A Tale of Two Launches

Aaron Stein 0:02

I don't get up in the morning for coastal cruise missiles. I really don't.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:09

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

Aaron 0:25

And I am Aaron Stein, director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Scott LaFoy 0:30

And I am Scott LaFoy, super producer on the Arms Control Wonk podcast, program manager, national security and intelligence at Exeger Federal Solutions. And I would like to note that my opinions are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Jeffrey 0:45

Launch a missile, get a pod.

Aaron 0:51

Not just any pod, a three-way pod. When was the last time we did this?

Scott 0:54

It's been a bit.

Aaron 0:55

Yeah. Yeah. We had to bring out the big gun, Scott, you know, to to supplement my knowledge, because this is right in his wheelhouse. And he's already made me laugh off camera, off audio and camera.

Jeffrey 1:06

That is such a blight way, Aaron, of say, find another co-host who gives a shit about Jeffrey's missile models.

Aaron 1:14

I like your missile models. But North Korea, I mean, North Korea is the gift that keeps on giving. I swear it's made our podcast more popular than ever. And Scott is the perfect person to come in on this. Welcome, Scott. We love you.

Scott 1:30

I missed y'all. And North Korea is, in fact, the gift that keeps on giving twice in one week. But very, very different situations with very different reactions.

Jeffrey 1:40

Well, I mean, I think that they are different cases. But just for listeners, basically, if you haven't been following North Korea day in and day out, which, you know, good for you. There's a giant ship stuck in the Suez Canal. So, like, there are more interesting things to look at. On Sunday, North Korea conducted a pair of missile launches that were not announced.

North Korea didn't announce them and the United States and South Korea didn't announce them. And they only became public later when the Washington Post got the story. And, you know, the reaction was pretty muted. The Biden administration said this was military, sort of normal military activities. I said that on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is an ICBM launch and 1 is Kim farting in our general direction, this is a 2.

And then to follow that up, then, was it two days ago now? So we're recording this on a Friday. This must have been on Wednesday.

Aaron 2:43

No, it was on Thursday because... I think it was yesterday because it was on NBA tread deadlines. You're right, it was yesterday.

Jeffrey 2:50

Okay, so on Thursday...

Aaron 2:52

It was missiles and NBA. Time is a flat disc.

Jeffrey 2:54

On Thursday, North Korea conducted two additional missile launches. In this case, these are short-range, solid-propellant ballistic missiles. And I don't think we would have done a pod for the Coastal Defense cruise missile. But we are definitely here to do the pod for the two SRBMs. That's right.

Scott 3:17

Historically, we have only occasionally gotten those cruise missiles, and it's usually when they've given us a full photo set of them and when they've been special because they've been new, as opposed when they are unspecial, outside of maybe the method via which that information was released.

Aaron 3:34

Well, I think there's a political aspect to it, too, is that with the changes of administration, perhaps we've had a tone down in how we interpret the potential American response to these missile launches. So perhaps there was less urgency to talk about it because we're less scared of our own people.

Jeffrey 3:50

It is my favorite liberal pastime where we will sit around in a circle and wring our hands. And worry if we're hypocrites and if we're not holding Joe Biden to the same standard that we held Donald Trump. Because, you know, it is just so important that life be fair. I don't get up in the morning for coastal cruise missiles.

I really don't. I don't either. So I suppose we should say, I mean, it is an interesting story because North Korea didn't announce the coastal cruise missile, and we should say what a coastal defense cruise missile is. These are probably the Kumsong-3. So these things have a range of no more than 200 kilometers. They are not nuclear-armed.

They are interesting in that they show us that North Korea is interested in cruise missiles, but, and I think this is the important test, if North Korea were to disarm and give up its nuclear weapons... It would still have coastal defense cruise missiles. So, North Korea launched two of them. It didn't announce them, and it seems that it's a little unclear.

The first version of events that shows up in the Washington Post is that the U.S. and South Korea don't see them, which would have been very typical for a cruise missile, and it's only later through other intelligence methods that they realize that the launch happens, and so they don't really want to talk about the launch. Not Purely because it's not a big deal, although they say it's not a big deal, but also because they don't want to talk about how they knew.

