North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Ankit Panda: How North Korea could take its military modernization to space

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

NK News Data Correspondent Anton Sokolin kicks off this week’s episode with a look at Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s visit to Pyongyang for a summit last week, and his potential to serve as an intermediary between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump. The conversation explores Belarus’s evolving ties with the DPRK, including plans to establish […]

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That's shop.m.knews.org. Hello, listeners, and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jack O'Swetsuit. And today, it is Tuesday, the 31st of March, 26, and I'm here in the studio with Anton Sokolin. Anton, welcome back. Hey, Jacob. Hey, listeners. Anton, big question to start off with.

Is President Lukashenko of Belarus going to mediate between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump? But certainly seems so, because definitely he stated his desire to do it. Well, we know now for a fact that he has been invited to the U.S. at least by Donald Trump. by none other but Donald Trump. Okay, so the invitation is confirmed. We're right. So Donald Trump posted on his true social that he invites Lukashenko to participate in his board of peace. That's for Gaza, right?

Yeah, for Gaza. And before Lukashenko kind of turned down that offer because he wasn't invited before, but at this time, Minsk official positions that they're going to consider it. But definitely if one thing is happening, then the other thing can happen, right? So if he's going for the meeting, then he definitely can just catch up with Tom, on other issues as well. Sure. And it's not the first time when Lukashenko is in this kind of position.

He often talks, he often meets people. He often has conversations right before going to Pyongyang. He had a conversation with Putin. And now we know that Putin, at least one thing we know for certain that Putin asked him to lay a flower bouquet at Soviet Memorial, Pyongyang. And that was done at the request of the Russian president. So there is that. And of course, we also know, and that's what actually Donald Trump said,

So Donald Trump has his special envoy to Belarus. And why Belarus is important? Because it's in the heartland of Europe. I mean, it's needless to say, but I'm just reminding where it's located. The thing is the U.S. often steps in whenever there is a bit of an escalation and there is a peace process between Russia, Belarus. And one of the key elements to this process is the release of political prisoners on Belarus. Belarus is known to have thousands of people jail for apparently allegedly threats.

in their Lukashenko regime. Because he's been in power, well, since the 1990s. And it's been long. So he's clearly put away a lot of people. And once in a while, the US government steps in and offer certain concessions. So like, we're going to lift you some sanctions over you. We're going to, for example, do some business investment. One of the big things that are a big chunk of the Belarusian economy is felt fertilizer.

So, for example, with the US, let's do something with fertilizers. Either we invest you or you can see. sell something somewhere, you know. So there are certain concessions, and a little by little, Lukashenko just releases a few prisoners here and there. The latest prisoner release, a campaign, 250 people. And that's what Donald Trump announced. And it's thanks to his special envoy, John Cole, who works on this issue.

Right. So we can see that Lukashenko is not just a one-off figure doing something crazy. He's an actual mediator. He's been in this politics for very long. He knows the game very well. And he's on the short leg with Putin and apparently with Trump. So if this visit materializes, he can definitely convey certain messages. Let's bring it back to Pyongyang from it for a second.

Is there any indication that Kim Jong-un either invited Lukashenko because he wants him to do some mediation role with the United States or that Kim Jong-un brought up this possibility while Lukashenko was there? So we know that Lukashenko was invited by Kim when they were both in Beijing last September. But even before that, Lukashenko had been trying to get this meeting. We don't know for what reasons, what he was trying to achieve. Maybe my suggestion would be that maybe the U.S. administration somehow delivered their maybe a sort of signal of openness to dialogue with King.

A back channel. Back channel. And they just conveyed that message because anyway, there's lots of talking between Lukashenko and Washington. So maybe, and he's been trying. And maybe you remember last year, he said he wants to meet. and he will probably go. And then Kim Jong-in's sister, Kim Yo-John,

releases the statement and said, well, that's an exaggeration. There was no thought, nothing like this was going on. And there was no talks underway. And if you want to, we are very open. If you want them, we can do it.

But you've got to follow official channels and notify and we can set it up. But, like, those media reports and, well, she didn't specifically say that Lukashenko is a liar. She said, like, those media reports saying that Lukashenko wants to me that's a lie. So we could see that there was something wasn't quite working out. It was a bit, there was a bit of friction.

But then eventually, of course, it turned out pretty great. And, well, we can talk about what they discussed. Well, and you've got a longstanding diplomatic asymmetry there in that North Korea has an embassy in Minsk. Right. But Belarus has not yet had an embassy in Pung. But now I understand that Lukashenko in his visit said, we're going to set up an embassy.

Right. So that's one of the things that they disagreed on. Of course, having an embassy, it's an important thing. So for now, I'm not certain, like, I'm not entirely sure, but I think Russia was helping tip. Up until now, it's been helping Belarus with visa processes or whatever, like diplomatic stuff. Like, you know, my European embassies, like Sweden also arranges certain things for other countries that don't have a diplomatic representation in North Korea. So it's not very uncommon.

But now they will have. And of course, there is also this big friendship agreement that they signed. We don't know what exactly it entails is just called a friendship and cooperation agreement. But we know that there are sub-deals, multiple economies. economic sub-deals that cover pretty much every conceivable sphere, field, right? So agriculture, IT, whatever, blah, blah, blah. In one of your stories I saw specifically what listen and education, and there was a third one, I forgot what it was, that possible.

