Angry Planet - North Korea and Russia—A Very Special Relationship

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.comNorth Korean troops are fighting alongside Russian ones in Ukraine. Bringing the two together hasn’t all gone smoothly. There are language barriers, cultural barriers, and a whole lot of Russian territory to recover. The results have been mixed, but the partnership points to a deepening of the special relationship between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation.On this episode of Angry Planet, Jenny Town is here to explain the deepening ties between Russia and North Korea. Town is a Senior Fellow and Director at the Stimson center and writes at 38 North.Initial reactions to the “ICBM attack” in UkraineThe special relationship between Russia and North KoreaThe growing anti-western sphere of influenceWhat the North Korean military is doing in Ukraine100,00 more North Korean troops in Ukraine?Is Kim Jong Un preparing for war?North Korea’s brand new uranium enrichment photos.What would it take for South Korea to get a nuclear weapon?Making use of the Kaesong Industrial ComplexIs Kim Jong Un Preparing for War?First Look at North Korea’s Uranium Enrichment CapabilitiesKaesong Industrial Complex: A Tortured History and Uncertain FutureQuick Take: North Korea’s Coverage of Russian War Against UkraineSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Hello, and welcome to another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. I am Matthew Galt. I'm here with Jason Fields, as always. Yeah, that's right, I cut you off.

I'm not going to let you say your own name today. Okay, fine. There. And we're sitting here with a lovely guy. Will you please introduce yourself? Well, thanks, Matt. I'm Jenny Town. I'm a senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.,

and director of our Korea program, and 38 North, which provides policy and technical analysis on North Korea. So North Korea is going to... Not much going on there. You know, it's pretty quiet. Like, it's a boring topic. So I do want to... I do want to throw this out just because it just happened like in the last two hours and is not, you know, directly related to North Korea. But I just wanted to get reactions since we just hopped on a call.

Ukraine is saying that Russia hit it with an ICBM. Yeah. I think that it, you know, there's still a lot of unknown right now. I think it may have actually been an IRBM, but, you know, we'll figure all that out later. Does anyone have, Jenny, do you have a reaction to this? Jason, reaction? I mean, I definitely have a reaction. You know, I think if you trace back, even why North Korea is in Russia right now, this didn't come out of the blue. And so, you know, the escalation of the war really started when Ukraine started bombing Russian targets to begin with. And so that happened in like late August, early September. You saw Putin make statements in. early September saying, you know, hey, if this continues, and especially with Ukraine's request to use U.S. Atacams to hit Russian targets, that Putin considered that a real change

in the dynamic of the war. And what you saw right after that was State Secretary Shoeu Kulgo to both Pyongyang and Tehran. And of course, Russia and North Korea had just signed, you know, the mutual defense treaty. the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty in June, that has a mutual defense clause. And so, you know, that's why North Korea is there now, is because the war has now been taken into Russian territory. And now that the Biden administration has approved the use of Atticams, it's a significant, the Russians consider that a significant escalation of the war itself. And so, you know, Russia was never going to fight a strictly conventional war endlessly,

especially now that it's in Russian territory. So, you know, I think all of this, a lot of this could have been prevented with some more careful calculations on the kind of support given to Ukraine. So I have a question about this. Why would you use? What's the advantage of an ICBM in this case? I mean, it has to go up really low. If it was an ICBM. If it was an ICBM.

Yeah, why would you use, is that just because it sounds worse? I mean, does it carry a larger warhead? Why? I'm just not sure. Because it's awfully close to be using an ICBM, right? I mean, yeah. It carries a heavier payload. It can go further into Ukrainian territory without setting troops, you know, further in.

So it can cover a lot more ground and do a lot more damage when it hits. Yeah. And I do think it's, as I just spent the last hour doing, when that kind of weapon is used, it causes Western news media to write the headline, Russia uses ICBM on Ukraine. And I think the theater and the signal of it is important. And it is a direct, Ginny, as you just said, it is a direct, it is an answer to them to Ukrainian strikes deeper into Russian territory. Like, it is a nutshell. And especially using U.S. weapons.

Yes. Yeah. It is a rhyme. It is, I would say, again, you know, I'm putting thoughts in people's heads, but like, it is a reminder to Europe and America. We have weapons that go pretty far too. Right. And you, you aren't just sitting this war. If you're supplying the weapons, you are part of this conflict.

Yes. And we see you as part of this conflict. And Putin has said that. That was a statement that Putin made in early September was that to the U.S. and to, you know, other nations that were providing offensive missile systems to Ukraine, that the actual use of them would be considered them participating in the war. Yeah. Right. I guess ICBM is what you would use to hit the United States, and ICBM almost implies nuclear warhead, even if one isn't being used.