South Korea sort of immediately contradicts that and says, no, no, no, no, we watched them the whole way and we decided with the Americans we weren't going to say anything. So that's like, that's like two different versions of the same story, right?

Scott 5:42

Yeah. And anytime we get into, I feel like the sources and methods type of things, it's hard to tell which one is going to be the correct story, which one's someone trying to posture. But ultimately I think that the main lesson to take away from them is if you follow munitions, these are fascinating tests. And you fall, if you follow the theory of intelligence and like theory of information, these are fascinating to see how they're reported on, but they are not a strategic level capability.

And they're not something that we lose sleep over. It's something we track because we're analysts, but It's not something to freak out about. It's certainly not the first test of the Biden administration.

Jeffrey 6:14

Well, and I would also say, you know, I think, Scott, you made this point off air, but I think it's worth reiterating. I mean, the Kumsong 3 was an interesting test the first time they did it, because it showed us something about their orientation and their goals. And if, you know, we think they've done an air-launched Kumsong 3 test, if they showed us one of those, we would be interested because it's new.

But I think You know, I have a different test than the Biden people. The Biden people said, well, it's not really covered by UN Security Council resolutions, so we're not getting worked up. I think cruise missiles should be covered by UN Security Council resolutions. I think we will soon see a cruise missile that will make us regret the fact that the UNSCR says ballistic missiles.

But really, the test is the one that I use is the one I outlined at the beginning, which is, if North Korea agreed to nuclear disarmament, would they give this system up? And if the answer is no, they would still have this system, then it's a big yawn for me.

Scott 7:12

And I think that's a very reason, especially, again, taking the content of our podcast, a fairly good standard to hold. I was very confused that they used that specific legalistic standard. I'm not sure I've ever heard the U.S. administration using that before, because I feel like even sometimes we've seen them get a little frustrated with large artillery and just seeing them be like, meh, it's legal.

It's fine. A little surprising to me. Well, you're not.

Jeffrey 7:35

I think it's a big mistake for them to be saying it for two reasons. The first is that we are going to see a long-range nuclear-capable cruise missile from North Korea. And so we will regret the legalistic, well, it says ballistic, so everything else is fine. Like, no, not everything else is fine. You're going to have to go back and get a strengthened Security Council resolution when we see that thing.

But the second piece, which brings us to the next test, is In the UN, the Russians and the Chinese have adopted this really freaking annoying argument that because the KN-23 flies an aeroballistic trajectory, or what was the phrase in the KCNA, Scott?

Scott 8:26

Oh, God.

Jeffrey 8:26

I want it again.

Scott 8:29

Okay, so you're killing me with this one. Irregular orbit features of low altitude gliding leap type flight mode already applied to other guided projectiles? Yeah. I had to read that like seven times to like KCNA is not known for its amazing translations and is very much known for its creative interpretation of the English language. But just again for listeners, irregular orbit features of low altitude gliding leap type.

Jeffrey 8:55

Yeah, it does a pull up maneuver. It's an abstract. It's a pull-up maneuver. The next time I go to the gym and they try to get me to do some, like, pull-up, I'm going to call it an irregular orbit feature of low-altitude gliding leap type exercise.

Aaron 9:13

We should actually do that on Instagram feed and charge money for it.

Jeffrey 9:17

The Chinese and the Russians have argued that the KN-23 is not covered under the UN Security Council resolutions because it flies a so-called aero ballistic trajectory. It does the pull-up maneuver, a.k.a. The irregular orbit features of low-altitude gliding leap-type flight mode. And they say that that's not a ballistic missile. So I think the decision by the Biden administration to read the Security Council resolution very literally is something that at the end of the day is a little bit contrary to our interest in making sure that we are focused on containing North Korea's nuclear and missile proliferation.

Aaron 9:58

I mean, don't you think they did that to try and Prevent this from cycling too quickly, from tensions going too quickly because of our own political debates?

Jeffrey 10:11

Yeah, but you know, is that a realistic approach to take? I mean, can we actually say, well, if we're just cool, the whole North Korea thing will stay off the front pages? I look at this as the beginning of a process. You know, I mean, Kim at the Workers' Party conference outlined, like, a lot of stuff we're going to see this year.

