KCN-eh? June’s other North Korea Developments

Andrea Berger 0:06

You're listening to the Arms Control Wong podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. My name's Andrea Berger, and I'm a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. And I'm joined by two wonderful friends of mine, my colleague Melissa Hanham, who's also a senior research associate with us at CNS, and Ankit Panda, who's an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists.

So we're all sitting here in Seoul in a very odd configuration in the hotel room recording this podcast. And we've been here for the past few days doing a working group on North Korea policy that's run by FAS and having some chats with people here in Seoul to figure out what on earth is going on. So I'm really pleased you guys could join me today.

So welcome to the Arms Control Wong podcast. Thanks for having us.

Ankit Panda 1:02

Absolutely. Always fun to join the podcast.

Andrea 1:04

So we have to basically pick up from all of the summitry that happened in the first half of the month and digest everything in the latter half. And there's been a lot there. There's been a whole bunch of news on sort of follow-up things to the Trump-Kim summit. We've also had some developments and pieces of news around basically what...

North Korea is or is not doing in its nuclear missile programs right now, and then maybe we can talk a little bit about some of the things that we've been hearing in Seoul, or the, the vibe that we've been getting in terms of what the North Korea discussion is like, and the alliance discussion, especially, which is something that we've been hearing a lot about. Scott's gonna have to turn on the bleeper. sorry, Scott.

So where do we want to start? Maybe let's do some stuff on summit follow on. What were your reactions, guys? Because you actually sit in the US. So you were kind of in the firing line of all the tweets when Trump came home and gave his readout of how he thought the summit went. So what were your initial reactions to that?

Melissa Hanham 2:13

The Monterey crowd were live tweeting from our video conference rooms. And I was driving back and forth because I had an interview. But several pizzas in, people were kind of tearing their hair out. There was a lot of nothing even matters anymore vibe going on.

Ankit 2:34

Yeah, I mean, I was in New York, so the time zone wasn't the best to observe the summit. And I promised the Daily Beast that I'd file a very early reaction take for them. So I was up at like 4 a.m. watching this press conference. And I guess the question leading up into this whole summit was that, you know, you have Donald Trump, a person who really operates in the moment and is likely to give up any range of things when asked without necessarily consulting with allies.

And, you know, throughout the summit, you know, we saw the handshake. We saw the The actual talks under, you know, go under. And there weren't too many terrible off script moments. I mean, there was that weird fat joke that he made about Kim Jong-un at one point.

Melissa 3:09

There's a lot of caressing of his back, too.

Ankit 3:12

Yeah, yeah. I think that was like a weird, like macho dominance move in weirdo Trump Jersey gangster world where he comes from, you know, the whole. I'm going to dominate you by grabbing your arm and Kim trying to deal with that. But, you know, we did have the crazy Trump moment at the press conference.

Melissa 3:28

And the saluting.

Ankit 3:29

Yeah, yeah. And there was the salute. I mean, yeah, that I think blew up into a bigger chunk of the news cycle than it maybe deserved to be, given some of the other things that came out of the summit. But the big moment that, you know, I think caught everybody off guard, including our allies here in Seoul, was the decision to...

Announced that provocative exercises, sorry, war games would be canceled.

Andrea 3:52

Don't call them war games.

Ankit 3:54

Yeah, that's what Trump called them. I play war games on my computer. Trying to be accurate to the president's words. And, of course, then we have Trump come back and immediately announce that there is no nuclear threat from North Korea and he's accomplished what Obama could never do. And, you know, I sort of struggle with what to make of that still.

I mean, on one hand, part of me is like the less Donald Trump talks about something or takes an interest in something, probably the better off we will be in the longer term. But for any kind of process to succeed with the North Koreans, they would need to see that the president, that the president of the United States is actively engaged and sees it as a matter.

But now it's all with Pompeo. And yeah, so I guess, you know, peace in our time. No more threat from North Korea.

Andrea 4:41

Yeah, I found that tweet to be totally extraordinary, not because it should surprise anyone that he said something like that, because I think everyone sort of knew that he was going to paint this as a massive, unqualified win for both the issue and for U.S. security policy. And, you know, it's for anyone who works on the issue and has seen as we'll get to in a minute that North Korea does not appear to be pausing.

Its nuclear and missile activities aside from limited restraint, because frankly, they haven't promised to. You know, the threat has not dissipated. Maybe the political atmosphere has changed for the moment, but in terms of capability, at least North Korea retains that capability. So Trump coming home and saying there is no more nuclear threat was just so ridiculous. And for me, it creates this worry that actually we are going to continue on A really crazy ride of mismanaged expectations that characterize the pre-summit period, and I just don't think that's done yet.

Like, we're going to have that again, and it's going to involve probably more technical assessments now that we're getting kind of into the nitty-gritty of arms control or potential Discussions over rollback of the North Korean nuclear program, it's going to involve mismanaged expectations now around the like core details as well, potentially, whereas before it was more around is the summit happening isn't what is the art of the possible.

