Transcript
Transcribed automatically: it certainly contains errors. It’s pretty good, just not perfect. We provide it here because, for accessibility, it’s better than nothing.
Jeffrey Lewis
0:02
I have nine tons of explosives in my apartment. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast about arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation, allegedly. I am Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog, and a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
Decker Eveleth
0:28
And I'm Decker Eveleth, an associate research analyst at the CNN Corporation. We have a very undeniable thing that has happened in that someone on the Korean Peninsula has unveiled a missile. And it's not the usual suspect.
Jeffrey
0:42
I mean, it's parade a missile, get a pod. But yeah, it's the other Koreans, our friends in South Korea, who, boy, that's a big one.
Decker
0:55
Yes, the... Massive, what, 15 meter long canister, SRBM, quote unquote.
Jeffrey
1:04
Yeah, so for listeners, we are in the midst of what I think ultimately will be a pair of reveals. So there was a parade at an airbase outside of Pyongyang, and there's supposed to be a parade in Seoul today, yesterday, soon? Yesterday, yeah. Yesterday, but I haven't seen any images from yesterday. Have you?
Decker
1:26
Yeah, I have. Oh, my God, okay. Two big missiles, and then they were very excited to show us, and they talked about at length the fact that the new giant launcher has all-wheel steering.
Jeffrey
1:40
Okay, so South Korea, not North Korea, South Korea has paraded now on two occasions a few days apart a giant canister with the Hyunmoo 5, Which is like a medium range missile, but not really because it has an eight ton warhead.
Decker
2:04
Yeah, eight to nine tons.
Jeffrey
2:06
So, you know, if you put like a normal warhead on it, that that sucker would would fly real far. And so we've we we I actually Decker invited himself on the podcast to do it. Because nobody else pays as much attention to the South Korean missile program other than maybe Jang Chang-ha, North Korean Sven Decker.
Decker
2:30
So I don't know, man. It's very frustrating because I think that the South Korean posture, including how they base their missiles,
Jeffrey
2:40
And how they actually think about executing a fire mission is like a really important aspect of how we think about escalation on the peninsula. And like, nobody wants to talk about it. It's insane. Well, okay. So I think that is the place to start. why do you think so? No one else, other than the South Koreans, have bothered to put eight tons of conventional explosives on a missile.
Everyone else is like, I am really into accuracy. Little payloads. Why do you think North Korea... I keep doing it. Why do you think South Korea...
Decker
3:20
I've had years of training on this. Good Koreans. It's like the Simpsons game where it's like, no, North Korea. It's like, I'm right here. Oh, sorry. Of course I have it.
Jeffrey
3:32
But the less naughty Koreans... The South Koreans, why do you think the South Koreans have put such effort into developing a giant ballistic missile with a huge warhead that travels modest ranges?
Decker
3:51
Well, let's say, theoretically, South Korea had an adversary. And this adversary had a very personalist approach to, let's say, the authorization of nuclear weapons. So your strategy for deterring that adversary is communicating that you have the capability to kill that person, right? And theoretically, that person would build elaborate bunkers around the country to make sure that it would be as difficult as possible to do that.
So in response, if you don't have, let's say, a nuke ready, you just drop basically a semi-ton's worth of explosives
Jeffrey
4:35
On this bunker to make sure that you definitely kill the guy. So I find this interesting because in the United States, our approach to busting bunkers has gone in a radically different direction, right? We have emphasized accuracy. And the idea that accuracy can enable repeated strikes. So the idea is you would hit the bunker repeatedly in the same spot and sort of dig it out.
Right. This is a whole other strategy, right? This is blunt force. I'm going to crush you in the bunker.
Decker
5:17
Yeah. I assume that some amount of tons on that missile are just metal, right? To make sure that you can actually penetrate. but yeah, I mean, like, it's, it's, it's comical. It's a comically sized weapon for the mission that you are attempting to accomplish. Now, you know what I love about this? Is the previous time when the North Koreans did it again when the South Koreans force habit. Sorry.
