North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Frank Aum: Why North Korea’s claims should be taken at face value

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

Frank Aum, a senior expert on Northeast Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), joins the podcast to talk about a recent event the institute hosted which focused on past efforts at Korean peace, as well as a retrospective he wrote on the 70th anniversary of the 1954 Geneva Peace Conference for USIP.  He […]

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This episode was recorded by me in Seoul on Wednesday, the 24th of July, 2024. And I'm joined by a stream yard by Frank Alm, who is the senior expert on Northeast Asia at the US Institute of Peace. He oversees the Institute's work on Northeast Asia and focuses on ways to strengthen diplomacy to reduce tensions and enhance peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. From 2010 to 2017, he worked at the Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Defense, including as Special Counsel to the Army General Counsel, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and

Pacific Security Affairs, and Senior Advisor on North Korea in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. During this time, he advised four Secretaries of Defense on issues related to Northeast Asia and the Korean Peninsula. And you can find him on Twitter at Frank Aum, that's Frank A-U-M, number one. Welcome on the podcast, Frank. It's great to be here. I know it took a little while, but thanks for having me. It's all coordination. And there's certainly a lot to talk about.

Could you perhaps give us a condensed version of the highlights or lowlights of past efforts of Korean peace as you see it? Yeah. So I think there haven't been many serious efforts at peace since the Geneva conference in 1954. Recall that, you know, I should preface this by saying that, you know, last year we did celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean War.

And there were a lot of commemorations that focused on the military aspects of that occasion, right? So the establishment of the US South Korea mutual defense treaty, the alliance between the two countries, the sacrifices of veterans and service members. But what was often ignored was the fact that the two sides used diplomacy to end hostilities, hostilities that had taken millions of lives up until that point, right? And it was the longest negotiated armistice in history, 158 meetings spread over two years and 17 days, right? And so I think that is the aspect that is forgotten. Diplomacy is what got us out of

the war. Diplomacy helped resolve what the war could not. Can we call it diplomacy when the negotiators were all soldiers in military uniforms? It's still negotiations between officials from both sides, right? So military folks can assume the role of diplomats when you're talking about war and peace, right? But the point I'm trying to make is that another important aspect of the armistice agreement is that the military commanders recommended that a political conference be held

to resolve the Korea question, right? And this political conference ended up being the 1954 Geneva conference that followed the end of the Korean War in 1954. That conference did not succeed in resolving the Korean question. And 70 years afterwards, we still have not resolved the Korean question, right? And I think, you know, there's various reasons why we haven't been able to resolve the Korean questions from the war. Initially, I think there were just the enmity between the two sides following the war prevented them from having the trust to engage. And they just really

had no interest for 20 years after the end of the Korean War. By the 70s, I think North Korea started to realize after they reached the 1972 inter-Korean joint communique and agreed to peaceful cooperation and unification, they started to realize that they still need to engage with the United States to resolve the broader tensions. They reached out to the United States in 1954. There was a letter that Hwang Jang-yup wrote to the US Congress in 1974. You can find it on the Wilson Center website. The US didn't really respond, but that was the pattern from the early 70s. North Korea actually wanted to engage. That was the default position, and it was the US that had the leverage to say yes or no or apply preconditions.

But the US did not engage, again, for a variety of reasons. They're focused on other issues, the Cold War. I think also inter-Korean competition prevented the US from engaging further because the US had to cater to its ally, South Korea, in this competition against North Korea. And so that meant acknowledging, supporting South Korea, ignoring, discounting North Korea. Things changed in the early 1990s with North Korea's development or threatened breakout of a nuclear weapons program. And then that led to a period of 15 years of engagement afterwards. But again, you had lingering mistrust, a sort of a cynical fear-based view on both sides about what peace might mean.