And maybe we don't see it all this year. But if we don't have a diplomatic strategy, which, by the way, we don't. We can talk about that. But if the strategy appears to be what I think it is, which is minimize what they're doing and focus on f***ing up our allies... The North Koreans are just going to work their way up the value chain until that's not a feasible strategy anymore.

So like, I mean, like, you know, they're buying themselves, what, a couple weeks here at most, maybe a couple months, but.

Scott 11:14

I mean, I think they bought themselves four days because the amount of time that we went from this is a legal launch and it's really not our problem, please move the news cycle elsewhere to, well, okay, that one's illegal. It was pretty quick.

Jeffrey 11:30

Do we want to talk about... Do we want to talk about what it was? Yeah.

Scott 11:38

Yeah. I'd like to talk about what this thing was because it's a little weird, but it's not like this isn't like North Korea weird, to be fair. This is evolutionary. This does not appear to be a revolutionary capability for them. It does appear to be, at least on first glance, the extra chunkification of an already existing system that looks to me like an ER version, an extended range version or extended sort of capabilities version of something we've already seen.

Jeffrey, I believe you and your team are already working on your analytics.

Jeffrey 12:09

Yeah, we have a pretty straightforward hypothesis about what this is. And maybe I can just walk you through quickly, because I think we think about these things in like a really unique, aka weird way. So, you know, the first thing we get is the range. Which is like KN-23 type range. It's reported as like 450 kilometers. The North Koreans come out and say it's 600 kilometers.

Maybe they're not telling the truth. Maybe because it does that little pull-up maneuver and glides, it's hard to see on radar. I don't know. But when we get the apogee, Right, how high it flies. It's only 60 kilometers. It looks exactly like a KN-23 trajectory. And so, you know, we kind of put it down like, okay, well, we think, you know, before we've seen it or seen what the North Koreans had said about it, just based on what the ROK in Japan and the US released, it's, you know, like, it looks like a KN-23 from how high it goes and how far it goes.

And then we get the And I will say at that time, I said, you know, well, it could be a KN-23. It could be the kind of chunky boy, the, what is it, the KN-24. Or it could be the new thing we saw in the parade that looks like a super KN-23. But we got to wait. But, you know, the trajectory looked KN-23-like.

Looked more like that than anything else. So then the North Koreans released the statement in the pictures. And I think the statement is really interesting. Because, you know, they call it a new type tactical guided missile, which is the phrase they use for the KN-23.

Scott 13:57

And just real quick, the North Koreans, when they've been debuting all of these solid fuel sort of short range technologies in the last two years, each system has sort of had a correlating specific like catchphrase or descriptor that goes with it.

Jeffrey 14:13

Yeah, which I think is so interesting. So they won't tell us it's Name but for the KN-23 they keep calling it the new type tactical guided weapon but for the KN-24 aka the chunky boy they call it just the new weapon and so you know okay so it's so they use that phrase so like okay that's KN-23 but then they say and you know I think this kind of like lets the cat out of the bag They say that it's improved.

And so I think the actual phrase is improved version of solid fuel engine. And so what I take that to mean is that, and this is like the most common thing in the world to do with solid propellant motors, is they stretched it. They just made it longer. And indeed, when we measure the pictures, we measure the booster at like 4.7 meters long.

We think it's like the same diameter as the KN-23. It's just a lot longer. And then they say, which I love, it has a two and a half ton warhead.

Scott 15:33

That's a lot of warhead.

Jeffrey 15:35

Why is it so big? I found this. I was so pleased with myself.

Aaron 15:41

I saw your Twitter. Sometimes this is my assist.

Jeffrey 15:45

Last year, South Korea decided that it was going to test something called the Hyunmoo 4, which was an evolution of their Hyunmoo series, which is You know, we have jokingly taken to calling the KN-23 the Hyunmoo 2, T-O-O, like I can do this too. It looks a lot like South Korea's Hyunmoo. I know people say it looks like the Iskander, but to me, it looks actually much more like a North Korean, like we can build a Hyunmoo as well.