And those are the terms that we're thinking about. I think it absolutely implies. I mean, this was a conventional warhead, but. Right. But yeah, ICBM typically synonymous with nukes, right? Well, and it comes at a time when Rasha also just released its updated nuclear doctrine. Right. That lowered threshold for use as well. So if you ever wanted to sort of, you know, certainly the doctrine didn't change as a response to what just happened. It's been a long time in the making, but releasing it when it did is another way. way to sort of remind all of those stakeholders involved that this could go nuclear.

Well, let's back up and start to focus on North Korea. Yeah, speaking of nuclear armed people who don't like the United States very much. And who are involved in the war in Ukraine and are part of kind of this, I wouldn't even call it a slow ratchet up, but this escalation that we've seen in the last year. North Korea and Russia have gotten awfully close. North Korean troops are now fighting in Ukraine. I wonder if we can kind of start, maybe not at the beginning, but back up a little bit, and have you kind of explain the relationship between Russia and North Korea, how it came to be, and the relationship between Kim and Putin.

Sure. Well, you know, North Korea and Russia relationship goes way back, you know, to the original days. of when the Korean Peninsula was divided, right? Like it was under the Soviet protectorate during that period of division until the Cold War, until the Soviet Union fell in the 1990s. You know, relations between Russia and North Korea

have ebbed in flowed over the years. They're not necessarily great friends, but they see value in the partnership, knowing that they do share some values and some common causes, and that over the years has had some high points and some low points. And certainly since Russia started the war, since they attacked Ukraine and started the war, North Korea is the only country that has been consistently supportive of Russia's efforts and of Putin's efforts, both supportive and publicly supportive and consistent about that support,

whatever Russia needs we're happy to provide. And has, you know, the calculation that he took and, you know, betting on Russia on that has really paid off for him in a real deepening of that relationship that has brought about, you know, now this comprehensive of strategic partnership, the upgrade in relations that includes, you know, now cooperation across a wide range of capacities. So, you know, this includes trade. It includes, you know, socioeconomic and tourism and cultural exchanges. It includes cooperation in a lot of sanctioned areas, such as technical cooperation on cyber, on space, on a number of things that, you know, the international community has, over the years, banned that kind of cooperation from happening. So it's a big boon for the North Koreans to have a partner to do this with. And for the first time, you know, since the Soviet Union, it also includes military cooperation. And that is, you know, something that's been incredibly attractive to the North Koreans and that they benefit from, which, but has really, you know, agitated relations with South Korea and the United States and those who are on the other side of, on the adversarial side of North Korea is what, what is North Korea actually getting. for its help and support of Russia's effort.

So, you know, North Korea has been sending artillery and missiles and anti-missile tanks and weaponry and, you know, multiple rocket launcher systems and now even troops to Russia. And, you know, that's building up a lot of debt. They're certainly not doing it free. It's not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Certainly, Russia is paying for that in a number of different ways. And, you know, the higher that debt gets, the more likely it is that they're paying for it also in military technology cooperation. Does North Korea still need some basics like oil and other material to even fend off, you know, I mean, North Korea is still a very poor place, right?

And do they still need the basics from the outside world? I mean, is that going to help them as well, not just military cooperation? Yeah, of course. You know, they are a resource poor country in terms of like energy resources. And there's been bans, you know, with the, with the U.S. Security Council resolutions and the sanctions imposed on them, there are limits on how much oil can be provided, how much jet fuel could be provided. and, you know, there's caps on what, you know, countries are supposed to be able to provide them. And, you know, the North Koreans have always found ways around that and found partners in those sanctions, violations.

But now, you know, the real difference now because of, again, the rising debt between, you know, North Korean and Russia is that Russia is very open. about, you know, flaunting this idea of a shared resistance to Western, you know, punitive measures, aka sanctions. And so, you know, when they signed the treaty in June even, part of the narrative around signing that treaty was their common cause and their common struggle against sanctions and against these Western imposed restrictions. And so, yeah, this has been an enormous benefit to the North Koreans being able to get the basics, like fuel, oil, food supplies. Some of the first shipments that were brought in from Russia were actually a wheat and other food, you know, food staples because, you know, North Korea was just coming out of the pandemic isolation and had a lot of food security issues. So, you know, while normally a lot of that role is played by China, these days Russia, there's a lot of trade and economic activity and aid that's going back and forth as well as part of this new arrangement and increased cooperation. We've had guests on the show that have described more of the economic side about what's going on. It's kind of like the creation of a different international order and international market on the other side of the world.