Pharma, there is pharmaceuticals, there is for sure cosmetics, so that's trade, right? There is also academic exchanges, like the level of academics of science and also just student or professors exchanges, that sort of thing. But also one of the things, and this is a notable one, especially for sanctions monitors, is that Lukashenko's order to speed up work on granting visa-free entrance to North Korean nationals to Belarus, which opens flight gates to North Korean laborers pretty much. Wait, hold on. Does Russia give visa-free entry to North Koreans too? No.

So Belarus would be a little bit unusual in this case. Yeah, but there is e-v visas for North Koreans in Russia. So there is a simplified already. Simplified. The two countries have simplified the visa process since, I don't remember when, but like, clearly a few years ago. And actually, it's very easy for Russians to get a visa, so it takes like three days or something. And the North Koreans also, and we can see in Russian official data that there's lots of tons, tons of applications, including e-v visas. Okay.

So let's talk about what kind of North Koreans do we imagine would be going visa-free to Belarus? What kind of labor is? So, well, Belarus is normally known for its agriculture, right? So it's big on agriculture. And it has very good, high-quality agriculture products, meats, sausages, whatever, milk dairy. And Lukashenko, for example, he even told Kim Jong-in, like, well, your guys used to be interested in our dairy products. But something didn't work out. So if you want to send your specialists, we're happy to host them and teach you our dairy know-how.

All right. So that's one thing for sure. Although, it's hard to imagine a lot of North Koreans can even eat dairy given... Well, it's actually very popular. Lactose... That's different. Lectose intolerance... They were introduced to Soviet dairy a long time ago.

So the dietary thing, like composition is a bit different. And dairy products are very common. Russian dairy products are already represented in North Korea. Okay. And as far as I understand, it's been the case for long, very long. Don't want to make it up, don't want to make a mistake. But I think it's been... I know for that late Ambassador Matsugua,

that many times that Russian yoghers, Kurds, whatever, that's right there. So that's one thing, so farming. But we're talking here about specialists. So that's like agricultural specialists. We're learning people, right? But not unskilled laborers, not like... Yeah, but Belarus does have lots of farms, agricultural complexes, those greenhouse stands, and that's one industry.

Another industry is Belarusian textiles, of course. They also make a lot and they sell to Russia. In Russia itself, Belarusian products are very highly regarded. because of their good quality. Dictatorships and autocracies, they have a tendency to produce certain goods very well because there is a certain set direction. There is a policy that directs that we have to do it well.

Otherwise, otherwise, well, else. Yeah. So that's one thing. And of course, construction industry, why not? Construction workers could easily go to Belarus, help out with whatever construction projects. Minsk is growing. Minsk, I've never been, but I hear it's a very beautiful city.

Even Lukashenko mentioned that it's very similar to Pyongyang in its style because it was completely devastated during the war, rebuilt, and it's very clean, it's very neat. And of course, it's growing. It's a developing economy. So there is certain investment, despite whatever is going on, despite friction with the European Union, there's always some kind of investment either from Russia, from China. It's a big player in Belarus. So there is definitely an opportunity there. I'm also thinking about years ago, I heard that Belarus had a kind of a, what, a crypto or a tech valley or something. I'm thinking, is that perhaps a place where North Korean infotech workers could go and work visa-free?

You know, they do a lot of these. It's the limit. Well, okay, so it's all possible. But I'm not sure how Belarusian crypto industry is doing. They used to be quite good, and their IT products used to be quite good. They were especially great at gaming and stuff, but, well, I don't know how. It was recently because after like 2020, and probably we're going to mention this, things got a little bit weird in Belarus, well, the regime got a little bit tougher.

Right. I was thinking specifically, you know, we've done a lot of stories here at NKNUs about North Korean tech workers working illegally for American companies or most recently Australian companies. And I thought that having a base in a European city could make them more attractive, perhaps. I don't know. We can't rule it out. Of course, we've got to wait and see until they go. One problem is going to be that Belarus is probably not going to release any data,

any customs data, any migration data. So it's going to be a vacuum, and we're going to have to monitor it through some other weird channels, workarounds. It's going to be a bit complicated. Russia is more upfront about it, so it's published stuff. I mean, the handy thing about giving visa-free access is that when you release stats on which nationalities have been given visas, North Korea won't show up. Yeah, but they still track countries.

Well, they will track it. But I mean, in terms of anything that's openly released in public, that will not be there. Probably it's going to be hidden. Even the Belarusian trade data, for instance, it's very hard to track. They release it with huge delays and it's not complete, so it's et cetera, et cetera. There's many problems. Now, is there anything that we've missed on this story so far? Anything we haven't?

Well, one interesting thing probably I wanted to bring up is that Lukashenko brought his son alone. Oh, yeah. Yeah. A possible future successor? Well, it's been in the talk about. so long and at the same time, Lukashenko has denied it. But there's two extra things that I wanted to rest. So how old is the son? I think in his early 20s. So, well, there is a lot of secrecy around his life. We know that he is a college student now or or graduated. I think he already graduated.

He studied biotechnology or something like that. And for a for certain period, he even studied in China. He is interested in biotechnology. And I think as far as if I'm not wrong, if memory serves, he even wrote a paper on certain stuff about coronavirus. So he's in that field. He's doing well. It's a very handsome fellow, blonde, super tall, maybe even taller in New Jack. Yeah, and he was there.

So he wasn't very prominently featured by Belarusian State Media right away. But actually, we spotted him at the Kemsu Sun Palace, where Lukashenko was laying floral baskets to pay his respects to late Kimmerzson and Kymmerich. And his son, Nikol. And his son, Nikolai, was also there. And then the next thing we learned already from state media, from Belarusian state media, is that he shook hands with Kim Jong-in himself at Kimmerzun-Square right before the official ceremony for Lukashenko.