Jeffrey
5:54
Previously, when the South Koreans showed us the, was it three and a half ton warhead?
Jeffrey
6:00
The North Koreans immediately felt.
Decker
6:04
Yeah. I think it's called.
Jeffrey
6:07
Yeah. The North Koreans immediately felt the need to show us an equivalent missile. So are we going to get an eight, eight and a half, nine ton North Korean warhead?
Decker
6:21
I mean, theoretically, that mission is already accomplishable by the tactical nukes, right?
Jeffrey
6:29
I mean, but this is a dick measuring contest, Decker. This is also true, right? Or I guess this would be more like ball weighing. What's the... I see you have a three and a half ton set of balls. I do, too.
Decker
6:47
We could see North Korean Pioneer.
Jeffrey
6:50
Oh my God. That'd be incredible. I mean, I, I kind of want to see this. Yeah. Just take the first stage of a fucking ICBM and just put nine tons on it.
Decker
7:04
Yeah. And they did, didn't they do that recently? Didn't they, when they did the Murph test, wasn't it just the first stage?
Jeffrey
7:10
Wait, no, it was with the IRBM, right. Looked like it was like a glider on a, on a first stage.
Decker
7:19
When they did the Hwasong-18, I could be wrong about this, the Hwasong-18 MIRV test.
Decker
7:32
I could be wrong about this.
Jeffrey
7:34
All right. We will double check. Yeah. It's really overwhelming. Okay. So what do you think the Hyunmoo... So all we have seen is that... So, okay. So we both agree that this thing exists because... The strategy of a non-nuclear South Korea in the face of a nuclear North Korea is decapitation.
Jeffrey
7:56
Both to deter Kim. If you start a nuclear war, they won't be able to retaliate with nuclear weapons, but he will die.
Jeffrey
8:05
And moreover, I think this moves left of launch. There is the implicit threat that maybe Kim won't be attached to the finger that would have pushed the button because they're going to kill him first.
Decker
8:20
Yeah. I mean, yeah. South Korea has tried to distinguish.
Jeffrey
8:25
President Yoon has said this, right? He slipped up and he said the quiet part out loud, but go ahead.
Decker
8:32
Yeah. It's, it's, For many, many years, South Korea has had a two-step doctrine in that if you try to launch, we will kill your launch vehicles. And if you do launch, we will kill you, Kim Jong-un. I don't know of anybody who actually believes that South Korea won't just try to kill Kim Jong-un immediately. There's no two steps here.
Jeffrey
8:59
Right. I think, I think that's right. And you have occasionally seen South Korean military officials say it, and President Yoon came out and said it like, well, of course, this is about preemption and decapitation. But right, they, they sometimes get a little angry when you say that. All right. So, so we agree that that's the purpose. you have, I think, a correct hypothesis about where this bad boy is going to be based.
Decker
9:28
Yeah. And we should talk first about just how the South Koreans base their missiles. There's a bit of a misconception about that in that people sometimes talk about South Korean missiles as if South Korea is practicing dispersion as a doctrine, as in making other missiles leave the launch area, the base.
Jeffrey
9:51
Well, I mean, they would if they plan to go second. Yeah.
Decker
9:56
It's a valid strategy for going second, not a valid strategy for going first. And so when you look at the very obvious series of South Korean missile bases, by the way, of which there are a lot of, and the number of bases does not match the total number of launchers that South Korea says they have.
Jeffrey
10:13
I keep saying this in meetings because you, Dave and I were really obsessed with counting South Korean missile bases. And then you became the only other person we knew obsessed with it. And you were more obsessed than we are. And, like, does the white paper still say 60 launchers?
Decker
10:29
I believe the last version does indeed still say 60 launchers.
Jeffrey
10:33
There's no f***ing way it is only 60 launchers.
Decker
10:36
Yeah. At this point, it's 16 different bases.
Jeffrey
10:41
Right. You can divide 60 by 16. It's not 60 f***ing launchers. It is a lot more. But, okay. Keep going.