That's kind of a direct result of the U.S. deciding to go whole hog on economic warfare in the past decade. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think, you know, in this, under the Biden administration, we've seen a real integration of economic and military security. It's been more tied in the last year, in the last four years than it has been. And that, you know, has really put a lot of pressure on countries to kind of choose sides because it's very values-based. It's very ideologically based.

And if you're not in the right ideology, then, you know, we can't do business. And it's part of this whole economic security is national security push. but it really creates a big dilemma for a lot of countries, right? Because the idea that you should only do business with people who share your values means that half the world is left out of that equation on either side, right? And so I think there's this whole vision of a multipolar system that Russia has really been championing has a great appeal to a number of countries that, that aren't necessarily in the right camp or are much more, you know, are kind of on the margins of both sides. And, you know, within the brick systems, for instance, we've seen a lot of changes and a lot of deepening of cooperation, a lot of new countries added to it, a lot of countries that still want to be part of it. And a lot of countries within that network are de-dollarizing banks.

this idea of, you know, creating a BRICs currency and a BRICs pay system. And, you know, there's a, there's several in the West who are like, well, it's never going to catch on worldwide. And it's like, well, it doesn't have to. That isn't the point. The point is for those within the network, for those who buy into this idea that we need an alternative system and that they benefit from an alternative payment system, it creates opportunity and, and, um, and networks there that they benefit from. And certainly a country like North Korea, this is a very attractive arrangement and one that they've, they have, we've seen them increase their activity and participation,

for instance, in BRICS activities, even though they're not a member. Totally makes sense. I mean, it just, you know, I mean,

what are you going to do if the United States is always trying to say nasty things to you or trying to get you to change something or something. else. I mean, for years they just had to, or decades even, people had to sit there and take it. And I guess they don't feel that way anymore. Right, right. Well, and that's the thing is, like, you know, people talk about how Russia is a pariah. Well, Russia's only a pariah to the West. If you look at Bricks and how Bricks is developing and expanding, Russia's not a pariah

everywhere, even if people disagree with the war. The message that Russia is championing, and Russia really is the one taking the lead on really building this vision, has a lot of resonated, you know, quite, quite strongly amongst a lot of the world, the global south, you know, the Middle East, Latin, you know, South America, you know, like all of these countries that have felt the brunt of kind of heavy-handed policies and heavy-handed coercion from the West. They all have kind of common cause and kind of common trauma that they now have, you know, support and support networks to help them through. Yeah, there's only so many predatory IMF loans you can, you can stomach, right? Before you decide to opt out of the

whole system. Well, even the idea of like under the Biden administration, they've had IPEF, right? The Indo-Pacific economic framework, the idea that we need to rewrite the rules. Well, a lot of the rules that are being rewritten in even with, you know, the inflation reduction act in the United States and the CHIPDAGs, a lot of these measures go against world trade organization norms. So, you know, why are we, who gets to rewrite the rules when we've already established rules as a, you know, as a global society? And why should only a few set countries be able to create new rules and new protocols and hand them down to the rest? You know, what gives them that right?

And so the more we kind of lean into that, well, we need new rules because these rules disadvantage the good guys. Well, guess what? People have choices. And since we're writing new rules anyway, you know, we can create our own sphere. over here and do our own thing. Because, yeah, I mean, that's a good point. And it began under Trump, but Biden certainly didn't pull away from it into this economic populism and protectionism that the U.S. has been pursuing.

And it seems like it's going to ramp up quite a bit in the next four years. Can you, to kind of switch gears a little bit, can you tell us about the exact nature of what, I mean, as much as we know, about what North Korea is doing militarily in Ukraine, how many troops, what kind of troops, what kind of equipment is coming in? So there's a lot we don't know. And a lot that, you know, hasn't been verified, of course. But, you know, certainly there are North Korean troops in North Korea, somewhere up to around 10,000 now.

most of them have been now deployed to the front lines. There's some belief, there's at least some special forces, North Korean special forces that are part of these troops, including some generals, including some kind of mid-level officers. They're, you know, being integrated into the Russian systems, they don't have Russian language skills, and the Russian generals don't have Korean language skills, There's been, from what we understand, a lot of problems with the integration.

