a lot of DPRK related stuff on our minds that we want to talk about. So thanks for joining me, Matt.

Matt Korda 0:41

Thanks for having me.

Andrea 0:43

So we're going to go through a few things. We wanted to cover some of the developments around the Olympics because that's been one of the big kind of continuous North Korea stories this month. We also wanted to talk about some of the leaks that have come out about the UN Panel of Experts report, particularly about North Korean military cooperation with Syria and Myanmar.

And then we were going to talk a little bit about some ships and interdiction stuff as well, because that keeps coming up. So might as well talk about it. So let's start out at the Olympics. Matt, what did... What did you think were the highlights besides the curling, obviously, which, well, I mean, as Canadians, we have to be careful that wasn't even a highlight for us.

It was so sad.

Matt 1:31

I'm still in mourning. And about the hockey, too.

Andrea 1:34

Yeah, it was, I flew to Toronto on Saturday night, partly so I could get over jet lag with a little bit of notice, but also partly because I wanted to be there in the event that Canada was in either the gold medal men's curling match or the gold medal hockey match.

Matt 1:54

Yeah, we were going to go watch.

Andrea 1:55

Sadly, did not happen.

Matt 1:57

Shattered dreams.

Andrea 2:00

Shattered dreams. Otherwise, what were your Olympic highlights as it relates to DPRK stuff? What do you think was the most interesting?

Matt 2:07

So for me, I was having a lot of fun sort of watching the kind of optical dynamics that were going on between North Korea, South Korea, and the United States with the Olympics sort of as this backdrop. And it was really interesting to see kind of the diplomatic chess game that was going on. This sounded like a three-way chess game.

I'm not sure if That's the right analogy. But you could see it was kind of like, you know, North Korea would, you know, they make a move and they would send, you know, Kim Yo-jong on this kind of what people are calling the charm offensive. And then the United States would, they'd play, you know, Mike Pence to try and counter her with his steeliness, which sort of massively backfired.

And then South Korea tries to kind of mop up and they have President Moon meet with Kim Yo-jong and they sort of take that really awkward photograph together. And then North Korea plays Kim Yong-chol, who's this massively controversial figure in South Korea. And then the U.S. plays Ivanka. And it's kind of this whole weird optical chess that's going on.

Andrea 3:11

It was very, very weird to watch. And I think gripped a lot of people, right? You know, just everyone was paying attention to these diplomatic dynamics that were playing out in front of us with the Olympics just broadly as the staging ground. And yeah, it was fascinating. I mean, first of all, I thought it was extraordinary that actually you You got a member of the Kim family to go to South Korea.

It's important for us to remember that that hasn't happened since the Korean War. And so the fact that even she went really did set the stage for all that attention.

Matt 3:46

Yeah, very much.

Andrea 3:49

But yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I thought there were pieces of that stage managing by the South Koreans that I don't think was done probably as well as it could have been. I also believe it was fairly transparent from the outset what sort of posture the Americans were going to take when... Pence especially went to the Olympics, right?

He went with Otto Warmbier's dad and was therefore inevitably going to make a very harsh condemnation of the North, a very pressure-oriented set of statements, human rights focused. And Given that, I thought maybe there could have been a little bit of better forward planning about some of the awkward moments because it's not that they were a total surprise that they came up, especially given that orientation that Pence was going to have.

Matt 4:43

Yeah, I think it's really interesting to see the South Koreans in particular try and kind of navigate between the United States and North Korea, because it's already sort of difficult when you're dealing with sides that are rational and predictable, but both of these sides are extremely unpredictable in terms of their kind of foreign relations. And the Trump administration, I think, doesn't really understand or at least is sort of reluctant to understand the really difficult position that President Moon is in.

And in the meantime, you have North Korea, which I think understands it very well. And they're going to keep to, you know, seeking to exploit it at every opportunity.

Andrea 5:27

Yeah, Moon, I mean, Moon stepped up hugely here, right, as the central coordinating figure, and I think will stay in that position. But he did so still with some caution, right? You know, he's very much taking a leadership stance on the pro-engagement front with North Korea, but in doing so, he's done it in some ways by the book, right?