There's risk aversion. And I think and enmity between the two Koreas. What are the other key takeaways of that 1954 Geneva Peace Conference that we can learn from today? Yeah, I'm not an expert on the 1954 Geneva Conference. You could talk to Mark Tokola who has researched that very closely. I should also point out that former podcast guest, Rad Jong-il, ambassador, former ambassador to Tokyo and to London, wrote an excellent article in English on the 1954 Geneva Peace Conference that people can dig up on that and read. Yeah, there's not much research out there on that. You're right. But there were several issues that came up during that conference, including holding elections on the Korean Peninsula, the withdrawal of foreign troops who would supervise these

elections. And most of the issues actually were resolved, except for the issue of supervision of the elections and the agreement. So I think it's unfortunate that we had all these very thorny issues. Most of them were resolved and yet because of that one issue, we couldn't reach a final solution. That's I think a bit of a frustrating point and I think that's a pattern that we've seen play over and over again throughout the history of the relations between these two countries. Yeah. Now, we're probably going to return to some of those themes later on, but there's a lot

to talk about here. So I'm going to move on to January this year when the US Institute of Peace published a series of articles called Pursuing Peaceful Coexistence with North Korea, and your own piece was the first in that series. My first, I guess, starting question for you is about the question of underlying belief or assumptions. Do you believe that we should take North Korea at face value when it says that it feels besieged or under threat from the U.S. policy that it calls hostile? I think we do. I think the actions that it's taking

represent insecurity, fear. And if you even look at objective factors, the poor state of its economy, its isolation from the international community, the relative weakness compared to not only its southern neighbor, but also its primary adversary, the United States. We can objectively see the discrepancy in power relationships.

And so I think it's well understood that North Korea feels besieged and is adopting the siege mentality. And because, and of course, it's now establishing relations with other major powers and allies in the region like China and Russia. And so it certainly is not desperate. It may not be at a point of urgency. But again, speaking in absolute terms, it's not in a comfortable position right now. And yet the internal messaging that is in the propaganda that it speaks to its people, the messaging is more about, we're going to get revenge on the Americans rather than watch out those Americans are coming to get us again. It's hard to interpret North Korean propaganda.

I'm sure they've said things along those lines in terms of revenge, but they've also have talked about tightening its belt, right? They've used the pressure from the United States and international community to justify or explain why it has to take certain measures or why the population is undergoing a difficult situation. I think North Korea uses propaganda for different reasons, and I've seen the gamut for what it has said about his approach to the United States. In your piece in January, you argued that the United States and South Korea's prioritization of denuclearization above all else needs to change to fit the new reality. Why is this? Why does it need to change? Because it's simply not working at this point. On one hand, we have seen what North Korea is saying about nuclear weapons. It has updated its constitution to solidify the role of nuclear weapons in its identity, in its defense.

It's also stated explicitly that it will not engage with the United States as long as nuclear weapons are on the agenda. So again, we have to take North Korea's words as face value, right? So that's point one. Point two is that, okay, so even though it's saying that it's not gonna negotiate away as nuclear weapons, maybe the argument is it doesn't matter. It's a violation of international law. It's a threat to the United States and the

international community. So it doesn't matter what North Korea says. We still need to force, coerce, and pressure North Korea away from that, right? That's a fair argument. But again, now we think about what's realistic and what's practical. Is that going to happen? The answer is no. It's not just my opinion. It's the opinion of the US intelligence community that agrees, that assesses that North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons. And so what are we doing when this

is the assessment of the US intel community and we're taking an approach that is contradictory to that assessment? of the US intel community and we're taking an approach that is Contradictory to that assessment right it seems sort of a nonsensical approach Now leaving aside the US for a moment there North Korea has been told by the United Nations Security Council on a number of occasions With the agreement of all five permanent members including Russia and the People's Republic of China You are not to have a nuclear weapons program and you are not to have intercontinental ballistic missiles. North Korea has been offered other security assurances. Why do you think North Korea persists and is it justified in doing so?

Well, again, I think it persists because of, again, the paranoia, the insecurity of the government and the siege mentality that I referred to earlier. Its belief that nuclear weapons is the strongest guarantor of the regime's security. And so it can't rely on the security guarantees or promises of other benefactor countries like China and Russia. North Korea points to what has happened in other countries, Libya, Iraq, maybe even Ukraine on what happens when you give up nuclear weapons or the prospect of nuclear weapons. And North Korea has also seen that spanning many US administrations, there have been this

underlying sentiment that supports regime change or at a minimum regime collapse. So I think as paranoid and nonsensical as it may seem, North Korea has some justification in thinking that nuclear weapons will provide the security that it needs. Of course, any other normal country would disagree because of the other benefit, the trade-off, the pros and cons to that calculation, but North Korea is not a normal country. And yet, pretty much up until the first North Korean nuclear crisis of 1994, North Korea was telling everyone who would listen that it was deadly opposed to having nuclear weapons, that it didn't want nuclear weapons.