So trying to give them instructions and orders has been very difficult. And the reports have said, you know, from the generals have said basically, you know, the troops that are there, they're young, they're eager, they're willing, but they're not versed in modern combat. So, you know, North Korean special forces, they might. might be special forces, but North Korea doesn't have a state-of-the-art military. And so they haven't had combat experience since 1950s, and they haven't really had experience with things like drone warfare or things that would be used in today's kind of conflict landscape. So there's, you know, there's up to 10,000 troops now. They're out on the front lines. You know, the words cannon fodder have

been used. And most likely, yeah, these are going to be infantry units sent to the front to sacrifice for the Russian cause. In the meantime, you know, North Korea is providing Russia with weaponry as well. Artillery shells, of course, is how it started. We've seen KN24s, you know, short-range missiles that have gone in. We've seen things like the Bullseye anti-tank missiles and associated vehicles, armored vehicles that have gone in. There's now some talk of, there's been proof of things like self-propelled guns and upgraded multiple rocket launchers, things like this. So, you know, whatever North Korea can, it will. It has. And, you know, it might not be state of the art. It might not be the highest quality, but it's volume and

numbers and capabilities that Russia can use to continue their war fighting efforts. And it fits in really nicely with Russia has been doing anyway, which is throwing troops into a meat grinder. That's that. I mean, the Times today was just talking about how they are taking large amounts of territory now in Ukraine, but it's only because they're willing to take incredible casualties. And I'm going to guess they're willing to take more casualties with North Korean soldiers than they are with their own, right? Right. Well, and, and, you know, it's a good narrative for Russia to be able to say, hey, we're doing all this and it didn't cost us Russian lives this time. And, you know, in North Korea also, you know, like I said, they're not doing this

for free. So they're also getting payment and certainly a North Korean soldier. The what they're paying in that agreement in terms of actual dollars is a lot less than what you would have to pay a Russian soldier for the same amount of work. Do you think there's any truth to, I don't know if I should call it a rumor, that there'll be 100,000 more North Korean troops. I think Zelensky said this in a speech to European Parliament. Is he just kind of pulling a number out,

or do you think that there's any indication that more will come? I have a hard time believing that that high of number will come. Mainly because, you know, North Korea, one, is a small country. And certainly, you know, 10,000 troops is a major contribution symbolic, though, right? It's not going to be a game changer on the front lines in Ukraine. But, you know, 100,000 troops would be a pretty massive contribution by the North Koreans. And if you're talking about a million men army, yes, it's a million men army, but most of that army is not really equipped for service, right? So a lot of them do construction work and they do farming work and they're not necessarily all ready to go, and even if it's just cannon fodder. But I also have a hard time believing that because I have a hard time believing that's how Russia is going to continue fighting the war.

of just throwing bodies endlessly until what, right? And so, you know, the idea that they've already started using a potential ICBM, that they've already sort of hinted at lowering the nuclear threshold. I mean, I think there comes a point where Russia stops fighting the war, it's fighting now, and transitions into, again, more nuclear threats and raises the stakes to a point where, again, where it isn't just throwing bodies at it, but real threats. It strikes me that another thing that North Korea gets out of this is training for the officers that are there and survive. As you said, this is an army that has not fought a conventional war in a long time, doesn't know how to do it, doesn't know how to handle drones, and any kind of war that North Korea would fight in the near,

future would involve all the things that it's facing now. Do you think that that's part of the play here is training for another war? I mean, people have suggested that. My sense is, though, that learning curve is going to be minimal because that assumes people are going back to North Korea. And I just don't think that's the play. So, you know, I know like the idea that North Korea, that Russia's been using North Korean missiles, that there have been North Korean observers and launches, they are getting kind of battlefield diagnostics now that they've never been able to get before because they've never been used in the battlefield and they've never been tested more than like once or twice just to prove concept. So that's been very helpful for the North Koreans and being able to.

able to try and improve their capabilities and try and improve quality and accuracy and reliability and those kinds of things. And certainly if Russia wants, those are areas where Russia can help in technical assistance. But this idea that they're learning modern warfare because they're fighting with the Russians, I'm not sure there's much there there. If Russia starts doing joint military drills with the North Koreans, that's different, right? That would give them actual experience and new methods and new methods of training and all of that. But the just sending troops to the front lines right now, I don't think is going to have much added value to North Korea's military strategy, thinking and experience. I want to ask you about kind of bridging from this.

I want to ask you about another piece in a piece in 38 North that you did not write, so I apologize for that. But I do have questions about another one you wrote over there in a minute. This is one from January. It's from Sig Hecker and Robert Carlin. You know which one I'm talking about is Kim Jong-un preparing for war. And I would say that there had been other signs recently. the bridges being destroyed I think being the most

overt and can you kind of talk about this? Can you? Is he preparing for war? And are there signs that he is? Well, so these two things are marginally related but kind of different breads, the whole

severing of infrastructure, for instance. So is North Korea preparing for war? Sure, every country is. War readiness, war preparedness is part of defenses and deterrence. Is North Korea preparing to start a war is a very different question. And I think it's one that gets too tied into the war preparation narrative. there's been a lot of statements from Kim Jong-un talking about basically how ill-prepared the country is for contingency. And I think that was one thing that came out, of course, during the pandemic of how much, if they had to quarantine different areas, how little capacity there was in the rural areas to help themselves. And so part of this whole war preparedness narrative is not just how do you fight a battle, combat preparedness, but how do you survive and have continuity over the long haul if there is a war? And so some of that is defense-oriented. Some of that is then contingency for the economy, contingency for the government, and all these kinds of things. And we have seen North Korea really emphasize the need to be ready for war, prepared for war.