Melissa 6:17

Yeah, I 100% agree. I think that everything we've heard from Pompeo, Bolton, Trump is that they're being overly advantageous to their own sort of perspective on what's happening. And not to jump too far ahead, but what we're hearing now is Or leaks about what's coming out. And even as a person with no special access to information, just in the open source, we were able to see that North Korea really hadn't changed its behavior at its nuclear and missile facilities.

If anything, there may have been a little bit more activity. And so with those expectations set so high, I do. My biggest worry is that Trump's going to one day feel embarrassed and need a scapegoat. And it'll be Kim Jong-un. And we'll be back to maybe not even square one, but like square negative five.

Ankit 7:18

Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, there's been, you know, we've talked about the Trump tweet about there being no threat, but just the level of delusion around what North Korea has said and not said is really getting to, like, frankly, ridiculous points. I mean, we've had multiple press conferences with Pompeo since the summit, and I think just a day after the summit, he implied that the word And complete denuclearization somehow implied, verifiable, and irreversible.

And he insulted a reporter when he said, you know, that's not in the text. Like, that's not what North Korea signed on to. And complete denuclearization, obviously, you know, I don't want to litigate the hermeneutics of that. There's been a lot of that since the Panmunjom summit. But that means something very different in the North Korean context.

And the other issue, as Melissa just noted, is that, you know, Kim Jong-un In his New Year's Day address, directed the mass production of warheads and ballistic missiles, and nothing he's done since then reverses that order, right? The framing around the April 20th decision to enter the moratorium on ICBM testing and to dismantle Punggye-ri, both of those were done in a unilateral context.

They had no relationship to the ongoing diplomacy with South Korea and the United States, overtly, at least in how North Korea framed it. It was more of a, you know, we feel that we're now, you know, Done with our warhead development and we feel like we're a responsible nuclear state. So these are some things that we're going to do.

We don't need to flight test our ICBMs anymore. So we're just going to stop testing them. So really, they've made no attempt to connect that. But I mean, this administration has really, you know, taken up those things. I mean, when when they blew up the nuclear site, you know, we got tweets from Trump saying that, you know, Oh, they've stopped all research on nuclear weapons.

They've stopped nuclear R&D, and it's like there's just no evidence of that.

Andrea 8:58

And in the press conference that Trump gave after the summit, he also repeatedly kept saying that North Korea has pledged to stop all missile tests. And that's just a complete misreading of what they've actually said. They are not stopping all missile tests. They may do it in practice, but that's definitely not true.

Ankit 9:22

One of the really interesting things, though, is in that April 20th statement, Kim Jong-un, in sort of the preamble portion of his speech, he says that we don't need to test intermediate range ballistic missiles, but then he doesn't actually get back to that and say we're actually going to enter a moratorium. The moratorium is just on ICBMs, but he does acknowledge that there is no need for further IRBM testing, but he just didn't announce a moratorium.

And again, you know, I'm worried that we're just going to do leap day again with all of this stuff. I mean, I'm fully expecting the North Koreans to launch a space launch vehicle at some point or possibly test shorter range missiles, depending on how things progress from here within the inter-Korean place.

Andrea 9:58

We may need to do a brief explanation there of when we say we're worried that it's going to be another leap day, what that is. So, Melissa.

Melissa 10:05

So, yeah, no, I mean, during the Obama administration, there was this negotiation to end what the Americans thought were all rocket tests. So missiles plus space launch. And what the North Koreans seem to have thought was only missiles, not space launches. And if you ask Americans from that time period, they still feel really angry about this, like they were double crossed.

But if you put the English and Korean statements side by side, there's a room there. There's a gap there, I think, that they never really agreed to it. So the North Koreans went on and You know, launched a space launch vehicle and missiles during their missile moratorium. And the Americans were upset, very upset.

Andrea 10:50

Yeah. So I think that's all kind of at the in the backs of our minds as we're thinking about what's happening here. I think, however, you know, despite the mismanaged expectations, it is pretty clear that there is general concern Rhetorical restraint for the most part being exerted with regards to characterizing North Korea as a threat or in the reverse, North Korea characterizing its traditional adversaries as a threat right now.

And that's pretty interesting. And particularly the extent to which North Korea seems to be doing that. We were talking, Ankit and I, earlier about some of the Propaganda that came out in the North Korean papers on the anniversary of the Korean War and how there was this sort of mention of a generally threatening environment, the type of environment that North Korea has embedded so deeply in its national philosophy, the sort of threat-based identity that it's had forever.

But there was no specifics. Normally you get like detailed, detailed specifics about how the US imperialist aggressors are being terrible and how their South Korean puppet forces are, you know, just kind of going along with their will. But this time was different. It was much more general.

Ankit 12:13

Yeah, it's been interesting. I mean, that's certainly been noticeable to me since the summit. And part of me wonders if, you know, North Korea has kind of taken the hint on maybe Donald Trump being a little bit thin-skinned after his, you know, May 24th decision to cancel the summit just because he thought the North Koreans were being mean to Mike Pence.

So maybe he just, you know, they think, well, we have this process now with the Americans, and it's probably not worth blowing it up over a spicy editorial in Nodong Shinmun, so we should probably... Tamped down on the anti-American rhetoric. You know, they've been talking generally about the West. Japan is certainly still getting a lot of flack.