So, of course, there's, well, I'm throwing it there so you can start your conspiracy theories about Kim Jurye and Nikolai's arranged marriage. Well, of course, it's unprofessional, so don't listen to me, but it's fun. And second thing that I wanted to bring up is that gifts that Kim Jong-in and Lukashenko exchanged. And one of the gifts that Lukashenko gave Kim Jong-it was an actual rifle. It's an automatic rifle, locally made in Belarus, called VSK. It's a standard 760-2 caliber, also compatible with AK-74, et cetera. And why it's notable?

Because, well, when Lukashenko gave it to him, he said, in case, days enemies turn up at your doorstep. And he was speaking from experience, because in 2020, a following, well, pretty much rigged elections and his rigged victory in Belarus, there was a protest, right? People took to streets in Minsk and practically overthrew his rule. And they reached his residence and there were widely circulating videos of Lukashenko running around with automatic refa. I don't know whether it was AK-74 or it was that we. But the point is, he was running around in a bulletproof west with a rifle. With his son, his son was in full military gear.

He was like 15 or 16 or something like that. And Lukashenko was trying to, according to him, was trying to show to project the image that he's not fleeing. He's ready to battle. One notable thing was that his rifle was missing the magazine. Oh, that's not good. That was interesting. And people were interpreted, so he wasn't ready to shoot people.

or he was what was going on or he just forgot. He's an old man. So this symbolism, given also the Iran situation and the situation between North Korea and the U.S., and he's willingness to broker those talks, it's very telling. And later we knew from his, we learned from his foreign minister that Lukashenko is actually willing to explain to the U.S. that may, I'm quoting here, that you maybe should not be so categorical in questions. related to North Korea or Asia and large. So that's probably what they're going to talk about. So what he's pleading for some sort of flexibility?

Yeah, he probably is implying that, well, he's probably trying to get his message across that the US should not escalate things with North Korea. Then it means flexibility because you need to accept certain things and maybe you should negotiate certain positions, right? And I'm quite certain that North Korea, is pretty much interested in that. And Kim Jong-in apparently agreed, and that's his position, right?

That probably the US should exercise a certain degree of flexibility in this issue. If that doesn't work out, Kim Jong-in now has a good new rifle. He does have a good new rifle, yeah. Anton, we're going to have to stop there. We've run out of time. But before I say thank you and sign off, I will suggest to our listeners that they read one of your other stories, which I found fascinating and also somewhat ironically amusing. the title is Russia's top news agency reaches deal with North Korea to combat fake news.

A remarkable little story. I don't want people to not know about that. All right, Anton, thank you very much for being on the NK News podcast today. Listeners, stay tuned because after this break, we'll have Uncad Panda to talk about North Korea's military technology. Welcome back. We have Ankid Panda in the studio today. You were on the show very early this month, and given the ongoing situation in the world, We thought it was time to get you back in for a longer chat. It's quite rare that we get a guest in so quickly after the last. But, you know, you've got a lot of content to talk about.

So, which reminds you, I should let people know about your newsletter that people can find at pander. com. And Anka Panda is also at the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. So welcome back and welcome in person because our last time was done on the Internet. Thanks, Jack. It was really good to be back here in Seoul. It's great to have you here. So you've written recently that North Korea is less opaque than people think, if you know where to look.

So let me start there. What are the clearest signals in the past year that North Korea's approach to warfare is actually changing? Yeah, that's a really good question. So, I mean, first of all, the point on opacity is one that I think won't be revelatory to listeners of the NK News podcast, which is Kim Jong-un gives us a lot of pictures. And he gives us a lot of text at the North Koreans release statements about what they want to accomplish in the world, which is actually a very big contrast with another country I spend some time studying, which is China, right? When we talk about military capability development in China, we actually do see a kind of opacity that we don't see in North Korea. And so the question people might logically ask is, why would North Korea do this?

It seems very counter to the North Korean ethos, right? Transparency is not what we associate with North Korea. But the answer is deterrence, right? They need the United States. They need South Korea. They need the outside world to take their development of capabilities seriously to prevent war. as I think we've also seen, and as I was arguing back in 2018 and 2019, there's also an element of marketing to this, right? I remember in 2018, 2019, looking at some of the developments in North

Korea's ongoing military activities and wondering, are they marketing something? And of course, as we've now seen, that marketing effort has paid off with North Korea. To potential buyers, you mean, right? Russian Federation, right? And so there are many reasons for North Korea to behave in that way. And so, you know, you asked about the last 12 months. What we broadly see is, you know, continuity with the, you know, they were wrapping up the Eighth Party Congress five-year plan of military modernization, and we saw a number of, of course, interesting missile exercises. Kim Ju-Hay has been, of course, present at many of these military events as well. The daughter and putative future air?