But that's the narrative we all use, right? Like, that's why we do military exercises. That's why we do training and strategy and civil defense and all of these kinds of planning and strategies and strategies. But there's one narrative that the – so, The article itself, I think, was really good in pointing out how there's been some really significant shifts in the way that North Korea thinks about its place in the world, its opportunities within that, the role that it's going to play, and its own internal and external relations, right? There's been major shifts in all of this since the failure of the Hanoi Summit in 2019. a real realignment with Russia and China with the autocratic side of the global order. This, you know, that really created a big opportunity for them and they've kind of ran into it full force.

But, you know, part of the rest of it was after 2019, after the Hanoi summit, Kim Jong-un really talked about that he no longer believed that the relationship with the U.S. could fundamentally. change. And because of that, because he doesn't believe that, you know, sanctions are actually going to be lifted, you know, the, you can't build your economy around a market economy if you don't have access to the market, right? So, you know, part of the narrative was, hey, we need to build an economy more resilient to a persistently hostile environment. And so we've seen since then the, the rollout of the rural development initiative to try and increase the capacity. and improve the rural areas, not just the capital itself. And then this 20 by 10 policy, which is, you know, the idea of building factories within 20 cities, rural cities, counties, every year for the next 10 years in order to increase their capacity and resilience and their ability to do for themselves in case of contingency, right? So this is part of war preparedness. It isn't all just like, hey, let's get the military ready and send them to the front lines. It is a lot of kind of broader systemic changes that are going on to make the country more resilient. When it comes to the border stuff and the inter-Korean stuff, what we've seen this year is North Korea really changed our policy on unification. They've renounced the idea that peaceful reunification can be achieved or that it should be a goal. They've labeled themselves, they've designated themselves a permanent sovereign state and South Korea, the Republic of Korea, a permanent hostile state. And they've, you know, they've talked about redefining their borders, unnegotiated, redefining their borders and in order to preserve their sovereignty, right?

And so you hear them say a lot of like if even a millimeter of our sovereignty is violated. that there will be consequences, right? Well, that's hard to say if there's still borders and boundaries and fuzzy lines, right? So some of what we're seeing now in the DMZ and in the severing of infrastructure to the South is part of that of the creating a permanent sovereign state. And it's really going to challenge some of these legacies of the Korean War, including the DMC, right? So if they're creating a southern border, not just a boundary and buffer area, this is in direct opposition to the armist disagreement and the demilitarized zone itself.

So, you know, there is a point where this is going to come into question of how do we deal with this now? Can we have, can we renegotiate parts of the armist disagreement to allow for border to border, border, more normal borders and interstate relations instead of special status. And this underlying need or this underlying drive for unification to be the end state, especially when these days, unification as an end state is an existential threat to either one side of the other because there's no way that you're going to achieve a state that still has two governments in such diametric opposition and values. Right. The cultures of both places would change completely. Right. Right. Like no matter who wins that conflict and who

say takes over, everything is going to change. Right. And things would not continue as they are. And most of the time when Korea talks about unification, it isn't a, you know, there isn't a place of the Kim regime in that unification. And so if you're Kim Jong-un and, you know, you've tried this idea of peaceful coexistence with this special status, with preserving this dream of unification, more and more that dream is an existential threat to the Kim regime itself. And so, you know, part of what they, been doing now is eliminating that threat by saying that that isn't our desired end state. Our desired end state is a permanent basically two-state solution on the Korean Peninsula. That means they're also not making any proclamations about the South belonging to the North. No. Is that right? Yeah. They're not claiming North, southern territory. They are, there might be some, there are, there might be some, there, might be some contention over the maritime border. That's one of the things we worry about,

because, you know, North Korea has never recognized the Northern Limit Line as a valid maritime boundary. And so, you know, they have talked about defining that maritime border. We do believe they probably did it in their last SPA meeting past a constitutional amendment that defined what that border was, but they haven't given us any details as to what they did. And what we're seeing, for instance, in the destruction of the inter-Korean transport infrastructure, the roads and rails going into South Korea, is that after they hit a certain milestone, then they admitted, oh, yeah, like this is part of our plan to implement, you know, and to fortify our southern borders. Right. So we know they've defined at least the southern border because now they keep using the term southern border, but they haven't actually told us exactly what anything, what all decisions they've come up with yet. So we're sort of seeing the slow rollout of this plan. But when they did it, you know, they were very careful to announce publicly through KCNA, for instance, that they were going to do this demolition activity with this.