It brought in foreigners to walk down the streets of Pyongyang holding placards, advocating for no nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula. Was it fooling the world all this time, or was it actually in the process of changing his mind? I don't know. I mean, we don't have the insights, not privy to internal thinking of the North Korean regime,

Kim Il-sung in the 70s and 80s and what may have informed or changed his calculus. It's very possible that they were acting under deceit. At the same time, opinions can change and maybe they had the intention of not having interest in nuclear weapons and they changed. I suspect that they probably were, at least to some extent, interested in developing nuclear weapons. We know the psychological toll and damage it took

when the US bombed North Korea significantly during the Korean War, and there was threats of US use of nuclear weapons by Eisenhower against North Korea in the 1950s. To that extent, it would be reasonable to understand why North Korea had that fear and suspicion underlying their psyche since the 1950s. When you say in your article that the United States has, quote, led international efforts to isolate North Korea diplomatically, do you mean that the U.S. actually encourages countries to cut

diplomatic ties with North Korea? Yes. Can you give some examples of that? Well, certainly during the Obama administration in the second term, there were efforts to encourage other countries, not only to enforce sanctions robustly against North Korea, but also when appropriate to kick out North Korean diplomats. And we saw that, I can't remember the exact countries. I think it was some Latin American countries, for example, it could have been Spain, which is a European country, but I think maybe Chile. I'll have to look that up again. But there

are several countries, probably around 2015, 2016, that kicked out North Korean diplomats. And I think it was with pressure from the United States. Now, how can the US, in your view, reduce the risk of conflict, improve security, and build mutual trust and understanding in a tangible, proactive, and realistic way? That's something that you argue for in your paper. Right. Well, I think the idea of reducing risks, improving security, that is a goal that all administrations espouse. The question is, do we actually see tangible evidence of that happening? And that certainly did not happen during a lot of the Obama administration in which I worked.

It has not happened in most of the Biden administration. And it also did not happen in a lot of the Trump administration except for a period of a couple of years. What is the tangible evidence, right? Of course, you can say, well, yeah, we haven't had North Korean pouring across the 38th parallel, right? We prevented war for 70 years. And if that's the bar, then of course, our deterrence has worked. But if you're talking about, say, the absence of provocative behavior, missile tests, threats, proactive efforts to increase communications or take confidence-building measures. These things are largely absent.

Those are the tangible things that I think we need to be working towards that can show demonstrably improved relations. Now, why must it be up to the United States or even South Korea and the United States together to make these positive steps? Why not call on Kim Jong-un, who doesn't have a very complex foreign policy and defense policy establishment involving competing interests and parties and actors, why not call on him to make the first move to increase confidence, reduce risk, etc.? Right. That's a fair point. And I think there's a lot more that North Korea can be doing,

because it's an actor within these negotiations. And it's, I think, to many people's regret that North Korea is not walking through that door. The US has a policy of unconditional talks with North Korea. All North Korea has to do is simply walk through that door or pick up a phone, right? And so I think that's problematic. That being said, like I mentioned earlier, North Korea is the weak country here. It's isolated, it's insecure, it's impoverished, right?

Relative to South Korea, which has one of the strongest economies and militaries in the world, in conjunction in alliance with the United States, which has the strongest economy and military in the world, based on that discrepancy of power, it makes more sense, and there's academic literature that supports this,

that when the stronger country moves first, that tends to precipitate peace processes better, right? There needs to be someone who takes the first step, right? And it's often easier when you have a stronger country that can tolerate risk better. That tends to improve or help facilitate peace processes. But you've worked inside the US government. that tends to improve or help facilitate peace processes. But you've worked inside the US government, you know how hard it is to turn around that ship of state and to change policy, to make things align in the Congress,

between the Congress and the White House, between the various competing ministries, you know how difficult that can be. We've seen that over the decades there, that it's really hard to get those things to come into alignment, even if one person in a powerful position says, this is the way we should go. There's always these competing factions, there's the hawks versus the doves, there's sometimes the vice president and the president can be at odds. It seems to make more sense to