But they tested, South Korea tested something called the Hyunmoo-4. And this was after they got the U.S. to take the payload restrictions off. The U.S. and South Korea used to have missile restrictions. Right. And it has a two-ton warhead. And the South Koreans were bragging about it. So last August, the defense minister in South Korea went to ADD, which makes the missiles, and congratulated them for developing, and this is a quote, a missile with ample range and the largest payload in the world.

So I think Kim's like, largest payload in the world? You know, hold my beer or hold my Diet Coke or whatever the hell we see him drinking, right? Like, I think this is absolutely a North Korean like, oh, you're bragging about your two-ton warhead? Well, here is our variant of your missile with a two-and-a-half-ton warhead. You know, my dick is bigger than yours.

Aaron 17:21

Anything you can do, I can do better. Yeah.

Jeffrey 17:23

But, you know, I mean, just just kind of working it out, you know, when we get the pictures and we get the statements, you know, like it's because it's gliding and gliding extends the range a little. And I don't have like the world's greatest modeling software with me right now, but like Stretching it to about 4.7 meters probably would take a two and a half ton warhead to the ranges we're looking at.

I mean, it's, you know, it's close and there's some details, but like, you know, that's definitely like plausible.

Scott 18:01

I'd be curious how far you could glide a two and a half ton. Like, how do you glide a Volkswagen?

Jeffrey 18:07

One question is issues of lift and center of mass. And so, you know, I don't... When I say it's plausible, I just mean, does the stretch they do look consistent with the warhead claim? And it's like, yeah, it's in the neighborhood. But I mean, if somebody comes back and says... Well, where the hell is the center of mass on that thing?

And how do you, you know, what's the lift like? Those aren't calculations that we would do. But just, you know, I mean, we know it's possible because South Korea did it, right? South Korea put two tons on, theirs, by the way, they call it the Franken-missile. So I don't know. I don't know what we're going to, I don't know what we're going to call the North Korean version.

Scott 18:55

Franken-missile was actually the scientist. That's Franken-missile's munition.

Jeffrey 19:00

Oh my f***ing god. I'm dead.

Scott 19:11

So, okay, so you've modeled this, we've gone through it, and it looks like... Very similar to, so visually if people are familiar with the Iskander, the Hyunmoo, it looks very similar to sort of the modern solids, just bigger. For folks, I saw folks online joking that it looks like a V2 because the rail that it launches off of is hard to distinguish from the fins.

It doesn't look like a V2. Those people are wrong, unfortunately. I thought the same thing when I first looked at it.

Jeffrey 19:38

Oh, one thing I didn't say was the vehicle. The launcher is definitely the launcher we saw at the end of the parade. It's got an extra axle. And it's a KN-23 type launcher. It's not the type of launcher and canister we see with Junkie Boy.

Scott 19:57

It's very notable. They, they have, there's like a specific thing they love doing. It drives me crazy. They dress it up like an Iskander. They, this is just like a minor thing about the tell, but they use this hinge back top that is basically only used by the Tachka and the Iskander. And I think the Aka back when it existed Did anyone else notice that on the back, though, the normal place where you would store either electronics or other TEL helpful materials is open?

There's nothing there? The missile is actually blasting the panel open and there's nothing behind it?

Jeffrey 20:29

No, I didn't notice that.

Scott 20:32

Yeah, so along the side, you know, where like on the, you know, DF-21 and whatnot, you would have electronics and... Oh, it's escaping me right now. You would basically have all the bits that would be used to analyze and prep the missile ahead of launch, or even just shovels and ropes and stuff. Sometimes it's basic crew equipment.

It depends. It's either glove boxes or some sort of telemetry stuff. On this one, the back three appear to have nothing behind them except missile. They're window dressing.

Jeffrey 21:03

Iskander cosplay.

Scott 21:08

I love a Skander cosplay, except I said that for weeks and I said it can't be in a... Everyone calls it Kim Skander. It can't be in a Skander until it pulls up. And then what did they do? And I hate it.

Jeffrey 21:18

Yeah, we think the KN-23 pulled up. They released...

Scott 21:23

Well, that's why I stopped calling it a cosplay, because I said the thing that makes Niscander is guidance and quasi-ballistics. And then they did it, and I had to shut up, because I thought I was all smart and be on the right side of history.