I think like every other day, there's an editorial, you know, talking about Japanese colonialism, Tokuto, and all sorts of issues related to Which has sort of been sidelined amid all the diplomacy going on in Northeast Asia in the first half of this year. There is some talk about Abe meeting Kim Jong-un, but we'll see if that actually comes through.

But there's been some other interesting developments with North Korea propaganda too, right? I mean, after the Singapore summit, we had, you know, the front page splash under Nong Chin Mun showing Images of Marina Bay in Singapore, Marina Bay Sands, Sheldon Adelson's big casino on the North Korean front pages. And when you start thinking about the things going on in North Korea right now with sort of the pivot away from the first leg of Kim Jong-un's Pyeongjin line of simultaneously pursuing nuclear capability and economic prosperity, he's chosen now to turn towards the second component of that The economic issue and we start to see things that were frankly unimaginable a while ago, right?

I sort of come back to the KCTV footage of the candlelight revolution here in Seoul when the North Koreans were trying to communicate that, oh, the South Koreans are so unhappy with their political system and their equality of life. They're out in the streets protesting, but they actually had to pixelate the Seoul skyline in the background because they've long been concerned about trying to conceal the level of development in South Korea and other places.

But now we have Full splash coverage of how advanced Singapore is. And I think that sets up an interesting kind of ideological change in how they're choosing to propagandize these things.

Andrea 14:20

Yeah, that's a really good point. And I flagged as well, when we were talking about North Korean propaganda, the Japanese focus, it's funny that North Korea has sort of replaced the US and South Korean threat in narrative terms with Japan. Japan, of course, has thrown back some sort of negative press into this mix, right? Just a few days ago, they put out more evidence of North Korean illegal ship-to-ship transfers, right?

So they're sort of just sitting there in the corner, like, feeding some negative stories in periodically still. But so Japan seems to kind of have taken on that threat role temporarily, maybe for North Korean propaganda. And given that we have two Canadians sitting in the room, Canada has clearly taken on that for the United States. So for me, it was super bizarre sitting in...

I was on a TV studio with a few other people watching the press conference live streamed from the summit and hearing the rhetoric around Canada and how much that contrasted with the rhetoric around North Korea. Could not have been more bizarre.

Melissa 15:26

Yeah. We're the new axis of evil.

Andrea 15:28

Yeah. So... The one thing I want to finish on, kind of on the summit follow-on, is on the military exercises front. We heard from Trump in the press conference that he intended, he used the word cancel, but the U.S. has since kind of reframed things as a suspension of the big command post exercise, Ulchi Freedom Guardian, that normally happens every August.

So we knew that was coming and that was on the horizon. We also heard in the last few days that there's been a suspension, some people have said here while we've been here, postponement, and I'm not really sure which it is, of two smaller maritime exercises. Marine exchange program, yeah. So smaller exercise exchanges and those are being thrown into this mix as well, which I think raises an important question around what are the circumstances actually that the U.S. and South Korea envision for the continued...

Non-occurrence of joint military exercises? Is this something that they are thinking of as being an intention so long as there's serious negotiations happening with North Korea? Is it something that they feel is A point for a reciprocal kind of agreement. That has been something I've heard a few times here while in Seoul as well. So some people think we're getting things in exchange for refraining to do military exercises.

And it's not totally clear to me what actually is the framework for the thinking around where we're going or not going with military exercises.

Melissa 17:16

I think – well, so, I mean, I think Trump's language around it was interesting. He even used the term provocative, right, which is what the North Koreans often frame it as. So, I mean – It's not incorrect. The exercises are provocative to North Korea, and they often see them as a pretext for war. And so the thinking inside North Korea is if a war was ever going to start, it would masquerade as one of these exercises first.

But that being said, you know, putting aside North Korea's feelings about it, like there really hasn't been any evidence of any quid pro quo for stopping them. And I have to admit, I was blown away when I heard that kind of level of commitment. I thought maybe they would roll them back. They would scale down decapitation or whatever.

You know, reconfigure them in some way. But, you know, they aren't, I mean, war games is tossed around in the vernacular, but they are readiness exercises and they're exercises that are needed. And especially when you're far away from the area, like myself, sometimes you don't realize how important they are. And so, you know, just the other day we were talking about the turnover rate of soldiers or just of U.S. and Korean participants.

And it's around two years. So if you don't have them every six months. That's okay. But if it goes too much longer than that, then you're going to have people who have not trained before.

Andrea 18:56

Yeah, there's a question here as well around what we call OPCON transfer. So transformation of the control structures between South Korea and the US in a wartime scenario, especially that would result basically in greater ROK leadership. Is one of the discussions here. It's been on the table for ages. And the plan that Moon Jae-in kind of sketched out early on in his time in office was that when certain procurement programs were completed, that there would be this transfer that would happen.

And Despite that, so there may be changes in those procurement programs as well that affect this discussion, but military exercise is affected as well. Can you still have that on the same timeline if you haven't been exercising together? Does this actually hasten the political imperative for that transfer to happen? So I really don't know how that's going to play out yet, but maybe you guys have thoughts on this.