me that if North Korea, which is, after all, a one-party, one-man state, if it were to do this, it would be a lot easier. Again, fair point. I will note that North Korea, despite the perception that everything comes down from the top and it's just a single unitary voice, does have diverging constituencies, right? There's the elites, there's the military, there's the intel group, there's hardliners, there's people who are relatively less hardline. The foreign ministry is different from,

say, the former United Front Department, which is different from the Supreme People's Assembly, which is different from the organization and guidance department. North Korea has their own competing factions and constituencies, and Kim Jong-un has stated as much to the U.S. delegation during negotiations. That's the first point. Second point is that I think the U.S. also, despite how messy it is and the diverse voices,

can also be top down as well too, right? The direction comes for foreign policy primarily comes from the White House. And so we talk about, sometimes we'll talk about who's going to be the special envoy, the special representative. These people implement policy, right? But it's the White House at the very highest levels that set policy. And policy can change despite the competing entities like Congress or different agencies. You can have the policy change fairly quickly

when there's political will at the very top. We saw that when Donald Trump agreed to meet with Kim Jong-un. Before that, in 2017, when it was the height of fire and fury, no one thought that we would ever meet with North Korea. And all it took was Donald Trump to sort of step out of conventional bounds and say, yes, I will meet. And then what happened was you had a historic event, the first time a sitting US president

met with a North Korean leader in history. So those things can happen, but it requires unconventional thinking. You make the case in your paper for things like climate and energy cooperation, economic training and projects, academic and scientific collaboration, humanitarian initiatives, and people-to-people exchanges as ways to proactively pursue mutual interests that tangibly improve military and economic security for both sides. But it feels to me like many of these things have been tried before, especially most recently under President Moon Jae-in.

Why don't these small confidence building measures ever lead to something bigger or more durable and lasting? Yeah, I mean, I do want to be cautious. I'm not saying that these types of engagement channels will necessarily change the course of US DPRK relations in an enduring way or in a sustainable way or could do it very quickly. But these are all bases for improved relations and cumulatively in the aggregate over time may be able to help promote and define new US-DPRK relations

that's more cooperative and friendly, right? So one by itself, maybe in several by itself may not do it, may not even lead to improve track one or official negotiations. But again, I think all of these things can serve as the basis for improved relations. I wanna throw a note of skepticism in about people-to-people exchanges. I'm by no means convinced that North Korea would welcome or even accept people-to-people exchanges, especially with South Korea, even if they were offered.

I think it's quite clear that over the last 25 years that North Korea has allowed contact between North and South Koreans only under very rigid and very tightly controlled and very time-limited conditions. I'm surprised actually that on People to People exchanges your paper doesn't suggest something that I've been rabbiting on about for the last 20 years but nobody will listen. A postal exchange between North and South Korea, wouldn't that be a wonderful thing? It hasn't happened since the war began in 1950. Every year more and more family members on either side of separated families are dying. A postal exchange would be the very least you could ask North Korea to do. And yet I think when it has been offered to North Korea by South Korea,

North Korea has rejected it. That suggests to me that North Korea is not that interested in people-to-people exchanges. What do you think? That's absolutely right. And another point I would raise is the idea of liaison offices. That's something we throw out there as if it's something that North Korea is asking for when I think the past track record suggests that North Korea is not so keen on having liaison offices, right? Yeah, it wants to limit contact. Right.

That's absolutely true. We should be under no impression that North Korea, even in an environment of improved relations, will open the floodgates and allow for thousands of Westerners coming in. Or even thousands of South Koreans. Right. But that being said, we should also note that there was periods of what I call, quote unquote, peaceful coexistence between the United States and North Korea during the 90s and 2000s, right?

And it sounds ridiculous to say now, but back then we had constant diplomacy between the North Koreans and the United States to implement the agreed framework after 1994, to have missile talks, our proposal for PTOCs in 1996, the Perry process starting in 1998, Malin Albright's visit. So that's constant diplomacy between the United States and North Korea. We had US DOD, Department of Defense officials in North Korea working side by side with the

Korean People's Army on the remains recovery operations, recovering the remains of US service members from the Korean War. We had thousands of US citizens going to North Korea every year for reuniting with family members, but also tourism and other business. And this is prior to the Otto Warmbier Act of 2017, 2018, right? You also had US congressional delegations of staff going to North Korea every other year. You had North Korean delegation, dozens and dozens of North Korean delegations going to

the United States for scientific, academic, sports and cultural exchanges. So to that extent, I think that was helping to inform both sides, provide a better picture of US culture and thinking, build relationships. Again, this is at the micro level, but I think that all ultimately helps towards a better understanding and less of a sort of a singular image on both sides of what the other country is like.