That's right, yeah, and that's a discussion that perhaps we're not going to have today, but, you know, very interesting from an external propaganda perspective that she continues to join those types of exercises. we've seen the rollout of the claimed nuclear propulsion submarine, cruise missile launches from destroyers, the launch of new naval assets, exercises involving drones, loitering aircraft. Kim Jong-un ever since North Korea came clean essentially about the participation of North Korean troops in Russia's war on Ukraine, has talked a lot about the need to learn about modern warfare. And it's an observation that I think Kim is correct in making for North Korea.

the KPA is not a modern 21st century military force. And so we are expecting now, now that the ninth party Congress is behind us and we're in this new five-year plan period, what I'm watching for is to see whether the KPA will actually adapt the ways in which it trains to incorporate some of these new capabilities that Kim seems very high on, right? Artificial intelligence enabled loitering munitions, drones, et cetera. And so the North Korean modernization effort continues. But of course, the country's nuclear forces remain at the center of North Korea's

National Defense strategy. Now, as part of that modernization of the North Korean military, I think, if I'm not mistaken, that you've written that North Korea is trying to modernize its conventional military as well as building up its nuclear arsenal. Now, my question to you, is it logical for North Korea to do this? Does it, I mean, you know, North Korea has limited economical and other resources at its disposal. Can it do both? And can't North Korea's conventional weaknesses and shortcomings be compensated for by nuclear weapons? Why bother in a way to do Yeah, it's a very good question. You know, after the Second World War, when the United States had endured tremendous expense to defend essentially. Blood and treasure. Blood and treasure. President Eisenhower under the new look policy, looked at nuclear weapons, and he said, well, these things are actually a very good way to save a whole lot of money on very expensive conventional kit. You need a lot of people for. You need a lot of equipment, a lot of industrial capacity. And so this is not a uniquely North Korean predicament, right? The United States has had this thinking in the past about what nuclear weapons can do.

What are North Korea is more economically constrained than the United States? Far more. Exactly, right. I was about to, you know, I was about to make the observation that with the North Korean case, though, there's there's that, what you just said, that they are incredibly resource constraint. But there's also the puzzle of the North Korean defense industry, right? Like, this is a country that depending on whose GDP figures you use, uses anywhere up to upwards of a quarter of its annual economic output on the armed forces to include the nuclear forces. So already beginning there, the North Koreans reason about resource constraints very different. than we do in the West, where, of course, the military is one of many demands that competes with a whole range of other demands on public finances, industrial capacity, et cetera. The second factor, though, is that the North Koreans have taken this approach to defense development, and including the development of their nuclear forces, that's really globally unique, right?

There's this kind of fascinating stat that I sometimes like to mention, which is that if you take seriously what North Korea claims about the numbers of discrete types of missiles that it today produces and fields and has tested in recent years. The North Koreans have more discrete types of nuclear delivery systems than any other nuclear power, right? The second would be the Russian Federation, which has a whole bunch of non-strategic nuclear weapons delivery platforms. But, you know, like to use the examples of the United States, France and the UK, Western advanced liberal democracies, you know, there is this understanding of economies of scale. You have a system that works well. You double triple down on that.

You scale it up. You make sure it's highly reliable. the North Koreans operate very differently. And so that brings me to your question about conventional modernization, right? Why would North Korea do this? So let's also look at what's happened in the last few years. North Korea has liquidated a lot of its older conventional kit by essentially selling it to the Russian Federation, right?

Millions and millions of artillery shells, mortars, rocket artillery systems, some of the rocket artillery systems are still relevant for the contemporary situation on the Korean peninsula. But that actually means the KPA is moving in a direction where it could actually become a more conventionally modern manpower lean armed force. So the operational and cost requirements don't necessarily scale as they seek to modernize. And why else are they doing this? There's a nuclear strategy element to this too.

So I've long held the view that North Korea has the world's lowest threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, which I think is still true. When you mean a low threshold, just for our listeners who may not be familiar with the term, what does that mean? That essentially means that if you look at the nine countries that possess nuclear weapons, at what point in an intense conventional war would they resort to the use of nuclear weapons, given what they say publicly about their nuclear strategy and doctrine, North Korea, in my estimation, has the lowest possible point in a conventional crisis for resorting to the use of nuclear weapons.

Now, of course, there are certain advantages to that, but there's a big disadvantage, which is that even Kim Jong-un doesn't want to be put in a position where he has to start a nuclear war. He would like to have other options. And so conventional modernization for North Korea will give it those types of options to continue essentially expanding the space under the nuclear threshold to engage in violence, right? So, depending on your perspective, there is a happy conclusion there and an unhappy conclusion. The happy conclusion is that, well, maybe North Korea is slightly raising the conditions under which it would use nuclear weapons because it's more confident, it's got more nuclear weapons, it's less

worried about losing all if it's nuclear weapons in an American preemptive strike. But the unhappy conclusion, of course, is what academics call the stability and stability paradox. This idea that when you have a higher level of nuclear stability, nuclear stability in this case between North Korea and the U.S. ROK alliance, the space for other types of violence under that threshold expands. Small attacks, yeah, etc. Even a larger skirmish. And so a North Korea armed with, you know, loitering munitions, cruise missiles,

new types of conventional guided missiles could feel that it has more space to go toe to toe with a South Korea that is still sustaining a kill chain capability, for instance. Right. So that introduces, I think, a meaningfully different strategic dynamic. And then the last piece of this is that the North Koreans are, you know, what in the U.S. ROK alliance context we call conventional nuclear integration. I think the North Koreans are also interested in a version of that, which is using their conventional capabilities to augment their nuclear capabilities.