Ankit 20:05

Yeah, I mean, OPCON transfer, I think, has long sort of been a sovereignty concern in South Korea, particularly with the South Korean left that sees the alliance structure as being sort of unacceptable to the way a sovereign country should be able to operate its military forces in wartime while retaining support for the alliance. So the three specific, I guess, procurement schemes that have to be completed are the so-called K-3 suite.

So the three components of that are Kill chain preemptive strike capabilities, the Korea air and missile defense program, which they have a few indigenous systems in development there. And then finally, the massive punishment and retaliation program, which is the decapitation component of that. So once all three of those are completed, the idea is that that would Speed up the timeline to OPCON transfer.

My understanding right now is that they're still envisioning mid-2020s for this to happen. It was supposed to happen during the Obama administration.

Melissa 21:03

Yeah, I mean, so I lived in Seoul 12 years ago. It was like my first job out of grad school. And we were talking about OPCON transfer then too. So, I mean, I think at this point... I actually don't see it as a kind of benchmarked process anymore. I think I think they've got to decide. And they're I mean, they will be ready when when they say they are.

Yeah.

Andrea 21:29

But this is the interesting thing is you're sort of referring, I think, to the capability procurement program, which is set to on current timelines, bring those capabilities to readiness by mid 2020s, which is my understanding as well. And. From everything I've heard, that timeline is not going to be changed because of this discussion, at least yet. There's going to be, I think, a review of a lot of these programs as the inter-Korean dialogue process goes forward.

So whether that has implications for the defense budget or for any particular procurement programs will be really interesting to see and what goes on the chopping block as a priority. But The point probably I think you're making, Melissa, is that at the end of the day, this transfer decision is going to be a political decision. And that might happen completely separate from those procurement activities.

It might not. And we'll have to see. It's particularly noteworthy that the politics here are Seem to be very much geared towards creating an environment that does not seem threatening to North Korea right now. And I've been actually astonished myself as to the extent and how quickly that that conversation has changed.

Melissa 22:52

No, Seoul is weird. I mean, I mean, this particular point in time walking around Seoul is strange than any other time because you have people from the Moon Jae-in camp that are In some ways, being a little bit willfully blind to what's happening. And then you have opposition groups that are, I mean, I haven't actually heard a formal Korean speech delivered with so much swearing before.

Andrea 23:20

Yeah, there's been...

Melissa 23:21

In English, right? Like, I mean, I've heard plenty of Korean swearing, but like, we're being very polite right now as we dissect what's happening in Seoul right now. And it's not polite. It's...

Andrea 23:36

Actually, you mentioned before that you had a concern that the U.S. might use North Korea as a scapegoat in case everything collapses. We've heard several times this week the sheer terror around the possibility that the U.S. blames South Korea and indeed the real concern about the general state of the alliance and where we're at. There's a lot of anger around the fact that South Koreans were not seemingly a close part of the decision to suspend or cancel whichever you prefer military exercises, that there is not close coordination, that the U.S. is not thinking about South Korea's needs or considerations, that they are imposing More constraints on actually South Korea's ability to defend itself in that environment, whether that's in relation to capability acquisition or other things.

There's, I think, a real upset that is being not very well concealed here. Many aren't even trying.

Ankit 24:53

Yeah, I think the alliance is on really shaky ground. And a lot of the issues of Trump or the United States eventually blaming South Korea, I think those concerns have really existed since the early March decision to have the summit. Because it was originally, I mean, you know, Moon Jae-in was in the driver's seat in the process leading up to a lot of this diplomacy.

And what was being conveyed from the South Korean side to the United States about North Korean intentions ended up, I think, forming a lot of those lofty expectations that we all worried about in May. And while those have been recalibrated, I think there's again, again, risk that we could, you know, watch this process disintegrate in a very bad way for the alliance.

The other issue is that the way Trump's been speaking about the costs of these exercises has been interesting, right? I mean, he went off on this whole rant about how he knows a lot about airplanes and sort of Flying time hours for bombers. And he's like, why are we paying for this? I mean, he's fundamentally, as long as he's been a candidate for the presidency and obviously since he's entered office as well, complained about the costs of these exercises.

So for him, in his mind, when Kim Jong-un asks him to Make a quote-unquote concession on these exercises. I think he just sees it as an opportunity to do something that he's wanted to do anyways. And doing it without consulting the South Koreans is obviously a terrible way to go about it. But I think the North Koreans played their cards very well when it came to this issue.

And in South Korea, going back to this issue of the quid pro quo, In the Moon Camp right now, I mean, there is a quote, which is that they are creating the mood for peace on the peninsula, right? That is what they're getting back in return with all of these modifications right now. And it's really not—it has nothing to do with the specifics about where North Korea's actual nuclear complex is going or where the lack of concessions related to its ballistic missile program.

It's really— Very kind of bubbly and related to the general ambiance for peace, you know, creating the conditions for Moon's peace regime to take hold. So we're in this very strange place right now.

Melissa 26:46

I wish we could make some kind of matrix, actually, of what people say and what is actually true. You know, like, we could go down, like, has Kim Jong-un given up this? Has he not given up? Has he committed to do this? Has he not committed to do this? Has Trump committed to do this? Has Trump not committed?