Jeffrey 21:35

Well, if listeners remember our little, our little... A podcast on the ground-based intermediate-range ballistic missile the U.S. tested with three different sets of control surfaces, they'll recall that one of the papers we cited was a South Korean paper on making the Hyunmoo-do extreme maneuvers. So I suspect that that's something that South Koreans are going to continue working on, and I can't imagine that the North Koreans will let that go uncopied.

So, hey! One more thing I want to say, which is, you know, the the nominal reason for South Korea doing the 2000 kilogram payload was because South Korea doesn't have nuclear weapons and they want to be able to bust hard targets in North Korea with conventional weapons. That raises a really interesting question to me to go back to my test on the cruise missile.

I initially thought the KN-23 would be nuclear-armed. But now that we've got the Chunky Boy... Right? And now that they're talking about putting a 2,500-kilogram payload on the... What are we calling this? The stretched KN-23... Do you think it really is just going to be conventionally armed? In which case that means if North Korea were to disarm, add laugh track, they would still keep these.

Scott 23:13

I struggle with 2.5 tons a lot. I was having this discussion with Eric Gomez from Cato as well about whether or not this looks like a bunker buster or a hardened aircraft shelter buster. We know the F-35 is causing a lot of storm and drain in North Korea and that that's coming to South Korea. There's a lot of stuff being built up to support that including hard, including hardened shelters.

I think there's two ways to approach this. One is that from sort of the conventional perspective, this definitely looks like something that could be used as a bunker buster, or you're starting to look towards like early earth penetrator capabilities, that sort of thing. That would make sense with the size and the weight. But if you're approaching it, I'd say sort of if you're going to approach it from sort of a nuclear skepticism standpoint from the North Koreans, 2.5 tons is a lot of room to mess around with your physics package size if you have not fully and truly miniaturized your You're a warhead.

If you can't get down to that 500 kilogram warhead size, having a Volkswagen worth of space is a very, that appeals to my like 1970s Chinese nuclear analysis part of my brain. So I don't know what to do with that because I think there's two very, very reasonable competing perspectives on how to approach that number.

Aaron 24:37

Yeah, I was going to say, are you thinking about this too soon? Have they focused their nuclear weapons development on longer range systems so that maybe they'll get there in a little while? Just what Scott said.

Jeffrey 24:46

Well, I mean, that's what Kim said at the Workers' Party Congress. He said that the task now was for them to develop a variety of tactical nuclear weapons. So, you know, when I, you know, when they did the KN-23, my assumption was it would be nuclear armed because it was a perfectly reasonable dual capable system. And at the time they didn't have anything else like it.

But then they pretty quickly followed it with Chunky Boy, and that raises the question of, like, well, why do you need two, right? Can't you just swap warheads? And now that they're talking about it having, you know, two and a half tons of payload, like you're, you're right, Scott, that does give them options, but it also does really sound like a conventional penetrator.

So I, you know, I just, I just don't know. I mean, you may be right, Aaron, that they're just at the beginning of this and, you know, they, maybe they have ideas, but the ideas won't shake out.

Scott 25:54

Well, and going back to something that... Jeffrey, you brought this up on Twitter. When you see a stretched booster with a heavier... This is two extra tons of mass on that booster. We think they already have a half-ton warhead. What happens when you strip two tons off of their warhead and you just use the smaller one? What does that SRP become?

Well... A medium range ballistic missile. Like is, are we looking at the actual replacement for the Musa?

Jeffrey 26:27

That's also a really interesting question. It's one of the reasons when people kept saying, calling it the new SRBM, I was like, I don't know.

Scott 26:33

It's pretty big. Yeah. It's the same critiques we have on South Korea. You can say it's an SRBM all you want, but when you show me you have a small warhead and you show me you have a massive booster capable of carrying that warhead, you're telling me you secretly have an MRBM in your backpack.

Jeffrey 26:51

Yeah, and I think this is a moment to say something that is a challenge that we have in doing this sort of analysis, which is, When the North Koreans were at the beginning, and I know I've said this before, but I think it is so important. When the North Koreans were at the beginning, it was pretty easy to tell what would be next because they didn't have a lot of options and there were steps they needed to take.