Decker
10:48
So, at South Korean Missile Bases, they have very clear launch paths, right? Yeah. Launch pads for missiles, the idea being, like, their strategy is they'll just roll it to launch. You roll the missile out from the bunker to the launch pad, and you fire off, right? And they have a large number of reload vehicles to enable rapid reload, being that, like, you would fire off as many missiles as possible in a very short period of time, right?
So it's a very obvious geospatial signature, right, these bunkers and these launch pads.
Jeffrey
11:19
Yeah, I was hoping we would be able to automate it, although AI keeps letting me down.
Jeffrey
11:26
I want AI Decker. Same high quality work, less attitude.
Decker
11:31
That's what they want as well. Can we tell the story?
Decker
11:39
Last year, I think, an AI company did a whole test to see whether or not the AI could replicate basically my work. Like I, it's like, it's not even a joke. Like I am the active test case to compare to, which is very funny to me. I mean, you know, you're very good at this.
Jeffrey
12:01
So then again, I don't think if I, I think it was basically, you know, it was as good as you were. And, you know, again, yeah, a lot less attitude. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, you know, have to take you out for drinks. I definitely did not have to take the AI tool out for drinks afterwards.
Decker
12:18
Don't you think that takes a little fun out of it? We could work on this technology. We could make an AI tool that sasses you every time you try to use it.
Jeffrey
12:27
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I mean, AI is good at roasting people. You know, the more I'm thinking about this, Decker, let's just leave things as they are. Anyway, so you were counting South Korean missile bases.
Decker
12:39
Well, so part of the story was that South Korea began to say they were going to transition their previous military organization, the Army Missile Command, into the, quote, Strategic Missile Command, right? And they at some point moved the headquarters of Army Missile Command to a city called Wanzhou. And they started occupying a former division base, I believe, in that city.
Jeffrey
13:06
I got a former head of ROK Army Missile Command after you found this to confirm this, by the way. Really? He seemed slightly alarmed that I was like, oh, you moved into that former division base up in Wanzhou. And he was like, yes. I was like, oh, why'd you do that? He's like...
Decker
13:23
It's we're getting bigger. And then he was really not excited about continuing this conversation. I, I love that. But he confirmed they were getting bigger. Yeah. South Koreans continue to say, or South Koreans I talked to, can you say like, oh, our opsec is really, really good? And I will just, oh, because they take the patch off for pictures. Yeah, I will just say there's this great story of I was looking for basses.
And as part of that, I was trying to handle what the numbers were. And there's this great picture of it's at a church. And half the military guys have their patch off, right? And half of them don't. And I looked at the other patch that people were wearing. It was for infantry division, local division for infantry. But half the other guys just had their patch off.
No insignia whatsoever. And the best part was the church.
Jeffrey
14:14
Well, I guess it's impossible to find them, Decker.
Decker
14:17
The church published a baptism record of the people who were at this thing. And it lists in the baptism record the unit number and then in parentheses, missile command. It's like, what are you doing here, guys?
Jeffrey
14:32
Yeah. We did the same thing for a classified U.S. military facility in Germany. Birth records were great because, you know, people are proud of their kids.
Decker
14:41
Yeah. OPSEC goes all to hell when you're staring at that beautiful little baby yeah there are so many in a open digitalized society like South Korea there are so many attack vectors for OSINT that like you just can't do it anyway but they take off their patches and they cover the bases and trees so it's fine yes the reason why they moved to Wanzhou is likely because they are building a base in Wanzhou and it's really big usually the missile bunkers they build at these facilities are like 20 meters by 15 meters, the bunkers they're building at that facility are 15, or sorry, not 15, 50 meters by 20 meters.
Jeffrey
15:22
And they're really- Wait, when you say bunkers, do you mean revetments or do you mean the physical- Okay, so for listeners, these would look like the bunkers that you saw at Greenham Common. Yeah. Right where you've got a large square earth mound that you can drive through.
Decker
15:44
Yeah, really big bunker.