Has Moon Jae-in committed to this? But I mean, like, I feel like we should almost, like, just... Have a live fact checking of these, these different statements as they come out, because there's, there's just so much wish fulfillment going on. Like, I hope for peace, therefore it will be so. Don't tell me about the fact that they're ramping up solid fuel production, or you know that there's like additional enrichment facilities. Like, I don't want to hear it. La la la la. I'm covering my ears now.

Andrea 27:31

I think there is probably a reasonable version of what is happening right now in terms of the narrative flow around how North Korea is no longer a threat, right? There's where we were in 2017, which was like banging of the drum for military action. Constant talk about decapitation of the North Korean leadership. And that wasn't helpful either.

So somewhere in the middle of these rhetorical extremes that I think we're seeing playing out in the last 12 months is Is what is both realistic, probably, and sensible in terms of not creating this extremely tense atmosphere while at the same time not conveying the impression that North Korea is no longer a... You know, frankly, terrible actor on the international stage.

And that's, I think, the problem right now is we've seen both of those extremes in the last little while. But on that point, this is actually a good spot for us to transition to talking about what North Korea is doing or not doing with its nuclear and missile programs. Because another one of the things I've heard several times this week is the idea that North Korea has Has suspended a much broader range of activities than it has pledged to.

So let's talk about that. In the Trump press conference, we were all initially quite confused by this mention of a discussion supposedly between Trump and Kim Where Trump claims he asked for North Korea to blow up a missile engine testing facility because he could see the heat, and Kim Jong-un saying that they'll do it. Allegedly, that's how things went.

And we... Weren't clear whether or not he was actually talking about a missile engine testing facility initially. We thought maybe he was confusing this with other news. If it was a missile engine testing facility, we did not know which one, because there are several, and...

Melissa 29:45

Talking in past tense so I mean as a person who has to look at the satellite imagery past tense is really painful because I feel like gosh I may have missed something I'm gonna go check all the missile facilities and poor Dave Schmerler I mean his eyes must have been bleeding after looking through all those images and being like where is it where are the burn scars I don't see it and so now we learn that it's a it's a future tense

Ankit 30:11

Yeah, and on that, I struggle with this thing because in my mind, when he mentioned this and he talked about them being able to see it because of the heat, and I wondered, this was first of all a really discordant kind of specific technical concession to come out of a process that was anything but specific and technical.

So my first reaction was Trump did not ask for this. This was something the North Koreans came prepared to concede. And we got some reporting from Chosun Ilbo and other places that essentially clarified that this was something the North Koreans had come. You know, they kind of knew that this would be something that they could offer up as a show of goodwill.

And now we know that it's the it's the static liquid fuel engine test stand at Soha, according to the. Officials that have spoken to the media in the meantime. And Melissa, I think I'll let you explain what that means.

Melissa 31:04

Where, you know, it's a nice gesture. It looks good. I hope that they invite reporters, but even better experts to go and see it. But this is not an important part of their fuel cycle. And that's challenging, too, is North Korea's nuclear weapons program and missile program is complex enough that the average layperson doesn't Know really the depth or the meaning of that.

So you get this great explosion picture. It looks good. It looks like you've done something important. But these are not important to North Korea anymore. These are definitely the lowest hanging fruit. So what it means to get rid of Punggye-ri is that they're probably not going to test new nuclear weapons designs. It does not mean that they're not going to stop making Does not mean that they're going to stop making nuclear weapons. They can make all they want of the, at least two designs that we know they have, and the same with the engine testing stand at. So, hey, you know, they're comfortable with that engine. Kim Jong-un said so himself. So, you know, blowing up that engine means like they're not going to tweak the engine too much anymore. It Doesn't mean they can't mass produce that same engine design.

Ankit 32:16

I mean, if I'm writing the headline for like Fox News and when this eventually happens and they blow this thing up, you know, you can frame it like this is where they tested the 80 ton force engine in September 2016 and where they tested the March 18th revolution and the second stage for the Hwasong-14. So it's all of these ICBM component testing places.

So you can say, oh, Trump got the North Koreans to take down the site where they You know, developed their ICBM. And like, as far as framing goes, I can see why the North Koreans would bring this to the table because it is a low cost, high PR kind of exchange for them. And I'm worried that's what, you know, that's exactly what's going to happen.

And look, I mean, the Sohae site also includes the satellite launching Gansha. They're not taking that down.

Melissa 32:53

Yeah. So when I first heard SOHE, I was like, that's fantastic news. I'm so pleased because I was so worried what would happen when we started doing space launches from there. And then when someone told me it was just the engine test and it wasn't the actual space launch gantry tower and all the affiliated facilities, I was like, nope, that's stupid.

Yeah.

Andrea 33:15

This also, of course, fits into North Korea's narrative that it doesn't need to do further research and development on certain parts of the program, mainly ICBMs. So if North Korea is telling one thing to its domestic population, which is we're done with the R&D on these portions of our program. Therefore, we can make these sort of concessions or exert restraint in these areas.

That's a very different thing than thinking, as some clearly do on the U.S. side, that those are things that are being given to the United States as concessions in a negotiation context. Yeah.