One thing that stood out in your recent writing is the move into counter space capabilities. You call it a qualitative expansion. Why does space matter so much now for North Korea compared to, say, five years ago? Yeah. So, you know, to provide a little bit of context, when I looked at the readout in the ninth party Congress report, obviously we didn't get the kind of detail we got with the Eighth Party Congress, which was notable. But I zeroed in on counterspace because for me, that's the big headline from this, you know, from this party Congress. And essentially it is as significant in terms of the scope of North Korea's expansion of its strategic capabilities as the Eighth Party Congress declaration regarding tactical nuclear weapons was, right? And not in terms of the the effects on the Korean peninsula, but in terms of North Korea's ambition, counter space is an area where North Korea has not explicitly in the past articulated a development prior. And so up to 2017, you have North Korea kind of focused on the Pyongjin campaign under the Seventh Party Congress and reaching those qualitative thresholds for nuclear deterrence

vis-à-vis the United States into the Eighth Party Congress that leads into a broader expansion of tactical nuclear capabilities, other types of delivery systems. And now the big one is counter space. And, you know, he's talking about artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, some other things, but North Korea has been active in those domains in the past. So why counter space? I actually wrote an analysis for NK.K. Pro last year where there was a very interesting commentary that came out of the Institute for the Institute for North American Affairs at the North Korean MFA that was taking aim at Golden Dome, accusing the United States of bringing nuclear conflict into space. Golden Dome has a very strong space-based component plan to that, both interceptors and

sensors. The sensor component predates Golden Dome. So that was not a Trump-specific thing per se. And so that logically, I think, creates a strategic rationale for North Korea to look to space. And I think they've had that rationale for a while. In fact, it was a bit of a puzzle why North Korea had not evinced more interest in counter space capabilities in the past. The big ambiguity at this moment is what do they mean, right? The English translation that was released by North Korea of the specific development objective was special assets for attacking enemy satellites essentially. Okay.

What are special assets made, right? I wonder, because for me, when I look at North Korea, I also see a country that has incentives to potentially look at nuclear capable, counter space capabilities. There are reasons they might choose to do that. There are reasons they might not choose to do that. But obviously, if they do choose to look to put nuclear weapons in space or on missiles that can be fired at satellites, that not only has consequences for the Korean peninsula, but the entire planet, because nuclear weapons in space, you don't have to be, you know,

an astrophysicist to understand that the effects of those types of detonations are deeply indiscriminate. Yeah, very much so. So is this about deterrence or war fighting from your perspective? Well, the North Korean view of that, I mean, I would argue kind of every country's view is that you deterrent until deterrence fails. And after that, you're in the war fighting business, right? And I think Kim Jong-gun, in his own words, has said North Korea's nuclear forces have two roles, deterrence and if deterrence fails to repel an invasion. And so in this case, I do think it would operate a long.

both of those axes as well with with counter space systems. And by the way, there's a South Korean component here too. South Korea has aspirations to launch Earth observation satellites to lower orbit to partly build up the enabling technologies for its kill chain plans, right, conventional precision strike against North Korea. So it's both the United States, what's happening with Golden Doe and what South Korea is doing that I think is leading North Korea to look in this direction. Let's talk about some lessons from recent and ongoing conflicts. You've argued that Iran's strategies is about pain infliction over time, not a quick victory. And gosh, we're into week five now already of that conflict. If Pyongyang is watching this, and we assume there must be, what's the most

dangerous lesson that it might take from that? Yeah, so I would argue that, you know, the contours of what's happening in the Middle East, the way the war looks in between the United States, Israel, and Iran is very much unlike what I would expect a conflict to look like on the Korean peninsula, right? And so what are the lessons the North Koreans are taking away? The biggest lesson is that, you know, this fits very nicely into the North Korean worldview, right? The longstanding claims about the Libya model, about what happens to Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and the fate that befalls you if you negotiate with the Americans, right, which the Iranians did. The United States left the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018. By the way, just a month before the Singapore summit

with North Korea. And actually the very same month, by the way, and this I don't think I've actually seen in any public commentary about that, which is May 2018, Jacko, if you remember, that was when the North Koreans actually called off the Singapore summit. Oh, I recall that. Kim Kagan had that famous statement where he lashed out at John Bolton for talking about the Libya model, right? And the North Koreans warned at that time that, you know, the Libya model was antithetical essentially to everything the North Koreans believed. And so now the tragedy from the North Korean perspective of what has befallen the Iranians is, is really a told-you-so moment. But the point I was making about pain infliction, you know, this is

this is the difference between the Iranian interest in a long war. And I think the North Korean view that a long war cannot be fought and must not be fought, right? The North Korean theory of nuclear deterrence on the Korean peninsula is that it should never put the KPA in a position of having to fight a long war because the KPA traditionally has not been well pressured to fight a long war for reasons of fuel, sustainment, resources, morale, nutrition, I mean, all of these factors, right. On that, though, there's an interesting observation, I think, from recent U.S. Intel assessments of North Korea, that that slightly might be changing. When we talk about North Korea's conventional modernization, again, not that the North Koreans want to fight a long war, but they're potentially looking to increase their endurance. With the case of the Iranians, Iran, of course, is not expecting a regime ending ground invasion, even though we might see ground operations begin in Iran, whether that be in Kark Island or along the Persian Gulf Coast to open the Strait of Hormuz. But the point I was making about pain inflection was basically what Iran's strategic interest at this point is, which is trying to deter the next war from starting, right? They already have to think about how this war ends and what the world looks like after that conflict.