You argue in your piece that the primary focus of U.S. policy should be to strive for peaceful coexistence with North Korea, but the problem seems to me that North Korea is not content with peaceful long-term coexistence with South Korea in the same peninsular space as North Korea is. Do you think that this is now more possible and realistic given that Kim Jong-un seems to have given up on the dream of peaceful unification with the South? I think that's a proposition worth testing, right? Because when you go back to the Korean War, yes, there's a strong competition. North Korea probably felt in a better position to take over South Korea or a stronger legitimacy because of the state of its economy

relative to South Korea in the 60s and 70s. That has changed. And obviously with the improvements in the defense and deterrence capabilities on both sides, I think it's very unrealistic to think that one or the other could invade and take over the other. And I think both sides realize that. And now under the situation where North Korea has abandoned peaceful unification,

perhaps this is an opportunity to relook the unification policy of South Korea and think more about a separation policy or a normalization policy. Because again, the United Nations, the international community looks at the two Koreas as separate countries. Maybe that might be the basis for more peaceful coexistence and relations, if there's not this fear of one side subsuming the other or absorbing the other.

I'm not sure. I'm not convinced of this. I'll need to give a greater thought, but I think it's something worth considering. You've said already in this podcast that you believe North Korea's default position between 1974 and 2019 was generally to want to negotiate with the United States, right? Right. Do you see it as a problem that while that may be the case that North Korea generally wanted to negotiate with the United States, it was not always willing to negotiate with South Korea. I mean, during these years, for much of the time, the US was directing North Korea to talk to South Korea to solve the issues between the two Koreas, but often North Korea would refuse,

saying that it would only talk to the US as the controlling party. Yeah, it is problematic, but in many ways it's also understandable. Let's recall that North Korea did engage with South Korea in 1972, which led to the Joint Communique. They also negotiated with South Korea in the early 1990s, which led to the Inter-Korean Recon and the denuclearization agreement. There were also negotiations between the two Koreas leading up to the 2000 Joint Communique, the 2000 Summit, the 28th. So there has been lots of inter-Korean discussions, dialogue that has led to maybe better understanding. The problem I see it is that inter-Korean discussions cannot address

certain issues like nuclear weapons. That's outside of South Korea's purview, right? US troops. South Korea has a say in that, but the US also has a say in that. That's something that South Korea cannot control, unless they're saying, well, we're willing to kick out US troops, but that's something that needs to be decided together within the alliance. Sanctions relief, that's something South Korea has no control over. It's the US as a P5 member that has the veto. So I think North Korea realized that. They realized that while it's helpful to talk to South Korea, there are certain things that South Korea cannot discuss and it makes more sense to

discuss with the United States. I'm phrasing it in a more euphemistic way. I think what North Korea would say is that South Korea is a puppet, right? And North Korea needs to talk to the puppet master. But that being said, you can see why North Korea has legitimate reasons to discuss things with the United States directly. Now you've argued that it was the US who decided during that period 1974 to 2019 whether and when engagement would happen with North Korea. But on the flip side, it seems to me that it was North Korea that decided precisely during that same period, whether and when it would talk to South Korea. That could be true.

I'm not a historian and I don't have all the inside details of different moments where North Korea reached out to South Korea or South Korea reached out to North Korea. So I can't say with certainty there. So yeah, I would hold off on commenting on that. I'm just not sure. Do you believe that in 2017 or that it was the maximum pressure applied in 2017 that ultimately brought Pyongyang to the talks with President Donald Trump? I disagree. And I know that there are people who make that argument that it was pressure that brought