Jeffrey
15:45
And by the way, if you don't know what they look like in Green in Common, watch the first J.J. Abrams Star Wars movie. They reused that location as a site for one of the rebel bases, the green one. There's the Millennium Falcon parked outside. So anyway, so the Earth Mound, that square, is much, much larger, suggesting a much longer, wider missile.
Decker
16:08
Yep. And then they have these launch pads.
Jeffrey
16:11
Which we now just saw.
Decker
16:13
Yeah. They have these launch pads at the facility. And the launch pads are positioned on a particular azimuth. They're bearing about 320 degrees. Can you guess which city is along a 320 degree azimuth from the site? I'm guessing it's not Nampo. No. No, it's Pyongyang.
Jeffrey
16:39
And major... I mean, there should be one pointed at Wonsan, shouldn't there? That's a different mission, I guess. I mean, the big man. The big man's got a pleasure boat in Wonsan.
Decker
16:52
He's got, like, five palaces in there.
Jeffrey
16:54
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, South Korea... Tell our boys in South Korea they need, you know, two attack astronauts.
Decker
17:03
I'll just call them up and be like, hey, can you, like, just move one of those launch pads a little bit? You know, just... So it's after you just kept visiting this site while I was in construction. I thought, that's weird. This is a high-profile site. Why would you build it like this? Why would you put it here?
And my conclusion at the time was, like, this is probably the base for the 5, right? Yeah. Now, we haven't seen a 5 there yet. But, like, come on. Like, there's no other base.
Jeffrey
17:31
Well, I mean, the point is you're not going to be able to put it in one of the other bunkers because it's just too big.
Decker
17:35
It's too big. And also, I mean, those launch pad...
Jeffrey
17:41
Azimuths, the pointing thing. Very distinctive. Yeah. I mean, one thing I find really interesting, since all we have seen is the canister, right? We haven't seen the five proper. Yep. But that canister is so big, this has to be a larger diameter missile. Yes. So even though they are using the name Hyunmu over and over and over again, this is a new missile. I mean, it wasn't a missile for the four as well, right? The four was a bigger missile.
Yeah but it's a it's an interesting observation about for me at least because I I had this fight with people over North Korea where is the technical breakpoint between making larger solid propellant missiles Oh, right. And people have always acted like it was between, say, an IRBM and an ICBM, and I think that's wrong. I think the technological breakpoint is actually much earlier in the process.
Jeffrey
18:40
And once you go to something like a diameter of more than about 80 centimeters, certainly once you have something that's the diameter of a meter, I basically think... You've solved 90% of the technical problems that would allow you to scale up to making a SRB for the shuttle if that floated your boat. To me, this is another data point we have for when are you in the business where you can only make little ones, and then once you make one of how big of a size Can you then sort of infinitely scale?
And I think definitely the South Koreans are in the, we can infinitely scale department now.
Decker
19:25
Oh, I think if they want to just make an ICBM, they could just stack two of these up each other.
Jeffrey
19:30
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yes. Or, you know, cast it a little bit differently. But I just, I don't think that at this point, This goes back to my, basically, I'm taking pot shots at the MTCR, which sets up range and payload limits. But the problem with the range and payload limits is they don't necessarily, I think, correspond to the actual technical barriers.
If you don't want people building long range missiles, then for a solid propellant missile, there are volumetric limits on the size of the missile that you can cast. That you would need to sort of impose. Yeah.
Decker
20:12
Well, it's also, I mean, for the South Korean case specifically, it's also the South Koreans very successfully salami slice tactics their way out of the range limits that the U.S. put on them. For listeners who don't know. By the way, do you know we found the original letter? You did?
Decker
20:33
Oh, wow. I'd like to read it.
Jeffrey
20:34
I'll share it with you. Yeah. Oh, I'll share it with you. Anyway, sorry, Decker, please continue.
Decker
20:39
In the 1970s, South Korea made a missile called the Baikon, which was basically just a Nike that they had shifted around.
Jeffrey
20:46
A little plug for Nick Seltzer, who wrote one of the finest theses, which was published in the Amplification Review.