Ankit 33:53

Right. They're probably done with their large liquid propellant engine development. They've had a lot of success with this RD250 variant set, and they're very happy with it. The older failed experiments with the Musudan and the 4D10, I think they've kind of closed the book on that. They're like, this works for us. We've tested it. We succeeded with our first ever flight test, the twin-engine RD250 Wasong 15, which is a pretty impressive achievement.

They have a 100% success rate with ICBM flight testing. And they're getting pretty good with this stuff. So now they're probably going to shift over to solid fuel production. I mean, that's why when I first heard engine test stand, I was like, if this was a US ask, I sure as hell hope that it was, you know, the Magen Poe test stand, even though that's, you know, negligibly reversible.

It's a horizontal test stand. They can set that up pretty quickly if they needed to.

Melissa 34:39

Yeah, that's the other thing. It's not entirely like Pungi Re, like rebuilding an engine test stand, whether it's horizontal or vertical, is much easier than digging a big tunnel. But that's not to say they don't have other tunnels.

Ankit 34:50

I don't know. What are they doing with Tonghe?

Melissa 34:53

Well, it hasn't changed. I've been curious and I've been checking it out every so often. But yeah, it really hasn't substantially changed. So that, just for clarification, is... The East coast gantry tower launch station that, that could launch like an ICBM, but never, never really has depending on how you define the back to sun. Yeah.

Andrea 35:19

So we talked a little bit there about the missile engine test facility question and that as a data point. Let's turn to data points for continued North Korean activity on nuclear missile programs. So that's one where we think there might be forthcoming restraint or dismantlement of parts of the complex. Let's talk about ones where we don't see that.

There was some news in the last week about changes to the cooling water system on the five megawatt reactor at Yongbyon and some other infrastructure changes there. How significant did you guys read that story?

Melissa 36:06

So that wasn't my work, and I've been flying, so I haven't had a chance to really look at it. So if I had a dream scenario for denuclearization, it would be to eliminate the fissile material, the warheads, and the facilities that could produce more fissile material. And then we can get to missiles in my dream list later, but none of that has been promised, and none of that has...

Been codified in any way in any sort of written form. And then looking at satellite imagery of these places, like it seems like business as usual. So during the Bush administration, they blew up the cooling tower, which was one of the signatures for us to tell whether it was operating or not. And it sounds really dumb when you hear it, but yeah, we kind of just looked for steam coming out or steam not coming out.

And so back then we were talking about irreversible and you can see how difficult it is to make something like this irreversible because sure enough, when the deal fell apart, they didn't have a cooling tower, but they rerouted the cooling system to go to the nearby river. So now we don't look for steam. We look for signs that hot and cold water are flowing in and out of the river.

And, you know, we can still see that as a signature of whether it's operating or not. And, yeah, I mean, that and the continued construction on the light water reactor, which is... Going in right next to it is intriguing, not the least of which because we don't know exactly what the light water reactor is going to be and if it is in fact a totally possible or plausible light water reactor.

Ankit 37:56

The other issue is that Yongbyon is not the only site that we should be thinking about.

Andrea 37:59

Oh, we can talk about that too.

Ankit 38:01

Should we jump to that?

Andrea 38:02

Yeah, let's jump straight into that. That's a good segue to that.

Ankit 38:05

Okay. So, yeah, so I think for a few years, you know, people have pretty safely assumed that North Korea has covert enrichment sites, and we just haven't really known a lot about that. And NBC dropped a bombshell of a report a few hours before we began recording this podcast, sourced to 12 people in the U.S. intel community with knowledge of a recent CIA assessment, backed up by a few other people, but...

The core finding is that North Korea has a second enrichment site that's been known about for a while. There was a little bit of coverage actually in the Washington Post about this site in late May. The site is called Kangseong, and we don't know exactly where it's located yet. But it is thought to be a substantial enrichment site that I think the Intel community has known about for probably around five years now.

So the significance of that being that this was all Intel given to Trump before the Singapore summit. And I think the fact that you have 12 people talking to NBC about this and leaking really suggests that the intel community is not here for Trump's mission accomplished tour, that the North Korea threat has evaporated. I think we're going to start seeing more of these kinds of leaks coming out.

And after the second site, we actually now have evidence of a third site. We also don't know where that is yet.

Melissa 39:28

Well, so there's always been this feeling that you would have a pilot enrichment facility before the one that Sig Hecker saw at Yongbyon. And so, you know, when you're enriching uranium, you know, you go from this sort of conversion plant and you need to spin the centrifuges up. In order to get what you need ultimately to have the highly enriched uranium.

And so Sig Hecker back in 2010 walked into what was formerly known as the fuel fabrication facility and saw thousands of centrifuges. He wasn't sure if they were operating or not, but it kind of blew his mind that they were there. And there were so many of them. So the feeling was that they may have had a pilot facility beforehand.

And then, you know, a couple of years later, just the footage, the square footage of that facility doubled. And that's not to say that this number of centrifuges doubled, but it's an open question for us in the open source. So this new facility, too, is our nightmare because enrichment facilities are very hard to detect with satellite imagery and they don't have a specific signature.