North Korea to the table. But again, like I said, North Korea's default position has always been not typically, it's typically been to talk to the United States, right, starting in 1974. And the United States is a side that has said yes or no, or applied preconditions. It said basically no in the 1970s. And it said yes in the early 1990s when we found out about North Korea's nuclear weapons program, and that was a big problem. So we finally did say yes after 38 years. And then we continued to say yes up until the Obama administration, when we felt frustration

that North Korea seemed to be not fulfilling its commitments. And then we kind of went into this more patient mode. Some people call it strategic patience. I think the term used by the Obama administration, at least starting in the second term, was quote unquote, authentic, incredible negotiations. We would not engage with North Korea unless it did certain things. with North Korea unless it did certain things, right? So we set preconditions and that's why there were, there was no negotiations between the end of the leap day deal in 2012 to the end of the Obama administration. And that extended to the first couple of years

of the Trump administration, right? And then you can even say in 2018, when Kim Jong-un expressed interest in meeting President Trump. The only reason engagement happened was because Trump said yes. We can think of a counterfactual situation if, for example, it was Hillary Clinton who was president, she likely would have said no to Summitry. She would have said probably yes to working-level talks,

but I don't know if that was what North Korea is thinking. So North Korea, we got into talks with North Korea not because of pressure, but because North Korea always wants to talk. And the US actually finally said yes, at least at the summit level in 2018. Right. Yeah, I'm not. I don't see that North Korea is always willing to talk with the United States Oh, I mean I what I will say is that the things have changed in 2019 but I was talking about the period between 1974 and 2019 and I'm talking typically typically right because again North Korea talked from 1994 or actually 1992 to 2008,

right? For 16 years, they talked and it was because the US was willing to engage, right? 2011, they wanted to talk and that led to the leap day deal. 2013, they wanted to talk, we said no. 2015, they wanted to talk, we said no. 2016, they wanted to talk. We said no. 2016, they wanted to talk. We said no, right? Can you unpack that a little bit? When you said we said no, what exactly did America say in 2013, 2015, and I forget the third year when North Korea said they wanted to talk?

Right, so there was after the, if you recall, in 2012, 2013, this was, I think it was North Korea's third nuclear test. They conducted a satellite launch. And because this was a heightened level of provocation, the US and South Korea responded with enhanced deterrence measures, right? B-2 mission from the continental United States, carrier strike group presence, a static display of F-16s, a nuclear submarine port visit, these sorts of things, right? And then North Korea came back with a charm offensive wanting to talk. I'm trying to be careful because some of

these things aren't public information. And so I'm not sure if some of the outreach efforts were made public. I know in 2015, North Korea proposed a dual freeze. And I think China did as well. 2016, North Korea reached out saying they wanted talks, but the US did not want to have talks on North Korea's terms. And I think that might be the argument that some people might be making. Well, 2018, sure, we agree to talks But it was on our terms, but that's not the case either because the talks between Kim Jong-un and President Trump in 2018

We're not on our terms that was on North Korea's terms, right? We never wanted some a tree with North Korea North Korea wanted it for you know A variety of reasons and they got it, right find it very uncompelling, the argument that it was somehow pressure that got North Korea to table. I'm thinking aloud here because I need to put this straight in my own head. It seems now, listening to you, that there are at least three competing versions about why North Korea came to talks with the United States in 2018. And the first, as I mentioned, is maximum pressure applied in 2017, brought North Korea to the table. Yours is that North Korea was always willing, but Donald Trump simply said yes, and that's why it went ahead.

And then there's a third vision, which I haven't even mentioned yet, which is that North Korea had decided that it had a nuclear arsenal ready to go and that it was now ready to talk. That it had been working for some years on perfecting its nuclear arsenal and now since that was ready and Kim Jong-un I think made statements to that effect that we have our systems, we're ready to go, now we can talk. So we have three very very different visions. None of those two can be true at the same time. No, they're not mutually exclusive. You can have pressure that might inform and make things nervous for North