So it's like, oh, look, that's a scud. Oh, look, that's a supersized scud. Well, all you can do is cluster and stage that. Like, that's it. That is the technical possibility for that engine. And so, like, it was very easy to predict what the universe of possibilities is like. Now that they're making really large solids and talking openly about solid ICBMs, I mean, they can kind of make whatever missile they want.

And that's a very different, you know, for the government, it would be an intelligence challenge. For us, it would be an academic challenge. Because it's not just, they're not really as constrained by technology. What they're really constrained by is their desires and their conception of the world. And that's a tougher nut to crack.

Scott 28:08

Yeah, we're much more quickly approaching a point where when we kind of speculate on its capabilities, it's... There was a time when it was so constrained on what Jeff Forden called that Scud arc that you could reasonably predict their next steps. And now it's going to turn into a lot more armchair quarterbacking what it can do because there's so many variables they have control over now.

Their engineering has gotten a lot better in the last five years.

Jeffrey 28:35

We should say a word about this not being a message for the United States.

Aaron 28:41

Not everything can be a test because like that's like my biggest like journalistic trope that I can't stand is when people lean on this is the first test for the Biden administration. It's like things just kind of happen. You know, like I don't think they're At least their coastal cruise missiles were meant as a signal to the Biden administration, but maybe I'm wrong.

Jeffrey 29:02

I said something on Twitter that... On Twitter, I described what really annoyed me. The reason I hate the test framing... I mean, first of all, there is the... Well, there are two reasons. First is the narcissism of it. The idea that Kim Jong-un wakes up in the morning and isn't thinking... Oh, wow, I can use these missiles to get what I want.

I want a strong military. This missile is my penis. Whatever motivates normal leaders, we assume doesn't motivate the North Koreans. That it's just like, they're doing this because they want to impress us. It's like, no, Kim actually wants the military capability embodied in the missile for all the same reasons. That leaders around the world want those capabilities.

But at a deeper level, it's not just the narcissism. The whole frame of a test is that it's possible to pass it. Like, the frame of a test by definition means that if Biden is smart enough, if he's strong enough, if he makes the right decisions, that we will successfully pass this test. But like, That's only a function of the metaphor.

If this were a game, in a game, sometimes the other player is just better than you. Or in a game, sometimes the rules are structured so that you can't win. To me, the idea that we can compel North Korea to give up coastal defense cruise missiles is pretty laughable. The idea that we can compel them to give up these missiles is pretty laughable.

And, you know, frankly, the idea that we can compel them to give up the nuclear weapons is pretty laughable. But you avoid that addressing that reality by framing it as a test because you're just assuming that it can be solved. Like, what if it's not a test? What if it's just we have a North Korea problem and we don't really have any good tools to deal with it?

Aaron 31:16

We don't have... No, no, no. We do have tools to deal with it, but they aren't politically acceptable.

Jeffrey 31:21

That's right. We can fix the problem if only we would accept that the problem... If only we would accept that a particular outcome would be fixing the problem.

Aaron 31:33

Correct. I mean, we can do this. It's just accepting that the outcome will be less than what we've described. No, we're going to denuclearize North Korea, Aaron.

Scott 31:47

I'm pretty sure the aphorism for this in English is quite literally pick your poison. Sometimes you have to pick a suboptimal outcome because it's also the one you can live with.

Aaron 32:02

Yeah, of course. I mean, that's the essence of rational choice.

Jeffrey 32:05

It's the opposite of a five paragraph op-ed, right? The five paragraph op-ed is always like, the last paragraph is like how you fix the problem. And in real life, sometimes the answer is you're f***ed. Like you don't fix the problem. You know, like I often imagine like you're in like the Fuhrer bunker at the end of World War II and you're writing the five paragraph op-ed for Hitler on like how he's going to win the war.

It's like, no, you're not going to win the war. Like it's over. Like you made a series of bad policy decisions and like there is no magic fifth paragraph that gets you out of this.

Aaron 32:43

But the fifth paragraph, too, is usually like a throwaway. It's always something like, get tough, sanctions, coordinate with allies, and reassess.

Jeffrey 32:50

Well, I mean, as somebody who writes a lot, I will tell you, editors always ask for that.