They're just big, boxy, industrial looking buildings. They don't consume electricity in a way that you could monitor easily. They don't give off heat in a way that you could easily monitor, at least with what I've got. And you can bury them, right? Iran buried them all over. And North Korea is nothing but, if nothing else, they are fantastic at tunneling.

And so you could put one of these facilities pretty much anywhere. So whatever kind of denuclearization deal we do or do not get with the North Koreans or however we define it, someone's going to want to feel like they trust North Korea to have told them and to have seen where all the facilities are. But it's really hard to check that promise, even if it's given directly.

Ankit 41:27

These leaks are also really interesting, I think, for what they say about, you know, the intel community, I think, is risking some sources of methods with this coming out right now. Because I think the thing that I'd always wondered about is that, yes, the U.S. had knowledge of these covert enrichment sites, but would they wait until the North Koreans voluntarily make declarations as part of a process, and then immediately you know if they're negotiating in good faith or not because you know about the covert sites.

And now we've had this leak come out A week before Pence goes into his next round of talks with the North Koreans. And I think that's going to actually affect the conversations in that room, because the North Koreans will know that, you know, the so-called ace is up their sleeve. Because I think another significant part of this assessment was the assessment included an assessment of North Korea's intent to deceive the United States, which I think tells you that The kind of sources that we're dealing with here are not simply imagery, that there is other information backing up these assessments of North Korea's intentions.

So I think we're now getting to this really interesting point where the intel community is going to significantly complicate Pence's ability to walk away from the North Koreans with just a feel-good kind of deal about

Melissa 42:37

Well, and what we would love is for them to just give us a list and then check it against our own intelligence communities list. And if necessarily call them out sort of, I guess, James Kelly style. Not that that went super well, but it now that now that we're tipping our hand first, I mean, we may be wrong.

So one of the projects we're working on right now in Monterey with funding from MacArthur is looking at the uranium mining and milling projects. Facilities in North Korea, specifically because you can monitor them. And it won't be very accurate, but like one of our questions we're trying to answer is, can we tell within an order of magnitude how much enrichment they would be doing?

And does it match with what the known facilities are? So it's not going to be like super specific or accurate, but it's going to be one of the ways we try to map out whether we know if they have told us about all their facilities or not, or if they're mining and milling uranium at a level that would suggest they have more facilities.

Ankit 43:42

Yeah, and this is what I think confused a lot of people last year when we had that DIA-NGA assessment come out about 60 warheads with a production rate of 12 warheads worth of fissile material a year. That's not just Yongbyon, right? So, I mean, I think it was pretty telling that the intel community is aware of significant enrichment facilities that remain covert.

Andrea 44:02

Yeah, I think this will be really interesting to watch in the context of the negotiations that seem to now be picking up again. We've got news, I think, that Pompeo finally has a meeting date. July 6th. That's right. And therefore, I assume also has North Korean counterparts for that meeting, which is one thing that we didn't know, you know, who they were going to be.

Melissa 44:25

And this is before Russia, right? This is before everyone goes to Russia? Yeah, I think that's right.

Andrea 44:30

So, yes, we'll see in that context. Ankit, did you want to talk a little bit about Pocoxone 2 as well in this discussion?

Ankit 44:38

Yeah, happy to talk a bit about that. So this will be a story that will be coming out at the Diplomat probably within 24 hours of this podcast going out. So I guess exclusive on the podcast for now. So throughout the first half of 2018, the U.S. intel community has observed... Ongoing production of the integrated transporter erector launcher that we first saw in February 2017 associated with the Pukuk Song 2 solid-fuel medium-range ballistic missile.

For listeners that might be wondering what that missile looks like, it's basically North Korea's land-based version of its submarine-launched ballistic missile, its largest land-based solid-fuel system. It is

Melissa 45:17

It is ugly.

Ankit 45:18

It is ugly. Yes, it is not the prettiest tell, but I think it gets the job done as far as survivability goes. It's a pretty nice addition to North Korea's capabilities. So this has been ongoing throughout the first half of the year. But what's really interesting is that the assessment really has to do with the manufacture of the vehicles themselves and associated support equipment.

But not with the actual manufacture of airframes for Pukseong-2 missiles, which is an interesting choice on North Korea's part. I think there's several hypotheses to make sense of that choice, right? On the more benign end, you have sort of the idea that North Korea is withholding from the production of airframes as diplomacy is ongoing as a Show of goodwill.

On the more nefarious end, you have the hypothesis that North Korea is working on more advanced airframe materials, and they're waiting to maybe figure out a production line for those. So they're not continuing with the old metal-based airframes that they have flight tested so far. So that is the ongoing assessment. But I think the clear takeaway here for the Not only do we have this evidence of Yongbyon and other covert sites continuing with enrichment, but their ballistic missile complex continues to be in full swing.

Although we have also seen significantly reduced activities with regard to the movement of missiles. TELs and missile transporters around the country. Last year in 2017, you know, we had all sorts of reports coming out based on intel assessments that North Korea was, you know, moving Hwasong-12s around the country. And, you know, you'd see reports in like CBS, NBC being like, North Korea is moving missiles around, possibly they're going to launch something.