And by imposing energy costs on the entire world, by showing that a conflict in the Persian Gulf is simply intolerable to an integrated global economy, they are creating very strong incentives for the entire world to continue to dissuade the United States and Israel from ever resuming such an attack. Yeah. And as you know, Jacko, the Israeli mindset in particular is, you know, there is this mow the lawn approach to dealing with regional problems. So Israel will go in and bomb Iran every six months if they have to to keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon. And so if you're Iran and you understand this, as I think the Iranians very well do, the interest that they have right now in pain infliction, as I put it, on the whole world, is really high. And so this is why I'm really quite down on the prospects for a prompt conclusion to this war. I mean, obviously war is the province of a. uncertainty, as Klauswitz famously reminded us. But in this particular case, I would be shocked at this, if the Iranians at least acquiesced to a war-terminating agreement in the month of April, I would expect to see this go until May. We're also seeing a lot of talk about cost asymmetry, cheap missiles versus expensive interceptors and also cheap drones versus the same. Does North Korea already have the toolkit to exploit that dynamic as effectively or more effectively than Iran? Yeah, so again, with a nuclear armed state, the entire conversation around air defense, I think, looks very different.

There's just options available to the North Koreans, such as, you know, high altitude nuclear detonations that can cause problems for radars in queuing missile defense systems. This was a problem that the United States had to worry about during the Cold War, for instance. And, of course, modern radars are more advanced than Cold War are radars, but physics remains physics. there's also, of course, the costs of missing certain interceptor, or, you know, just having certain things get through in a conflict with a nuclear adversary. But I think what North Korea and both South Korea are probably taking away from this conflict is the need to quickly innovate in a very quickly changing air domain in contemporary conflicts, right?

So if you're in South Korea, and I think this is true, you've already observed the North Koreans pay so much attention to, you know, not just Ukraine, but Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh, which was one of those talked about conflicts before Ukraine about the use of of drones in warfare, but especially Ukraine where you have innovation on both sides, right? The Ukrainians and the Russians are adapting to a very drone-intensified environment. That creates very strong incentives for advanced wealthy democracies for whom air defense and missile defense has traditionally been the domain of the expensive and the exquisite to really quickly think about adapting as the Ukrainians have out of necessity.

And so on the Korean Peninsula, that will mean that South Korea's defense industrial priorities will have to shift towards not only fielding systems such as the Chungung-2, which has been extremely effective in the Middle East, much to South Korea's pride, but also having the capability to field a variety of short-air, short-range air defenses, what we call Shorad. And that is going to be not just a lesson here on the Korean Peninsula, but I think more globally as drones are, you know, continue to. proliferate. And I think we should expect to see the kinds of operations the Iranians have carried out manifest in other conflicts around the world. Just on the Ukraine there, we've seen how fast they've adapted and adopted new things into their own defenses there. And what do we think that North Korea is quietly learning from the Ukraine war that we're not talking about enough? Yeah. So, you know, North Korea's way of defense innovation and iteration is probably the

most kind of startup-like element about the entire country, right? Like the Academy of Defense Science is continuously iterating around new technologies, building low-cost prototypes, building a variety of things that work, don't work. So they have this kind of iterative approach to defense development that actually means that North Korea can be in a place where they can be rather nimble in adapting to these types of capabilities. There is, of course, an export control element to this. North Korea could, of course, build many of the components required for operating modern drones, as we've already seen them do, whether they can scale them up, build small drones that can operate with network swarms, for instance, very much ambiguous at the moment,

just given what we know about North Korea's ability to access in particular semiconductors, which they do have an ability to continue to elicitly import. But the ability to scale up will be, I think, a lot more difficult for the North Koreans than perhaps it has been for the Ukrainians who can still receive many of those inputs openly from the Europeans and other places. But again, I mean, you know, my through line and a lot of the work I do on North Korea is that it is a fundamental strategic mistake to under-rate this country or to underestimate what North Korea is capable of. And so again, it's not just capability development, right? Like, as I said at the beginning of our conversation, we'll have to look for how the

North Koreans adapt their doctrine, they adapt their training. Will the KPA fundamentally change as an armed force? And I think that's a much more difficult question that gets into. North Korean strategic culture, organizational politics, where I don't think North Korea is a fundamentally malleable and nimble country in those ways, right? Kim Jong-un has, I think, surprised us in many ways with his approach to the state, to governance, to shaping the North Korean bureaucracy in many ways. Let's see if he can take that to the KPA and actually realize the results that he seems to want to realize. Now, in a recent piece that you wrote, Friend K. Pro, you highlight North Grey's ability to launch cruise missiles in rapid succession every few seconds from a single

platform. And how significant is that shifted in practical terms? Yeah. So, you know, in that piece, the big thing I sort of zeroed in on was the decision to use a surface combatant vessel, right? So this is not a very survivable platform, right? It's a Korean people's Navy destroyer. It looks very modern from the perspective of what we see in, you know, the South Korean Navy and U.S. Navy. It's a nice big destroyer with a all these vertical launch cells. I forget the exact number, but it's in that in K-Pro piece. And so Kim Jong-gun shows us that he's got this ability to mass fire from a surface combatant. But the problem for North Korea is not that, you know, that capability won't be useful.

It's just that the ability to use that capability in a war with South Korea and the United States strikes me as very questionable, right? Early in a conflict, South Korea and the U.S. would have very strong incentives to destroy that vessel in port before it can actually set sail. Right. And unlike a submarine, you always know where the thing is, Because it's a surface vessel. It is, yeah. It doesn't have stealth features, for instance. So there are substantial problems. And for me, like, I look at what Kim does with many of these demonstrations,

less from, you know, there are some things North Korea does that I look at very seriously from a deterrence perspective. But like we have in South Korea in the United States, North Korea has some version of inter-service rivalries, right? So we see Kim Jong-un. Between the Army, the Navy, the Air Force. Exactly. And so Kim Jong-un has this interesting pattern in the way that he kind of, you know, he'll go through kind of a two to three months period where he's spending a lot of time thinking

about the Navy, spending a lot of time with the KPN observing, you know, naval exercises and launches. Then he spent some time with the Air Force, then some time with the ground forces, the strategic forces, the Missile Bureau. And so this for me is more evidence that as Kim kind of centers military modernization again, right, I mean, kind of sung in 2.0 in a way with the conventional modernization that's happening alongside the nuclear efforts that are continuing. He has to show that the Navy is actually receiving a big slice of the pie there. Keep the Navy happy, show that they're still part of the fight. But realistically, this capability worries me less.