within the northern half of the DMZ. And they even publicized that they notified the U.S. military, presumably through the U.N. hotline, a U.N. command hotline, that they were going to do it in order to not be misperceived, right? That this wasn't meant to be provocative activities, is that this was them doing work within their own sphere of the DMZ that was non-hostile to anyone, but really just part of their own change of infrastructure work, basically.

All right, I want to talk now about two other pieces on 38 North that you did write and did have a hand in. The first one is one that caught my eye. They're both in September, but the first one is the most recent. which is this look inside of North Korea's uranium enrichment capabilities. And it's Korean state media stuff, but you get a lot of information. And I thought it was a really fascinating piece because you really walk through everything you can learn from photographs.

Can you walk us through why this is important and what you learn from state media? Sure. So North Korea's uranium enrichment program is kind of a big question mark in the intelligence community. There's a lot we just don't know. So the only time we've ever seen their uranium enrichment facilities was back in 2011 when Sig Hecker and Bob Carland and the Stanford crew went to North Korea, they were given a tour of Yongbian. And including at that time the new uranium enrichment plant. And so they're the only Western people who have ever seen this uranium enrichment plant at Youngbian. And at that time, what they observed was that it was most likely these P2 centrifuges, that there was roughly about 2000 in the cascade. And then they can do calculations from that as to what the potential output of the, that is. After that, a couple years after that, North Korea doubled the size of that centrifuge hall. But we don't actually know what's in the other side, right? Which is a problem, right?

Like, we just have gaps in knowledge. We can assume that if there was 2000 on this side and they doubled the size of the hall in the exact same kind of formation that most likely they installed another 2,000 centrifuges. And we know from peer curment records that they probably had about 10,000 that they originally got their hands on. And, you know, Sig Hacker at that time and talked about because of the sophistication of the cascades and of the operations that they were doing, that they must have had a pilot plant somewhere else before the, you know, setting up the big plant. So that would have taken some centrifuges as well. We don't know how many. We don't know if it's running still any of those things. What was

interesting about those pictures that they recently released was that those were not P2 centrifuges. So you had a major centrifuge, a very massive centrifuge cascade operation. There was at least two different locations, two different configurations in those pictures that they released. None of those were P2 centrifuges. Those were North Korean designed, North Korean manufactured centrifuges. and of more advanced design than what the P2 actually was. So North Korea has their own knowledge and capability in uranium enrichment has really advanced. And their ability to expand their uranium enrichment production capabilities has apparently increased, right,

because if they can build that many centrifuges to use, that we saw in the picture from either indigenous design and indigenous materials or at least be able to procure enough materials to do that, they can certainly do more. So, you know, there's, we don't know exactly where those locations were. It could have been that second hall in Yongbian because we never actually saw what went in there. And there is like a little addition that was built at Youngbeon facility that, you know, could have fit the idea of this second location that was a little bit small.

than the big hall that they showed. There's a lot of speculations of whether it was Komsom, this suspected clandestine uranium enrichment facility. But there's also, you know, four to five others that are suspected clandestine uranium enrichment facilities as well. And of course, North Korea didn't tell us where this was. And, you know, the uranium enrichment halls don't necessarily have real distinct signature.

visual signatures to be able to verify like, yes, that's a uranium enrichment hall. Unlike, you know, nuclear reactors, you can tell a nuclear reactor from imagery. A uranium enrichment hall generally is just a big building with some cooling units. Well, that's a big guess, right, until we can see inside to verify. But it really did give the impression. It came after Kim Jong-un had talked about, you know, expanding, creating, announcing the mandate to expand the nuclear weapons program and their nuclear arsenals. And this then was released, I think, as a way to sort of emphasize that they could and their capability to do so.

Do you think what number is enough? How many nuclear weapons do you think North Korea actually wants? Do they have a target in mind or just keep making them until they run out of uranium? Well, it's a good question. Nobody knows, right? But the reality is we don't know how much they have now. Everything we know is all estimates based on what we know of their fizzlementary production capabilities. And so there's a lot of assumptions made that if they can produce this much, then, you know, if they use this percentage of it to make nuclear weapons and if they have this much proficiency, in the use of that nuclear material, they could make up to this many, right? Assuming that, and you'll see the estimates of how big their arsenals are, varies widely from like 20 to 200, because, again, we don't know exactly how big their uranium enrichment capacity is. It could be one facility, it could be seven facilities. And that's a big difference, right?