But they were doing that every week. And really this year, that's been a noticeable decrease in the assessments, that they're not just shuffling missiles around, you know, Chagang province and near Kusong, where there was a lot of activity going on last year in the ballistic missile operating areas. So it's interesting that, you know, the production's ongoing for the TELs and the support materials, possibly also for the ICBM TELs, but we don't really have an assessment on that yet.

And that's a more complicated task for North Korea, given how large those vehicles are and Fairly difficult to manufacture, but they'll probably get there in due time because I think we saw signs last year of Kim Jong-un taking an interest in that.

Melissa 47:35

Well, so I think for them the tell, again, is a constraint. So if they have six launchers and, well, maybe even less if they're thinking they want to keep some IRRBMs on them, but let's say six launchers, then they probably don't have a strong desire to make more than that until they're able to make more launchers. So I find tell counting really intriguing because it's a constraint, right?

You can only launch as many missiles as you have launchers for. And I don't want to take their thunder but just to also make a little shout out I think Dave Schmerler and Jeffrey Lewis are going to have something on solid fuel for the Pukuk Song 2 as well Pukuk Song 2 too so I mean we can definitely see that the facilities on the east coast are active and happening and I won't take their thunder by saying anything more on that I'm just a small peer review part of that

Ankit 48:33

Oh, and the significance of the composite material airframes. I think we should maybe just briefly mention why that matters.

Melissa 48:37

Yeah, lighter. Lighter, goes farther, carries more stuff.

Ankit 48:40

Exactly. And we saw evidence last year in August when Kim Jong-un visited the Chemical Materials Institute of wound filament casings sitting around that facility. So we assume that they're manufacturing those and they have a supply chain.

Melissa 48:55

And I feel like we saw it in a parade too, not in that, and not in that design, but another colleague, Michael Dutzman, he, he noticed the wound filament in another missile design.

Ankit 49:06

So on the trailer, on the trailer.

Melissa 49:08

Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea 49:09

So this is for me, I tend to think about this in the context of some of the pledges in the new year's speeches, because the, the 2017 Kim Jong-un new year's speech was like, we're going to Get to the finish line in terms of ICBM R&D. At the end of 2017, he declared victory on that. The 2018 New Year's speech said mass production and quantitative expansion of the arsenal.

And so I at least fully expect that that is what they are going to do and spend this time doing, you know, diplomacy ongoing or not. Yeah.

Melissa 49:51

100% and I think the solid fuel program which to me I know isn't always as scary to Americans who think of the mainland US but these missiles can still be very disruptive and destabilizing because they can be launched so quickly they're harder to see on satellite and yeah they're going to affect South Korea and Japan like allies and the US bases there so I think they're a riskier kind of missile.

And he made zero promises about the Pukuk song family of missiles. So I think that we may see more activities around that. I don't even know, like maybe even a test on that. But this is what worries me is that people think no new stuff is the goal, like the way the Trump. White House is talking about it is like, oh, they won't have any new nuclear tests, they won't have any new missile tests. Well, great, but they already said they were going to do that, and that's not the goal. The goal is to prevent them from having lots of these weapons, and, and that, that's what we need to push them on, is not having dozens and dozens and dozens of these things.

Andrea 51:05

To be fair, we don't want to probably just suggest that the restraint we are seeing by the North Koreans, even if it's framed in a certain way in a domestic context and not about what the Trump White House probably wants to think it is about. They're still valuable steps. And, you know, as in any negotiation process, we can't expect the North Koreans to do a whole lot of things that they haven't agreed to do.

So, you know, we need to be realistic on that front as well. But I, I think our ambition in talking about all of this is just to throw a Made significant progress already with the North Koreans, which is, you know, too early assessment from my view, or that we are going to make rapid and fairly, you know, complete denuclearization style progress on the North Korea issue.

People here are talking about having that done within the term of Moon Jae-in, which I truly think is extraordinary, but I sense doubt in this room at least that that is going to be possible.

Melissa 52:19

Well, just logistically. I mean, I think spiritually people want to get there and hey, I'm right there with them. But logistically, like when it actually comes to the number of humans involved, the number of sensory equipments, all the lines of... Agreements that have to be written, like, no, it's not going to happen in that time frame. I mean, Sighecker's on, on this already. It's going to take more than a decade, 15 years. I'm reminded of Trump's tweet in January 2017 about the ICBM, you know, it won't happen. Kind of, kind of on the flip side now with denuclearization, yeah, yeah, it won't happen. Yeah, Andrea likes to throw a little bit of cold water. I threw like an ice bucket challenge on the, it won't happen.

Andrea 53:04

Well, on that note, let's end there. Thank you guys so much for joining me, for enduring a room without air conditioning, which would have made noise and Scott would have killed me. And yeah, for a great week of discussions here in Seoul as well. So thank you guys so much for joining me and thank you guys for listening.

Scott's going to tell you a little bit more about how you can donate to the podcast at Patreon and join us on the Slack channel.

Jeffrey Lewis 53:32

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Again, that's patreon.com slash acwpodcast, and thank you for listening.