I mean, an undersea capability is different. As impressive as allied anti-submarine warfare efforts are, North Korea would have the ability to operate submarines from its littoral waters, much more difficult to deal with. The problem with cruise missiles, of course, continues to be that North Korea will have the ability to potentially strike South Korea from very unexpected azimates, right? So basically, cruise missiles don't have to fly in a straight line, and like ballistic missiles. And so North Korea could fire cruise missiles that could approach the

South Korean coast from the east or the west. And that presents a very different type of air defense challenge as well. Wow. Now, is this about overwhelming defenses of South Korea and its ally of the United States or about reducing warning time? It's about both. I think when I look at everything the North Koreans have been doing really since January 2021, when the first plan of the Party Congress happened. It's about creating, for all of the podcast listeners, but, you know, a whack-a-mole problem. Basically putting nuclear weapons, you know, air defense challenges of all kinds, cruise missiles, drones, ballistic missiles on a range of delivery platforms, in a range of domains, you know, under lake launchers. They showed us a lake-based pontoon for ballistic missiles, I think in, I think in 2023.

And, you know, new silos, new ships capable of like. launching missiles, submarines. And at the end of the day, you know, Kim doesn't have the nuclear warheads for all of these systems, right? North Korea, they do have more fissile material than they've ever had. They have more warheads than they ever had, but they're still writing essentially delivery system checks that they don't have the funds to fully cash with their fissile material and warheads. So that, but if you don't know where those nuclear warheads are, then... Right. So that's a, that's a different problem.

I mean, as far as I know, the North Koreans still store their nuclear weapons at a single central storage site, but they will kind of, disperse that. Yeah, I mean, that's a very, you know, it's one of those dilemmas that Kim has to navigate between. There must be a great risk involved with that. It is, but, you know, this gets into kind of the dilemmas of nuclear command and control, which is you can disperse warheads, but then you have sort of concerns about, you know, it's known as the always never dilemma. Nuclear weapons, always never dilemma. So nuclear weapons should always be available when the leadership demands that they be used, but they should never be used without authorization or an accident, because, of course, that's terribly risky for Kim Jong-un. Sure. And so, like every nuclear

state, North Korea has to make some choices here. And those are the choices that Kim seems to have made. Although, you know, my belief is that in a serious crisis, North Korea would very quickly disperse those warheads. And Kim has already implied that he would choose to do that. He would also look to delegate authority then to the KPA. Delegate, okay. So that would be a change in the command and control structure. In a crisis. But in, but in peacetime, the doctrine, you know, the doctrine, the North Korean law, updated law from September 2022 are very clear that Kim Jong-un retains central control. But yeah, I mean, so all of this creates a huge headache for the US ROK alliance as South Korea seeks to make its kill chain more credible. The United States seeks to make its own so-called counterforce planning more capable, the art of destroying North Korean nuclear weapons, essentially. And so the North Koreans are in this cat and mouse game with the US and ROK, where their incentives are to essentially significantly expand the domain, the types of delivery systems, look to mobility, stealth, hardening, a promptness with silos to make the, task for what they see as an attacking force a lot more difficult. And by the way, here we go back

to Iran too, where, and this I actually think is, you know, I should have mentioned this earlier on lessons from the war. If you look at Iran's entire missile strategy and the Iranians have the largest missile arsenal in the entire Middle East, before this war, at least, they had essentially built a concept of missile operations that I think very strongly relied on Iran taking the initiative in a war, right? And of course, what happened with both the 12-day war and the war this year, is that Iran did not take the initiative. They were attacked. It was reacting.

Exactly. And so when the U.S. and Israel struck first, tunnel entrances at Iran's so-called underground missile cities were caved in, leaving missiles entombed. As missiles were exiting, the remaining exits that remained available for use, the United States and Israel with air dominance, which just pluck off those tells as they were emerging. And so if you're North Korea, there's a really worrisome lesson here, which is, of course, taking the initiative matters. Yes.

And you can see how that creates a very dangerous kind of crisis. stability dynamic on the Korean Peninsula. Because of course, South Korea, as we know, has a kill chain strategy where South Korea wants to take the initiative before facing nuclear attack from North Korea. But understanding that South Korea might take the initiative and is a much more advanced country than North Korea, North Korea's incentives to then take the initiative in turn grow substantially. This is what Thomas Schelling, the Cold War nuclear strategist, called the reciprocal fear of surprise attack. And so this preemptive dynamic on both sides of the Korean Peninsula, I think doesn't get any better out of the lessons Iran, North Korea might be taking away from Iran's missile operations.

That's very scary. Now, let's zoom out. Has the Iran War clarified modern missile warfare, or has it just shown how messy and uncertain at all this? Yeah, I mean, I think for anybody following modern missile proliferation and air defense trends, the dynamics in this war haven't necessarily been deeply surprising. But I think for the rest of the world, obviously, this has been a really big wake-up call. And I think when I look at this decade as somebody that's been working on missile proliferation around the world for a number of years, I think it will be remembered as the decade that the lid came off of missile-centric warfare around the world. From India, Pakistan, to Ukraine, to Iran, Israel, we just see ballistic missiles and cruise missiles being used in conflict all around the world.