Decker
20:53
Amplification Review, yeah. And the Americans were like, all right, you can't make any missile with a greater range than that thing. And that thing had a range of 100 and... 180, right? Kilometers. Yeah. Which by the way, was a, the reason why it had that range was because it was radio guided and the radio, the radar they were using to actually make it function.
Jeffrey
21:21
That's right. You see that in the state department cables.
Decker
21:24
Yeah. Had a range of 180 kilometers. It had nothing to do with the missile. Right. And so a decade later They were like, hey, we've made this new missile that you told us not to make. Can you shift the range agreement? And the U.S. is like, all right, fine. And then another decade passes, and South Koreans are like, hey, we've made this new missile with an even longer range.
Could you shift the range guidance a little bit? And the Americans were like, all right, fine. And then finally, was it Trump who just got rid of it entirely?
Jeffrey
22:00
Yeah, well, the first thing they did was they dropped the – so it was always a range payload restriction, and the – it's funny. I don't remember if it happened in Clinton or Bush because it happened right at the end of Clinton and the beginning of Bush, but whatever. This was not a particularly partisan issue. They upped the range then, and then they upped the range in Obama, and then ultimately the Trump people got rid of the payload restriction altogether.
Jeffrey
22:28
So there was this range limit, but without a payload restriction, a range limit is meaningless. And then was it Biden or Trump? Somebody got like, now it's just gone. There are no restrictions. I mean, functionally, there never were. I mean, there were restrictions, but the process you're outlining, which is not how the South Koreans depicted it, but is 100% true, is they would present the US with the fait accompli.
And it was like, do you really want to fight about this? And we would be like, no.
Decker
22:58
Yeah, I mean, you can't admit that you did something that you agreed not to do very explicitly. So like, they have to say like, well, we, they have to like, obfuscate a little bit. But like, yes, absolutely. Yes, they absolutely they would get permission.
Jeffrey
23:11
And then the next thing you know, the missile was there. And it's like, well, that was an awfully fast R&D cycle.
Decker
23:16
Exactly. Yeah.
Jeffrey
23:17
Yeah. Golly.
Decker
23:20
And this is this is the like, decades long result of this process is you have this gigantic IRBM sized Short-range missile.
Jeffrey
23:31
And I mean, I have to say, I think it's important. One, it is important that we study good guy missiles as well as bad guy missiles, because we hear a ton about the Chinese and about the North Koreans. We never hear about the South Koreans. We never hear about the systems the Japanese are developing. We never hear about the cruise missiles that are in Taiwan.
But I don't think you can have an accurate understanding of either the geopolitical aspects of proliferation or even the technical ones If you refuse to study all the programs.
Decker
24:00
Yeah. I mean, it's like, remember that whole Twitter argument we had, or not you and I, but in general, about people saying like, oh, North Korea doesn't have any- We've had Twitter arguments. Well, not this one. It was people saying that like, oh, North Korea has no legitimate security concerns. Yeah, right. And it was like, okay, but North Korea can see the South Koreans building this missile base, and the launch positions are, as in, the towards Pyongyang. Like, you go up to Kim Jong-un and you're like, you don't have any legitimate security concerns when you can see the building, the things that are going to kill him. Yes, yes. And you know, and.
Jeffrey
24:41
We can say that we don't necessarily like the North Korean regime, and we can say we don't like what they do. The South Koreans went first. Yeah. They just did. It's just a fact. I mean, I'm not saying the North Koreans wouldn't have gone first if they could have. I think the North Koreans wanted to go first.
Oh, they tried. They definitely tried. But the fact of the matter is the South Koreans went first.
Decker
25:09
Yeah. And to clarify, we mean the South Koreans made a missile first.
Jeffrey
25:15
Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, one of the things I loved is Nick went back and got the original images of Park Chung-hee, the then dictator of South Korea, watching the South Korean missile test. Yep. And it looks exactly like one of the Kims. Yeah. Watching a North Korean missile test. The visual language is identical.