You look at the way that He applied for sanctions exemptions for the North Koreans to travel to South Korea. You look at some of the careful wordings of the statements around now joint military exercises. That's something we can get into. So, yes, he's definitely... Showing a lot of leadership, but he's doing so in a cautious way. And we'll have to see, you know, how he manages that, especially now that we're going to go into an even more difficult period, in particular around the April time when Olympics are done and joint military exercises are getting ready to kick off, and the North Koreans just hate those.

Matt 6:37

Yeah, really.

Andrea 6:38

So that's the challenge right now, I guess, looking ahead for the post-Olympic period is how does Moon, someone who... Obviously values engagement and thinks that that approach to the North Korean issue is one that has to be actively pursued. How does Moon seek to continue to maintain momentum in this dialogue process that he and the North have started?

In the past, the traditional approach I would say has been to use a kind of step-by-step Method, where you start small with Olympics diplomacy in this case, and then you gradually build bigger and up to a higher and higher level. He now, however, has this invitation that was given to him in handwritten form from Kim Yo-jong, which is an invitation to go to Pyongyang at some point.

And the question then becomes, do you take that early? So do you... Throw away that step-by-step approach that has been so favored in the past with engagement between North and the South, knowing as well that Olympics are coming up and have the potential to spoil a step-by-step incremental dialogue process, or do you stick with the way forward that is less likely to irritate?

Your alliance partner, because in this case, in the US, I think the Americans would find it really intolerable if Moon were to go to North Korea around the time of joint military exercises and send what in their mind will most certainly be the quote-unquote wrong signal.

Matt 8:23

Yeah, very much.

Andrea 8:26

It's a real dilemma. Yeah.

Matt 8:28

I think it's interesting because we were starting to hear some of these reports, I think last week or so, that the North Koreans might be trying to pursue some kind of parallel negotiations with North Korea and South Korea meeting separately from North Korea and the United States. And that's also problematic because if they're trying to pursue some kind of wedge strategy, as has been talked about quite a bit, You really can't be having any kind of daylight between the two allies.

You really need to keep those, you need everyone to sort of be on the same page. And so I think it's going to be interesting to see what President Moon tries to do over the next little while. But so far, I think he's played what's a pretty bad hand actually pretty well. He's sort of managed to set up these Conditions for dialogue.

You know, he's brought the Kim family to South Korea, which is pretty incredible in itself, as you mentioned. You know, even these kind of really small steps that you mentioned, things like the, you know, the inter-Korean hockey team, which I think people didn't really like originally, but seemed to have sort of warmed up to as the Olympics went on.

And there was even like a little story near the border that sort of caught me. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the North and South Koreans have kind of been messing with their loudspeakers. So for those who don't know, there's this kind of wall of loudspeakers that sort of just oppose each other across the DMZ. And the South Koreans apparently have changed the content of their broadcasts so that it's more about kind of fostering inter-Korean dialogue.

And they're talking about You know, the Kim family's visit to South Korea and things like that. And they're not calling Kim Jong-un by name anymore. It's less personal attacks on the regime. And then for their part, the North apparently has turned down the volume.

Andrea 10:32

Literally turned down the volume. Yeah. So this will be a really interesting area to keep watching. In the conference actually earlier this week that you and I were at, there was a lot of discussion over how Moon will manage these competing pressures, right? The desire to engage at a high level with North Korea, To continue the momentum, but also to be seen to be in solidarity with the United States going forward and not to be seen to be weak, particularly in the run up to South Korean local elections that are happening in the summertime.

And one of the ways which a number of the participants were talking about and which I agree with is that Moon might try to show that there's high-level buy-in to the idea of continued engagement without actually participating personally in the first instance and could send something like a... High-level rep or special advisor or some other senior figure that he designates to go to Pyongyang as a first measure before he then goes himself, which is a bigger personal risk at a time of domestic political elections.

Let's watch this space and come back to it, probably in April when we see joint exercises starting to kick off again, and North Korea's traditional parade time around Kim Il-sung's birthday as well.

Matt 12:07

Yeah, are you expecting another parade there?

Andrea 12:12

Good question. I wonder if it partly depends on just how the setup for joint military exercises goes. We had a fairly quiet parade in February, so Jeffrey and co. I think are planning a bigger episode yet on that. It wasn't last year's April parade in terms of size and scale, so I'm not really sure what the North Koreans are going to do with the 15th of April yet.