Korea, but it might not be the decisive factor, right? You also have a situation where North Korea, remember North Korea did come to the table for many, many years between 1992 and 2008. Was it pressure that got North Korea to the table during those 16 years? I wouldn't think so. I think it was the idea of receiving benefits, the potential for benefits that drew them to the table. And we also have to look at other situations. Remember 2005 when the US applied the Banco Delta Asia sanctions. And then afterwards, North Korea cites this as the reason for why they dropped out of

the Six-Party Talks for about a year. So that's a situation where pressure weakened diplomacy. And then they came back to the table in, I think, late 2006, which led to the implementing agreement in February 2007. And that, I think, was largely driven by the fact that we were expressing a willingness to give North Korea the $25 million back from the Banco Delta Asia sanctions. Not only that, in 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test to express its displeasure about the BDA sanctions. So I think we have

to look at the totality of the empirical evidence. What happens? What is North Korea's behavior when we apply pressure? What is North Korea's behavior when we engage? And I think, you know, you look at the studies out there, there's a 2017 study by CSIS that demonstrates a strong correlation between periods of USDPRK engagement and lower levels of North Korean provocations, right? And then you can also look at periods of US pressure. The first strong US pressure campaign was following the collapse of the leap day deal. So basically from 2012 to 2018, right? So it just overlaps a little bit with the maximum pressure campaign from Trump. During those six years, we heightened our deterrence, military deterrence efforts. We applied stronger sanctions starting in 2016.

We also diplomatically isolated… Sanctions that Russia and China signed on to, by the way. Yes, correct. Correct. China and Russia both applied the pressure together with the United States. Correct. No one said that they didn't. My point is that that was a period of pressure. is that that was a period of pressure, right? What happened during those six years? You had the greatest advances in North Korea's nuclear missile program, four nuclear tests, over a hundred ballistic missile tests. What's the second period of pressure? It's basically when Yoon Song-yeon was elected, 2022, and he agreed with the United States to return to a heightened pace of deterrence measures. And you had that starting with increasing the size and scale at the scope of exercises,

increasing the pace of US strategic asset deployments. So you look at 2022 to the present, again, you had now the greatest number of ballistic missile tests from North Korea in history, right? Over I think 90 in just in one year. It might've been 2022 or 2023. So again, I'm looking at this evidence. I'm also looking at the period of engagement between 1994 and 2002 when both sides were

implementing the Agri framework. What happened during those eight years? No nuclear tests, one missile test, no reprocessing of plutonium, right? So I know I'm sort of just reciting chapter and verse of this Bible, but again, I wanna go by empirical evidence, right? And then whatever that evidence suggests,

let's go with that. If pressure is showing that it is changing North Korea's behavior, I would say let's double down. I just don't see the evidence. For me, one of the greatest questions when we're talking about negotiations is whether a party to a negotiation is acting in good faith, is negotiating in good faith. That goes for North Korea as it does for South Korea and the United States. Now, I know, as you said before, you're not a historian, but can you point to any time in recent memory where you believe all three parties were

entering into negotiations in good faith? Are you talking about the U.S., South Korea, and North Korea as the three parties? Yes. It's hard to say because again, I'm not privy to confidential classified information about the internal discussions. And certainly the hardest would be North Korea. That's a black box. So I could not comment whatsoever on whether North Korea is entering things in good faith. My sense is that South Korea under the Moon administration believed that negotiations could at minimum

lead to reduced tensions, improved relations, and maybe even a sustainable pathway towards peace, just from talking with South Korean officials in the Moon administration in the Blue House at the time. And on the US side, I feel like there was sincerity as well. But again, it's hard to say because there's such inconsistency among certain US actors. So when I talked to Steve Began, I absolutely believed that there was sincerity, good faith in negotiating. But at the same time, you had people like John Bolton, the national security advisor, Mike Pompeo, who are more hardline.

From their past statements and writings, they clearly did not want, at least John Bolton, did not want any sort of deal with North Korea. And it's hard to understand President Trump's motivations. Maybe he did want a deal, but for not the right reason. It's hard to tell. It looked like he was sincere in reaching a deal. Maybe it wouldn't have been the best deal. That's hard to say. So it's really hard to interpret the motivations of many sides when you don't have all the information. It seems to me that North Korea is not willing to talk to the United States or South Korea,

either individually or together as a team. And that seems to have been the situation for the last five years. Would you agree with that assessment? Yes. So how do we break through that? How do we change that? How do we get North Korea to, once again, use that awful phrase, come to the table? Yeah, well, I think there is, again, I've pointed to past academic literature and research

that suggests that the way to facilitate peace processes, one of the theories out there is called GRIT, G-R-I-T, graduated reciprocation intention reduction. The idea is that one country, typically the stronger country, starts first. They offer unilateral conciliatory gestures as a way to invite reciprocation from the other side. And that leads to a cycle of reciprocation and tension reduction. There's precedent for that on the Korean Peninsula in the early 1990s when the United States unilaterally