Jeffrey
25:44
Anyway, so we haven't seen the missile itself. Right. All we've seen are the big canisters. But boy, they're big. Yeah. They must have tested the thing. What do you think the chances are that in the next year we get video of this system being tested?
Decker
26:07
Oh, very high.
Jeffrey
26:09
I can't wait.
Decker
26:09
I think we've always gotten video, at this point, always gotten video of the new modifications, the two and the three and the four. So I hope to speak different about this missile. I think they're going to show it off.
Jeffrey
26:20
And when they do, do you think they'll make it clear what they're going to do with it? Do you think they'll say, you know, this is the Kim Crusher?
Decker
26:27
Oh, I believe they will probably build, like, a fake bunker somewhere, and they'll blow up that bunker.
Jeffrey
26:33
With, like, a little mannequin of Kim looking a little courtly, like, waving outside the front door, and then they're going to, like, yeah.
Decker
26:39
To make it for either like Kim and then like traits labeled Hennessy. In the bunker.
Jeffrey
26:46
So there's going to be two mannequins. Like one's going to be Kim. One's going to be Dennis Rodman. Or maybe they'll do like, maybe they'll do like Kim and his daughter, like holding hands.
Jeffrey
27:02
The possibilities are endless. Are we off the rails Decker? A little bit. Maybe that's fine. Well, that's normally where we end when we're off the rails. Are there other things you want to say?
Decker
27:13
Well, just briefly, I want to point out that if this missile works as intended, I do think it slightly undercuts the material arguments for South Korea going nuclear, right? We can hope. Yeah, I hope so. It's never really been a material argument to begin with, but I do think that, like, We're in an era in which there are all these problems that in the olden days you could only solve with a nuclear weapon because of things like accuracy and ISR problems.
But now, in these enlightened times, as long as you have good ISR and a big enough missile, you can make the problem go away.
Jeffrey
28:00
I would like to say I don't have a lot of problems in my life, Decker, that I don't think I could solve with nine tons of explosives.
Decker
28:08
This is absolutely true. I think many of my problems could be solved, or at least moderately improved with 9 tons of explosives, even if I didn't have to use them. Indeed. Just saying I have 9 tons of explosives in my apartment would solve many problems.
Jeffrey
28:26
Wait a second. We may have to update the chart in the office about days since someone tried to become the Unabomber. Is it still up? No, but it's up in my heart, Decker. It's up in your heart. All right.
Decker
28:40
All right. Well, so. And you know where else you can go? Yeah. To talk about having nine tons.
Jeffrey
28:47
Ah, you're going to do it for me. You are. You are auditioning. Okay. Tell me where, where, Ducko, can I go?
Decker
28:55
You could go to the Arm Control Wonk Slack channel, which you can become a member of for, I don't pay for it. I can't remember how much money I actually pay for it because I don't pay for it anymore.
Jeffrey
29:04
Wait, didn't we just give you a free subscription?
Decker
29:07
Yeah, but I don't know. I remember how much you pay for it. Isn't it like five bucks?
Jeffrey
29:10
Oh, well, it's five dollars for a grown up. OK, three dollars for a student. So you were on the three dollar plan. But now that you're cashing those sweet, sweet, sweet CNA checks, that's five bucks a month now.
Jeffrey
29:26
I thought the deal was you'd pay and I'd pay you back in beer.
Decker
29:30
That was the deal for your Twitter subscription service that you never use anymore.
Decker
29:37
And it was burritos, by the way. It was always going to be those El Trito burritos.
Jeffrey
29:45
I don't know. There's some nine-ton El Chorito burrito joke to be made here, but we are definitely off the rails. That's right. So if you go to patreon.com forward slash ACW podcast, you can, in fact, support the podcast by spending either $5 a month if you're a regular person, $3 a month if you are a student. And you get both the benefit and satisfaction of knowing that you are sustaining the Arms Control Wong podcast and discussions like this, such that they are, but you also get access to our Slack channel.
So with that, Ducko, a pleasure.
Decker
30:23
It has been a blast. See you next time.