I think at one stage, I'm fully expecting a big wheel out of a whole bunch of TELs just to show that they're able to domestically manufacture transporter erector launchers and the heavy launch vehicles for the mobile missile systems. But I don't know if that will come that quickly. So hard to say. It could be something that they calibrate in relation to whether the U.S. and South Korea are going to do major joint military exercises and particularly what their field training exercises look like, the ones where bombers fly around and nuclear submarines show up near the peninsula and they announce they're rehearsing how to strike North Korea in various ways, right?

It depends how the North reacts to that, I think, in part. So, yeah, we'll see. But we had some other cool stories, I say cool, awful from an international security perspective, stories this month in the form of leaks from the UN panel of experts report talking about Continued military cooperation, especially between North Korea and Myanmar and North Korea and Syria.

And I know those were stories you were following closely as well. What did you make of the of the Myanmar aspect?

Matt 14:08

Yeah, well, the Myanmar one is really interesting because there's been, you know, kind of decades of military to military cooperation there between North Korea and Myanmar, which kind of dates back to the sort of like late 80s when, you know, Myanmar is becoming... Increasingly isolated from the international community and they're looking to buy various systems. And they turned to the Chinese at first and then they sort of realized that they can get cheaper systems that are similar from the DPRK.

So that's where they start to, these relations really start to get back together after the 1983 bombing where they kind of just cut.

Andrea 14:51

Just to interject there, actually, That's a really interesting pattern in the development of North Korea's military relationships generally. So there have been a number of countries who are wooed into buying from North Korea because their systems are sold as being really close to Chinese systems, but not, and cheaper. Azerbaijan, in particular, in the 2011 period, when Azerbaijan had this British guy marketing North Korean weapons to them, he was like, hey, this is basically Chinese stuff.

And that's how they ended up almost in a contract to buy conventional weapons systems from North Korea before they were caught. I digress. Interesting background story to the Myanmar relationship.

Matt 15:43

They've been collaborating with a ton of different systems. There's quite a bit of evidence that Myanmar has received ballistic missiles, surface-to-air missiles, multiple rocket launch systems, which is probably the KN-12 system that we saw at both parades. I think there was talk of ammunition and a ton of tunneling expertise as well, because the North Koreans are great tunnelers and Myanmar was sort of looking for something along those lines as well.

Andrea 16:19

Yeah, so for anyone listening who has not read this, press pause on this podcast and go read the translated transcript of the 2008 visit by a Burmese military delegation to Pyongyang. It's on the Democratic Voice of Burma website. I'll make sure we give it to Scott here so there's a link. It is amazing. It is a full rundown of their trip to China and the DPRK, including how they got taken to all these Military facilities in underground or tunnel complexes, everything from, like, radars to a scud missile factory they saw, which was also underground, if I remember correctly, and MLRS, anything was underground.

And so that was one of the things at the conclusion of the trip report, they're like, great tunnels. Yeah, really.

Matt 17:15

So... It's interesting to see also, like when you think about Myanmar's kind of like recent bit in the news, I think it was mid 2017, they were looking for Chinese systems. They were looking for, it looked like they were going to buy SY 400s, which is a solid fuel kind of short range system. And, you know, that's a Chinese system, but it's sort of unclear if the sale went through.

I don't think there's anything that's come out of that since then. So if you look at sort of the pattern where if that system didn't go through and then they're looking to the DPRK for a similar but cheaper system, you know, DPRK has a lot of solid fuel short range missiles.

Andrea 17:57

Yeah, well, this is the interesting point, right? I think that from what's come out from the panel report, the indication is that this is a relationship that is close and continuing. It covers a range of... Of military goods from your multiple rocket launch systems to ballistic missiles to surface-to-air missile stuff and probably other conventional weapons as well, I'm going to guess.

And that relationship is clearly persisting at a sub-state level. It is, you know, from my assessment, not one that the civilian government in Myanmar is controlling or directing. But rather it's being perpetuated by the Directorate of Defense Industries within Myanmar, which has traditionally been North Korea's liaison counterpart on the on the Myanmar side. And and those guys were also Re-designated, I think, under State Department sanctions in the springtime last year, so in like April or May 2017, under the Iran-North Korea-Syria Non-Proliferation Act, that one.