So, you know, we have a better understanding of their plutonium program because they only have one, you know, plutonium production reactor. There's questions now of the light water reactor that they just, they're starting to bring online of whether that will also, the spent fuel for that will also be reprocessed to increase their plutonium production capabilities. But again, all of this is just the capability itself. We don't know, even if we see signatures that the reactor is running, we don't know at what capacity. We don't know if it's really running at full capacity, producing at full capacity with uranium enrichment plants as well. We can sometimes see signatures that might tell us that, yeah, it seems to be operating, but again, at what capacity and then how much of that is actually used. So the idea of how much is enough, we don't know. But I would guess, you know, if you look at a country like Pakistan, you know,

India and Pakistan have, you know, India, Pakistan, Israel all have, you know, roughly in the low 100, 120 or so, I think is the last count. China had 300 but is now expanding its nuclear arsenal projections. are up to 3 up to 1,000 by 2030, with China expanding with the big powers all modernizing their nuclear arsenals and expanding their nuclear arsenals, I don't know that there is a ceiling right now because the geopolitical environment is changing. Nukes are very hot right now. Everyone loves nukes. Yeah, and I guess one is too many, right? I mean, one is too many.

And not enough at the same time. Ah, yes. Okay, so we've established so far that we're all going to die. And ICBMs are flying everywhere. You always get so into doom at the end of an episode, Jason. I do. But, I mean, we always start off from a negative place and then end up even more negative. I want to look at another piece from earlier in September that I think is really good because it's this concrete story.

about an industrial complex that also tells the story of the changing relationship between the North and South. I'm going to link all of these in the show notes for everyone so they can go and read them themselves. Can you kind of tell us about the KIC and like what? I know you could probably do an entire, we could do an entire episode just about that site. But like what does that tell us about North Korea and South Korea's relationship and how North Korea how things have changed in the last couple years? Yeah. So the Kaysong Industrial Complex.

Kaysang is a city just north of the border. And this was a North Korea's, you know, first kind of experiment with special economic zones. It was a special inter-Korean economic cooperation project, one of several that they tried to get off the ground during the sunshine era. when South Korea really wanted to improve relations with North Korea. And this was one of the signature projects of that era.

So it's an industrial zone where it's South Korean companies and North Korean labor. And so, you know, there were several South Korean companies at one point that had built operations there. There used to be up to somewhere around 40,000 North Korean workers were bust in daily to work. within these factories. And so it was a pretty robust operation, although it never really hit the potential that they wanted it to be, right? It was still in phase one.

There was a whole phase two plan to expand it and expand cooperation further that never got off the ground. But it was one of the projects that really did symbolize this underlying thread of inter-Korean special status affinity. Because from the time it was set up until 2016, when it was fined and closed,

it was the one thing that withstood the ebbs and flows, the highs and lows of inter-Korean relations. So even when inter-Korean relations were bad, Kaysang operations continued. So it was kind of that beacon of hope that there was a future future. together for a very long time. Until in 2016, then there was a point where President Pakenet at the time, as a response to one of North Korea's WMD tests decided to unilaterally, to start using it as a political tool and shut it down unilaterally. Well, this is incredibly problematic, one, to relations because it was the one thing that could withstand the political climate and suddenly

now was being politicized. But it was also really bad for South Korean companies because there were South Korean companies. They're actually doing operations that then had to shut down operations and then, you know, wait to see if they could get back in. And so the first time I got shut down, unilaterally by Pakane, then eventually they renegotiated into open a back up and then afterwards, then it's already tainted though, right? So then the next time the North Korean shut it down, unilaterally, and then it just sort of died. And so what we were doing in the article is that the industrial complex has been closed for operations since 2016.

And the South Korean companies have not been allowed to go back in. And they've really been pushing because they want to go back in and resume operations. But in the meantime, you know, inter-Korean relations have really just gotten worse. In 2018, it was a subject of inter-Korean talks. And one of the things that the Moon administration had committed to doing was reviving these inter-Korean projects, including Kays and Industrial Complex. But once it shut down, then it was suddenly subject to sanctions. Because before that, it had the exemptions. It got grandfathered into a lot of... of sanctions arrangements, but it lost that status, right?