And just a very intense type of air domain combat that is quickly changing, Operation Spider-Web, the Ukrainian drone attack on Russian strategic bombers as well. And so in the Indo-Pacific, I wrote a report a few years ago at Carnegie on Indo-Pacific missile arsenals. I spent a lot of time traveling around this part of the world looking at what countries are doing to procure these capabilities. China and North Korea, of course, have been at this for a long time. But, you know, South Korea has been also at this for a while. Japan is getting into the party. Australia is coming to the party too with many long-range capabilities. It's not, no, but it does mean that the kinds of wars that we should expect to see in a world that is more, you know, unfortunately, much more fundamentally primed for interstate conflict than it was at the start of this decade. are going to be extremely intense in the aerospace domain. So that does create, of course, a very kind of a different sense of public awareness, especially awareness among policymakers who maybe haven't been paying as much attention to these dynamics. But it does mean that, you know, the salience of air defense, missile defense for countries that may face attacks in future conflicts

is also going to rise substantially. Last question for you, Ankit, if North Korea does draw the wrong lessons from recent wars, what's the most likely mistake it makes? And I, yeah, I think you kind of hinted perhaps at one possible one, which is that this reciprocal fear of surprise attack. Right. Would that be the wrong lesson to learn, perhaps? Well, so that problem I've written about extensively on the Korean Peninsula because it's been true for a long time. And actually, it gets to what we were talking about earlier with conventional modernization because, again, paradoxically, a North Korea with more nuclear weapons and more confidence in nuclear operations, better conventional capabilities, is less likely to have what we might

term an itchy trigger finger, right? So perhaps I'm less worried about that problem than I was in 2017, but perhaps I'm not because of kind of, you know, I'm still chewing through some of these lessons from the war myself. Anybody that has, I think, very strong and high confidence opinions about what the Iran War tells us about, you know, X, Y, and Z in the world is probably in need of a little bit more introspection at the moment, just because these are very difficult things to reason about. But the second thing, and this is maybe not the answer you might expect, right, but this gets to the favorite question on many people's mind, which is what's, well, you know, will Trump and Kim meet? And one of the worrying lessons from this war is that the

Iranians were attacked as they were negotiating with the United States. And so one of the questions I wonder about is, you know, when we go back to 2017, I think it's quite clear that the first six months of that year, the North Koreans view Donald Trump as just another American president and a long line of American presidents they've dealt with. And then by the time we get to the August fire and fury, the Guam crisis of that year, we see evidence that the North Koreans have understood that Donald Trump is actually very different. And then Singapore in Hanoi and then You know, Kim keeps saying that he has good memories of President Trump. But now you have to wonder, so much of the world is looking at the United States today,

and they see a very different type of dynamic than they did during the first Trump term. And with the dynamics leading up to this war in particular, I think there is an unsettling takeaway if you're in North Korea, which is that negotiating with the second Trump administration is a very risky thing to do, even if you have a positive relationship. Because even if you have a positive relationship, because for me, that positive relationship is really all that North Korea, And it's not a small all, it's a big old that North Korea can cling to to to to say, well, you know, he never liked the Ayatollah anyway. So that's clear he was going to have him killed. But, you know, me and him, we had a meal together. We shared with times together. We wrote lovely letters together. Yeah, maybe. I mean, it's still a risky basis on which to reopen a chapter of negotiations. Again, I mean, I'm very strongly supportive of engagement. And it would be good if the U.S. and North Korea could get into a room.

my prior though at the at the moment is looking at the dynamics leading up to this conflict that that's quite dangerous i mean also like i could be wrong about this but i also see from a north korean perspective a very good reason this time to not actually begin a process with the united states with the leader involved directly and so i would expect a process this time to perhaps involve you know madame chasen he and stewitkopf before the leaders themselves get implicated kim has of course told us that his his essential precondition is that you know if the u.s wants to talk about coexistence of some kind. He's happy to have that chat, but denuclearization is off the table. So we might see something happen, you know, this year. There's also the matter that,

you know, President Trump doesn't like his long trips to Asia quite as much. So you would have to probably loop in a Kim summit into some other type of Asia engagement. So for me, practically speaking, we should expect a North Korea engagement process to look like it did in the past. But then, you know, Steve Whitkoff was the negotiator for the United States when this, when the Iranians were essentially caught flat-footed. And so it's not that the U.S. will attack North Korea, in my opinion, because of, again, nuclear deterrence in this case. But you can't be all too certain if you're Kim Jong-un that the risk of negotiating with the U.S. is worth running in the current situation.

Ankit Pounder, thank you very much once again for being on the NK News podcast. Thanks for having me, Jacko. Great to be back. Looking to stay informed about South Korea's fast-evolving political business and cultural landscape? Join us on Korea Pro, the go-to resource for in-depth analysis expertly curated by top-tier professionals. And now you can can pick the membership level that best suits your needs thanks to our new subscription packages. Starting at just $199 annually, you can access daily analysis and our weekly podcast. Or try our premium membership package, which offers additional perks such as executive briefings, monthly reports and forecasts, networking receptions and event opportunities, as well as much, much more.

To find the best fit for you, just head to signup.orgia Pro. and become a member today. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today. Our thanks go to Brian Betts and David Choi for facilitating this episode and to our post-recording producer Alana Hill who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions, and fixes the audio levels. Thank you for listening and listen again next time.