So, you know, it looks like this was something State Department had flagged, particularly after the change in US sanctions on Myanmar In the last days of the Obama administration. And that's just worth, I think, recalling quickly as well, because Obama had had made this grand speech in Myanmar saying, you know, if you unclench your fist, we're willing to shake your hand and, you know, trying to reintegrate Myanmar back into the international system to encourage further democratization, and as part of that effort was really compelled to lift all sanctions on Myanmar, including the specific authorities for targeting individuals and entities central to the Burma-North Korea relationship.

And I don't think that made everyone happy within U.S. government, especially if they had, I'm assuming, assessed that some of that military cooperation was still ongoing. And now we're seeing bits of that trickle back in. And I would be willing to guess that some of the information that the panel has been digesting on Myanmar has probably come from the United States or at least from one of its close partners in consultation with the United States.

So.

Matt 20:38

And it's interesting to see sort of what the Burmese were saying about it as well, because, you know, they were, I think it was as recently as December 2016, they like fully denied the relationship between, you know, North Korea and Myanmar. There was a great quote where they said, we didn't have many friends and they needed rice and we needed weapons, but now things are totally different.

And that's a direct quote from a Burmese official. So it's interesting.

Andrea 21:06

I think they did actually used to barter rice for weapons, if I remember correctly. It was one of the classic examples of barter arrangements. I'm assuming that person was being literal, actually.

Matt 21:16

I think that's all I have on Myanmar, but what did you find on Syria?

Andrea 21:22

The Syria one is interesting. The New York Times splashed this up again. It was mentioned in the Reuters initial leak of the panel report. Basically, every year this happens, the panel report goes to the sanctions committee, and within seconds of someone gripping its pages, it has made it to Reuters. So Reuters had a bit of the Syria story, but the New York Times really picked it up and elaborated on it in the past few days, and now everyone's reported on it.

And my takeaway from this is I really need to see the panel report in greater detail before making any conclusions on this. And the reason in particular is because the text of the leaks describes the panel having investigated, I think it was 30 or 40 cases Of North Korean shipments to Syria in the 2012 to 2017 period.

So the first kind of analytical element there is I'd love to see what the spread is. But in some media reports, especially, there seems to be a confusion or a blurring of the distinction between North Korean shipments to SSRC, the Scientific Studies and, is it Research Council? One of the key military and R&D organizations within Syria, particularly for the ballistic missile program.

There seems to be a confusion or blurring between North Korean shipments to SSRC and North Korean shipments to Syria's chemical weapons program. It looks like some outlets have interpreted everything that went to SSRC as potentially having been for Syria's chemical program, and this is why you're getting some of the huge assessments of North Korean Assistance to Syria's chemical program is increasing and that might all be true but I'm not sure we can conclude that yet especially if it turns out that actually in the panel report there's maybe you know only a handful of things that are believed to have gone to the chem program they mention valves thermometers and acid resistant tiles and if those are the examples that are being put out into the public space right now That means those are the things that are closest to a smoking gun.

So those are the worst or closest to a chem weapons affiliated shipment as there are in that set of 40 or 30. It's not totally clear to me exactly how big of a relationship there is on the chem front. Is this just a trickle of continuing procurement assistance? North Korea's in the past assisted Syria a lot with procuring things that it needs for a range of military programs.

Procurement services are one of the things that the North Koreans offer for sale, right? We have a great network of clandestine operations overseas and know how to hide and move things, and they offer that service to their friends and their customers. So it could be that that is the dynamic here. I think it's probably more than that.

But again, you know, what's the balance here between North Korean assistance to SSRC, maybe on other things, including ballistic missile related shipments as well? And to the chem program, and I'll need the full report to assess that, I think.

Matt 24:59

Yeah, that's fair. I've seen that conflation as well a few times, and it is interesting because there's a long history of the DPRK-Syria ballistic missile connection that started, I think, in the early 90s when they were shipping over Hwasong-5s and 6s and ER Scuds and things like that, and I think the way that I've seen it reported quite a bit is that, you know, they say scuds are a relatively safe and reliable way of delivering chemical weapons as opposed to, you know, artillery shells or something like that.

And therefore North Korea is aiding the chemical weapons program or increasing aid to the chemical weapons program. So there is sort of this potential conflation because maybe, you know, Outlets are just kind of putting them together.

Andrea 25:52

I also just don't know enough about valves and thermometers and anti-resistance tiles, to be perfectly honest. But there were previous North Korean chemical defense related shipments as well. So in particular, there was a fight a few years ago between various members of the panel of experts. I think you can read the description of their disagreements over whether or not chemical protection suits would be a violation of the arms embargo.