So then it's like in order to reopen, then it had to get sanctions exemptions, and the South Koreans could just never get the cooperation to do so. And so it's sort of from the South Korean perspective, it's been a dead project since 2016, but what we see in imagery is that there's definitely activity there. So the North Koreans are using those facilities because it is one of the few areas in North Korea where you have a pretty robust industrial infrastructure. And so unlike there are other economic zones, special economic zones that they try and shop out to people that has very little economic infrastructure. Here you have factories, you have electricity, you have, you know,

roads and you have things that you need to make things work. And so it's very clear that the North Koreans are using the factories in some way. And, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't trying to shop it around as well to see if other countries would want to come in and pick up operations there. If we can look at South Korea a little bit here at the end, and I can ask my panicky, ignorant questions. one of the things I'm worried about in a new Trump administration is nuclear proliferation. Do you think it is at all possible that South Korea would ever say, you know what? Our neighbor to the north who relations are deteriorating with, they've got nukes.

The only way that we can stay safe is if we've got our own nukes. do you think it would be possible for them to, or do you think it would even be politically possible for them to develop their own nuclear weapons? I think it's politically more possible now than it was a month ago. And, you know, South Korea had a clandestine nuclear weapons program back in the 1970s,

and at that time, they were convinced to give it up because they were given the ultimatum of like you could either have the alliance or you can have nuclear weapons. You can't have both. I don't think that kind of ultimatum is credible today. And especially with U.S. China tensions, U.S. China competition, you know, we need our allies. And, you know, it is good geopolitical, geo-strategic positioning on the Korean Peninsula to have U.S. assets on the Korean Peninsula. So it isn't so cut and dried of like, hey, you have to choose. There are certainly costs involved and political costs involved and reputational cost involved if South Korea were to do that. And I think the biggest questions, one, first of all, do, would, would, would, nuclear weapons make South Korea safer? Does it actually deter North Korea from doing the kinds of

things it does now? And if you look at India-Pakistan, that isn't necessarily a true assumption, right? Like both countries have nukes, they have nuclear parity, but you still see low-level scrummishes that go on below the nuclear threshold. It didn't solve that problem. And so it's not going to stop North Korea from necessarily being adventurous, the military adventurism that we see today. And it's going to cost them a lot, right? They would have to withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which would then have real implications for their nuclear energy industry. And South Korea has about 30% of its energy mix is nuclear. And, and South Korea has about 30% of its energy mix is nuclear and would be really hard to replace. South Korea right now is completely

dependent on foreign sources of nuclear fuel. And if it loses access, for instance, to the nuclear suppliers group, how does it keep its nuclear energy industry going? If it withdraws from the NPT, there are automatic sanctions that would be placed on it. And at the same time, it You know, the pathway towards North, South Korea, building a nuclear deterrent, not just a bomb, is a long road, considering they don't have enrichment and reprocessing now. They don't have nuclear fuel. They don't have their own sources of uranium. And, you know, just the technological development process itself, where are they going to test a nuclear device? where are they going to cite, you know, nuclear facilities, given, you know, what we've seen the South Korean, how the South Korean people react to things like Thad in the placement of the

terminal high altitude area defense system. There were massive protests against the sighting of it for, you know, two, three years of just a missile battalion, right? Imagine saying, oh, no, we're going to start doing nuclear testing in this mountain. It's not going to go over well. But just that the cost of building a nuclear program politically and economically is pretty high. And it's one that then there's also maintenance. There's also, you know, the process of actually mating, you know, mating and, you know, creating delivery systems that can actually deliver the nuclear weapons. So it isn't an easy choice if they decide to make it. And the question is, is what are they sacrificing for?

Does it actually make them safer? And the answer, unfortunately, I think is probably no. And the idea that it's going to then trigger North Korea to think twice and to engage in arms control, well, maybe that's one potential outcome, but it's not guaranteed. It could also trigger more of a nuclear arms race between the two Koreas, and it could encourage, it might encourage China to continue to expand its arsenals as well if suddenly South Korea has nuclear weapons. So there's a lot of talk about this, and certainly in the election cycle now, there's been people in the Trump camp who've gone to South Korea and talked about. Well, it might not be such a bad thing for South Korea to have nuclear weapons. But it might not be such a good thing either.

Jason, do you have anything else? No, I think this is really ending on the note I like to end on. Good. An in-depth answer about nuclear weapons? Yes, I think so. Yes. Jenny Town, thank you so much for coming on to Angry Planet and walking us through all of this. Where can people find your work?

So you can find 38 north at 38.org. We have a ton of analysis there, both technical and policy analysis of like what's going on and what do we do about it. And our career program at Stimson Center, you can find at Stimson.org, S-T-I-M-S-O-N.org. Thank you so much. That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners. As always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Gull, Jason Fields, Kevin O'Dell. was created by myself and Jason Fields.

Angry PlanetPod.com is the place you can go and kick us a few bucks to support our work. We will be back again soon with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe until then.