Aaron 32:55

Right, I know. I write a lot, too. Sometimes you're just like, what? There is no answer.

Scott 33:00

This is why the blog exists, so we can skip that fifth paragraph and be like, sometimes you just gotta map threats, man, because sometimes the threats are just there.

Jeffrey 33:07

Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know. To me, this is like school shootings. Like, we know why school shootings or really just mass shootings in general, we know why they happen more here than other places. And we know exactly what to do about that. And we are not going to do that. So there are just going to be mass shootings.

Right. We've made that political choice. But that's not how the op-ed has to be structured, right? But I think it's the same, which is we know why North Korea built nuclear weapons. We understand what the conditions are that would be necessary for them to disarm. Those conditions are extremely undesirable to us. So, you know, I'm sorry. North Korea will continue to have nuclear weapons.

Hey, do we want to spend two minutes on denuclearization of North Korea? Because I don't know that we've done a pod on it, and it's driving me crazy. I've got to burn my saddle. Or is that a brilliant pebble?

Scott 34:13

I would like you to, at a minimum, now that you've said it, expand on me the idea that we haven't talked about North Korean denuclearization on this podcast, because that surprises me a little bit as someone who's edited this podcast for going on five years.

Jeffrey 34:25

What we haven't done is we haven't talked about how the Biden administration has picked up this term denuclearization of North Korea.

Scott 34:33

Okay, so sort of the the almost institutional inertia that we have now with old terminology and how even certain allies are starting to maybe move away from that. Yes.

Jeffrey 34:42

And how many people in the field are just picking up the term like it's the big Lebowski like you ever noticed in the big Lebowski how people will use a phrase and it'll get repeated? Unconsciously, like, I think people do that. And because this issue has been going on for so long, when you actually go back to like what Kim Il-sung meant when he said denuclearization, people are like, vaguely, like, shocked because they've never like followed along. So I, I, I don't know if that's, I don't know if that's like worth two minutes of talking about or if that's like a different podcast, but

Scott 35:18

I think it's a different podcast, but I think two minutes is a good... I think touching on that would be appropriate.

Jeffrey 35:23

Can I do it in two minutes?

Scott 35:25

That's a great question. I believe in you. Okay. It's five paragraph op-ed.

Aaron 35:29

Jesus Christ.

Jeffrey 35:32

This word denuclearization, this is a North Korean word. It is a word that Kim Il-sung used a lot. There's a reason that Kim Jong-il said it was his father's dying wish and why Kim Jong-un said it was his father's dying wish. It is Kim Il-sung's word. And that is important because we have to understand what Kim Il-sung meant by it because his...

Son and grandson meant the same thing. And what Kim Il-sung meant by it when he started using it in the 1980s, and there is a speech on denuclearization he gave, what he meant was in the 1980s, North Korea did not have nuclear weapons, but they had nuclear ambitions. The United States had nuclear weapons in South Korea, but more importantly, the U.S. relationship of extended deterrence, which some people would call a nuclear umbrella, which is not a term I like, Was very alarming to him.

So when Kim Il-sung talked about denuclearization, it was easy to say he supported it because what he meant by that was the U.S. nuclear weapons leave and the U.S. nuclear umbrella is withdrawn. That is super important because Kim Il-sung only used that term, and we've seen this since, the North Koreans only use this term in bilateral agreements with the South Koreans.

There is a joint declaration on denuclearization. And every other reference, and they mentioned it in Panmunjom between Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, but if you look at other documents like the Agreed Framework or the Singapore Statement, all they ever do is reaffirm the bilateral commitment that the North Koreans made. So when the North Koreans say they support the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and they say of the Korean Peninsula, what they are really talking about is an end to extended deterrence.

Right? And they're saying that their nuclear weapons, now they're saying their nuclear weapons exist because they are embedded in the context in which North Korea is exposed to nuclear threats. And so when Kim Jong-un said, oh, I support the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, that wasn't like great f***ing news. That was bad news, right? What happened was Pompeo particularly Started trying to just change Kim's word.

So he would refer to the denuclearization of North Korea as agreed by Chairman Kim in Singapore, even though it said denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and we can read. And the North Koreans like went out of their way and issued multiple statements making clear that that is not what they meant. They did not mean the denuclearization of North Korea.