So there was that one. There was also, I think, some ampoules that the North Koreans shipped to Syria, I want to say around the 2011 period. So there have been some chemical-related shipments in the past, but seemingly more on the defensive side. And now these look potentially like they're going to... Either facility construction or non-defensive applications, so to speak. Yeah, so lots of interesting stuff there. I'm really looking forward to reading the report when it comes out, and presumably in mid-March. so plenty for us to dig into, our dig our teeth into, in in the next next episode of this pod.

But the last kind of thing that we wanted to talk through as well was the new round of sanctions that the U.S. Treasury came out. I've been getting tons of questions about it, especially because it coincided with some reporting around a potential naval blockade or something close to it, which is a...

Matt 27:32

Phase two. Phase two.

Andrea 27:34

Phase two. Oh yeah, corresponded to Trump saying that there was a phase two that would have to come in in this in this crisis, and it'll be very unfortunate for the world indeed. He is very sinister. So the round of sanctions. So basically U.S. Treasury says it has put out the largest ever package of sanctions. I'm guessing they measured that on the basis of the number of entities and individuals and ships designated at one time.

I can't see how that is otherwise the largest. So I think that's probably what they mean. But the designations included a whole lot of ships and corresponding owner-manager companies for those vessels. And most of them were actually North Korean flagged vessels and North Korean incorporated companies. And there's an important distinction there, and one that I think a lot of journalists that I've been speaking with haven't got their heads around.

There's basically within the sanctions package there two broad types of sanctions that were imposed. One was on foreign companies and ships that had, in particular, facilitated ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products to North Korea. And then there was another, so then bucket two is like North Korean flagged ships and North Korean companies, just those who are part of the North Korean fleet, basically.

And the effects there are going to be very different in terms of disruptive effect of the sanctions. There's more pressure going to be felt by the foreign companies just because they rely on, to a greater extent, on connection to international markets, on foreign insurance and banking and all that. The North Korean companies and ships seems to me to be more of a preventative Effort and just an awareness raising around who is in the North Korean fleet and especially in the event that those ships were to one day try to go to a flag of convenience or if they were seeking insurance providers or things like that.

So it seems to be more preventative rather than an active disruption effort for the North Korean side of that picture at least.

Matt 30:07

It was interesting to see in the report, like the report had a lot of photos in it and it was kind of neat to see they were showing off all of these various forms of deceptive North Korean shipping practices. They had the images of names that had been painted over or changed or changed IMO numbers. They had the ship-to-ship transfers in there.

It all, I guess, was sort of, Meant to send this message that the US is watching.

Andrea 30:40

Also, I'm sure that's partly an evidentiary thing. Remember that anytime the US Treasury designates someone or something, in this case a vessel, it's got to go through a process of lawyers taking a look at that saying, is the evidence appropriate and sufficient to warrant designation? And for a ship, you've got to, I mean, you've got to prove that they're participating in prohibited activity and that it is the ship that you're designating.

So in this case, if the ships, the North Korean ships that are involved or any others are, you know, painting over things on their hulls to conceal their identity or raiding Painting on incorrect IMO numbers to give a false identity, then that needs to be captured by photograph because I don't know how you would do that otherwise to give sufficient evidence.

And that's, I think, why you're seeing this sort of thing in there. It's to show there is no shadow of a doubt here that these vessels have been involved in this way. But it's a big resource investment actually from the U.S. and its allies in order to collect that evidence, right? It looks like Japan's got maritime patrol aircraft that are doing these rounds, including at night.

Big resource-intensive evidence collection initiative here.

Matt 32:13

I saw also, I think this was something that you flagged on Twitter, but it seems like other countries are sort of looking into sort of putting this into the open a little bit more. I think you posted the Panama Maritime Authority published their kind of restricted vessels list, which is, I guess, just sort of a list of vessels with names, company names.

The vessel IMO numbers and the company numbers as well that have all sort of been deleted from the ship registry for their ties to North Korea.

Andrea 32:43

Yeah, I think that's partly a practical thing. So in the resolutions, countries have to deregister vessels that have engaged in prohibited activity with North Korea. And then other countries are meant to not Re-register those vessels, but there's no information sharing channel that connects the two, right? So if I'm like Tuvalu and Panama has deregistered a whole bunch of vessels, but didn't tell anyone about them, How am I supposed to know that when one of those ships comes to me that it was deregistered by Panama pursuant to UN Security Council resolution-related concerns?

You wouldn't, right? Unless you phoned up the Panamanians every time and asked. And there's just so many ships that that would be hugely cumbersome. So I think this is partly Panama's effort to create... That transparency and other flags of convenience should do this as well, I think, just so that next time a North Korean ship gets kicked off someone's books, they don't immediately have such an easy time getting onto someone else's books.

Matt 33:58

Are there other FOCs that are doing this sort of thing, or is Panama kind of setting a precedent here?

Andrea 34:04

In terms of publishing restricted vessel lists? Yeah, good question. I don't know. Panama's the only one I've seen so far, but that's not to say that there aren't others too. Let me get back to you on that one. I don't actually know the answer. But we've got now this big emerging story around fears of a naval blockade coming up.

And blockade is the word that keeps being used. It seems like the inclination of the US and indeed some of its allies, we saw this line in the Vancouver meeting or coming out of it. It seems like there's a group of countries that are readying themselves for more assertive, aggressive interdictions operations. I don't know what that looks like yet.

I would love your thoughts on this. But to me, there's a pretty wide range of aggressiveness in interdictions. It's also a range of difficulty in carrying out interdictions depending on where you're doing it. Ports versus territorial waters versus high seas. And depending on whether or not it's a North Korean flagship or a foreign flagship. I'm not sure what they'll do yet.

The type of thing we saw in December with South Korea seizing vessels that were already in its ports, that's the comparatively straightforward approach. When we get to trying to board things on high seas, potentially in a quite aggressive way, then that's an interesting development and one that's likely to create escalation, not only with North Korea, but potentially with other countries as well.

Matt 35:54

Yeah, well, I think North Korea has already come out and said that if that happens, it's an act of war. But, you know, it's not the first time that they've said that.

Andrea 36:00

Lots of things are at stake for North Korea. But I don't think China will be very happy either, right? The Chinese came out straight after the US Treasury sanctions and said, if you don't stop doing unilateral sanctions, we're going to roll back our bilateral cooperation with you on DPRK sanctions implementation. And, you know, we've all been talking in the last half year or so, actually, about how we're Pleasantly surprised that the Chinese have been doing more than we expected to implement DPRK stuff.

Looks like they're genuinely doing more cooperative types of restrictions on sectoral sanctions, on the purchase of prohibited North Korean goods, likely on the maritime front as well. And they've made it very clear to us that that can go away if the U.S. keeps taking on Chinese companies.

Matt 36:56

Yes, I saw in the report, it seems like they're kind of mitigating strategy for that, the US's, is to potentially use the Coast Guard to do this kind of enforcement work. Because I guess their argument is that, you know, the Coast Guard cutters are sort of, they're less heavily armed, and it sends a very different signal than to conduct interdictions through coasts.

Through other means, instead you're using a Coast Guard vessel. I suppose in their eyes it's more clearly designed for law enforcement, but we'll see if that actually has any kind of impact or if the Coast Guard is even deployed. Or even if they're allowed, it's really unclear to me what the Coast Guard is or how far they're allowed to go.

Andrea 37:40

Yeah, that's unclear to me too. I'm not an interdiction specialist, but I was under the impression that most, if not all, of U.S. interdictions operations outside of U.S. waters are done by parts of the system other than the Coast Guard. Mm-hmm. This could also just be an effort to send a signal that the U.S. is willing to escalate with stronger measures again if necessary.

So who knows whether they'll actually do it and in what form. Great. Did you have any kind of little stories that we might have missed this month that's worth bringing to the attention of listeners?

Matt 38:27

Yeah, there's a story that I've been following for a little bit that Al Jazeera reported. I think it was last week or maybe it was a couple of weeks ago. And it's a bit of a Canadian story, but there are two Canadians on the podcast right now. So it's fine. Yeah, we get to set the agenda here.

And they report that about 2,000 North Korean refugees have been deported from Canada since 2013 with about 150 more potentially imminent refugees. And these are North Koreans that have come to Canada via South Korea. So they're in a bit of a tricky legal situation because the South Korean constitution offers the possibility of citizenship to all Koreans. And so the argument sort of goes that third countries like Canada or the UK, as we'll see later on, they don't really need to accept North Korean refugees because they sort of have a home waiting for them in South Korea.