They meant the peninsula and they meant extended deterrence. And they even suggested he take a geography lesson. And so fast forward to the current moment, like this is so frustrating because the Biden people are using denuclearization of North Korea, which basically is just telling the North Koreans to go f**k themselves. And the fact that the Biden people are using it, It's not just the phrase.

I mean, it's the kind of idea that it represents. But what really bothers me is that when they started using it and the North Koreans, you know, have like refused their overtures, their response isn't to like recalibrate. It was to bring in the validators, right? All the people from the previous administrations who've made the same mistakes and like enlist them to defend themselves.

So it really seems to me that when the Biden people are using denuclearization of North Korea, what they are really saying is that they are not interested in making any changes to our approach. They're just going to do what the Trump people did, which frankly is a lot like what the Obama people and the Bush people and the Clinton people did.

And they're just going to keep banging their head against the wall while North Korea builds more and more and more nuclear weapons, because from their perspective, as long as the U.S. has extended deterrence, the peninsula is not denuclearized.

Scott 39:27

Five minutes. But that also sums up pretty clearly, I think, some of the issues we had in 2017, where it was like they keep harping on this idea that you can't get. Because the two sides, much like the... Oh my God, what was the Space Launch misunderstanding?

Jeffrey 39:44

The Leap Day deal.

Scott 39:44

Much like the... Thank you. Much like the Leap Day deal when the two sides are using different words and they say that they mean the same concept and one side goes, well, hey, wait a second, one of those words doesn't mean the same thing and the other side goes, no, no, no, we're good, bro. Someone's going to end up eventually testing a weapon.

We're not going to get what we want. It's not a realistic way to do it. It is sleepwalking into another crisis at best and at worst is going to be just creating strategic patience again. Well, that's not at worst. Actually, that's probably at best. We got a happy note in there anywhere?

Aaron 40:25

I'm trying to think of something to close this out here.

Jeffrey 40:28

I know what the happy note is. Two things. One, I have a new missile to model. And two, this is not the last we've heard of North Korea.

Scott 40:39

Call me shocked. Hey, I've got a happy note for the imagery people. The high resolution photos that came out of the missile launch yesterday are of such high resolution that you can see the fiber optic wire running from the tell to the operators. Just so you know, if you haven't caught it already.

Jeffrey 40:59

That is nice.

Aaron 41:03

You know where that's going to be diagnosed and discussed at great length?

Scott 41:07

Is it on a Slack channel?

Aaron 41:10

It's on our Slack channel, which you can join if you want to get involved in the Arms Control Wonk podcast community even more than just listening to our show, which is to head on over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast. $3 if you're a student, $5 if you're a normal person. Join the Slack. It's where it's at. And if you don't want to join, rate and review us.

It actually helps us get the podcast further proliferated. We are like the North Korean missile of podcasts. We want more and more and bigger and bigger.

Scott 41:44

Also, I would recommend checking out season two of Jeffrey's other podcast, The Deal.

Jeffrey 41:49

Well, season two is a little more experimental than season one because season one was a nice contained historical narrative. How it came together, how it fell apart, and what that means for us. Season two is more... Responsive in a, in an artsy way, you know. We, we're looking at what's happening in the debate and we're trying to kind of find the story behind the story. So the last episode, which I quite like takes the idea of uranium metal, right? There was a great concern that North, that there was a great concern that Iran was manufacturing uranium metal, and what we talked about is well What what are those fuel plates like do like why does the Tehran research reactor exist.

And the answer is it's for medical isotopes and it turns out that people don't really know about nuclear medicine and the person who figured out how to make the PET scan the modern PET scan that everybody has today is an Iranian American. Who came to the United States in the 1960s at about the same time the U.S. was supplying the Tehran research reactor.

So it's a kind of meditation on nuclear medicine and the era in which the United States and Iran could actually benefit one another from those exchanges.

Aaron 43:08

Check that out wherever you get your podcasts, where Jeffrey can get experimental. With that, gentlemen, this has been fun. Thanks for doing this. Thank you very much. Pleasure. And thanks, everybody, for listening.