But the problem with this argument is that South Korea is not exactly safe for North Korean refugees. They face quite a bit of discrimination and social alienation. North Korean refugees have said that they're treated more like foreigners than actual foreigners in South Korea. They have a lack of marketable skills and a lack of jobs. Their suicide rate is about three to four times higher than that of the regular South Koreans.

And also they're at risk from the North Korean regime of assassination or potentially blackmail, because for many of them, they still have relatives in the North. So you can't really just send them back to South Korea. But in the meantime, you have the Canadian government that you're dealing with these North Korean refugees that have been living in Canada for potentially around a decade.

They have kids that are born in Canada, so they're Canadian citizens. And either families are being split up or these kids who are quite young basically have to start a new life in South Korea where they're not exactly safe. And Canada is actually lagging quite a bit behind other countries like the United States, which makes a special exemption for North Koreans.

But this is also not really just a Canadian problem. I think you sent me a great article by Marcus Bell, which sort of reports that similar things are going on in the UK. So the UK has also been turning away North Korean asylum seekers. And it's sort of this trend where, you know, one country can crack down and then the number of claims go up elsewhere.

And I think the article there also stated that after Canada cracked down in 2013, the numbers went up in Germany.

Andrea 41:06

It's so interesting, yeah. And it's not always, again, because North Korean refugees feel unsafe, per se, in South Korea, but the social integration problem is a big one. I imagine the unsafe feeling is potentially felt more acutely by North Korean defectors who have been higher up In the system or in particularly important places from the perspective of the North Korean regime.

Right. And therefore, you know, they might feel or fear for their safety a little bit more. There was an interesting visit that I did to the North Korean defector resettlement center in South Korea. This was a few winters ago. But I was really quite astonished by how there was an unwillingness in certain respects to acknowledge the difficulties around North Korean reintegration.

So the people who were running the resettlement center and indeed some of the officials that we met with around that were We're not willing to discuss capacity problems. We're not willing to discuss any issues with lack of diversity in the type of training that they provided, particularly to women, right? They give them only a few choices of what skills they're going to train them in.

Manicurist, esthetician in other respects, hair, that kind of thing. Seamstress, I think, was another one. And that's a pretty limited set of skills. And, you know, there wasn't an openness to discussing some of these problems, some of the mental health issues that defectors face, etc. And I found that quite troubling. I mean, it was really interesting to see how this whole process runs.

But if it's going to be a successful program, you've got to be clear eyed. Both about its successes and about its shortcomings. And clearly now we're seeing one of the aspects of its shortcomings play out here in the form of issues with North Koreans trying to settle in other countries.

Matt 43:28

Yeah, I think that's really interesting. And I think it's important for everyone to sort of understand a little bit of the kind of tricky legal and social nuances that are at play, because it's not always so simple. But yeah, what did you have for this month?

Andrea 43:43

There was a kind of curious story that only made it into the Indian press, but a North Korean staff member, senior manager apparently, at a North Korean company in Bangladesh, a fairly famous one actually that has been involved in mining operations in Bangladesh, was caught inside India, just on the other side of the border, In quite a semi-remote spot and he crossed the border on foot and the Indian authorities picked him up and have been trying to question him and apparently there's been language difficulties and he's been kind of frantic and we don't really know what's going on there.

So there's an interesting question of what this person was up to. He paid Someone to take him to the border and drop him off, and then he ran across on foot. So I'm not sure if that's a defection situation, or if it's the person was trying to do some form of illicit business, perhaps on behalf of the company, and didn't want to be caught going through one of the normal checkpoints. Not sure. that one I'll have to wait to see more on as well, but it hasn't really been picked up in the press yet. I wonder if we'll learn more in next few months or something.

Yeah, very possible. So was a little one that got missed, but not nearly of the significance, I think, of the really important stories that you highlighted there. So thanks for contributing that and for joining me on the podcast this month. It's been such a pleasure having you. I've got to find more Canadians so that I can just repeatedly have them take over this podcast with me.

But it was really great to have you, Matt, and thanks for joining us.

Matt 45:37

Thank you so much for having me.

Andrea 45:39

And thank you for listening.