withdrew tactical weapons. They unilaterally suspended the major team spirit exercises. And like I said, they agreed to high-level cabinet, cabinet-level talks for the first time in 38 years, right? These are all major concessions. And what did we see North Korea do? They signed the, the inter-Korean reconciliation agreement. They signed the joint denKorean Reconciliation Agreement,

they signed the Joint Denuclearization Agreement, and they signed the IAEA Safeguards Agreement, the National Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards Agreement, right? So that's one example of a reciprocal cycle of unilateral gestures, right? You had a same cycle in 2018, where South Korea started the process with conciliatory messaging and gestures.

North Korea reciprocated. Remember, North Korea shut down Punggye-ri, their nuclear test site. They shut down Dongchang-ri, the missile engine test stand. They handed over 55 boxes of US service member remains. They handed over three US detainees, and they applied a moratorium on nuclear missile testing. So that was North Korea's way of trying to facilitate the process. And the US agreed to summit-level talks. They canceled the UFG exercise in August 2018. So there was this process going on in 2018.

Unfortunately, it seemed to stop when Mike Pompeo made a return visit to Pyongyang after Singapore, and he didn't seem to have any other concessions. And so that only a list of demands, and that's when North Korea said, hey, we don't appreciate these gangster-like demands from the US. And things kind of fell apart a little bit.

They were reinvigorated with Hanoi, but then things floundered after the lack of an agreement there. But so all that is to say all that history is to say that that is a process that by which we can try to get North Korea back to the table. It is a little bit sad, though, that at the end of that period, just following on from where you left off there, that even while President Moon Jae-in was still in the Blue House and was still making conciliatory overtures to North Korea, that the North Korean leadership made that decision

to blow up the liaison building and basically throw a lot of dirt in Moon Jae-in's face. I mean, that's how those confidence building measures ended, in my view. Yes, and that's unfortunate. I think some of it is maybe North Korea's frustration with things that Moon Jae-in may have been telling North Korea, promises that South Korea shouldn't have been making. Again, I think at some point, South Korea ran out of road. They were doing everything they could to bring the two horses to the water, but they couldn't force those horses to drink. And the US was not making the type of concessions on say an end of war declaration or say sanctions relief in general that North Korea was wanting. and North Korea felt frustrated. They felt like South Korea was misrepresenting what could possibly happen. And so that's frustrating. That doesn't have to be

the final word. Just like pressure, if say a certain designation is made about a North Korean entity and that doesn't work, we don't just throw up our hands and say, well, pressure doesn't work. North Korean entity and that doesn't work, we don't just throw up our hands and say, well, pressure doesn't work. These things, you can make compelling arguments on both sides, and people have that these things need to be sustained to have effect, both engagement, maybe even pressure. And I think it's short-sighted to just say, well, things didn't work in the past, and that's that. Now, the last thing I want to talk to you about is that in April this year you co-wrote a piece that listeners can find on the US Institute of Peace website and I think will include a link in the show notes called Why Peace Games? Insights from East Asia. So what are peace games and how can they help to ease a tense or hostile situation between two

countries or two parties? Right so the idea for the peace game came from my general perception that one of the biggest roadblocks to peace building, at least in Washington, D.C., is that most of the policymakers view security issues like North Korea primarily through the lens of threats and worst case scenarios, right? So in other words, it's the fear of North Korean aggression, coercion, brinksmanship based on the country's provocative behavior since the Korean War. It's these things that have shaped how Washington views its objectives and risks on the Korean Peninsula. And similarly, North Korea's own perception, their own threat perception based on what it sees

as hostile US behavior has developed into what we talked about, the siege mentality that's used to justify repression and belligerence abroad. And in the US, I think the security focused perspective leads to analytical approaches like war gaming, which primarily emphasizes how to deter, contain, and defeat the North Korea threat. And so it's not surprising that these approaches contribute to or reinforce the development of U.S. policies towards North Korea that rely heavily on military deterrence and dominance, economic pressure and diplomatic isolation from the international community. And, you know, I think these tools have been successful in

achieving certain outcomes like preventing a war, but, you know, they've been severely inadequate in addressing the equally important goals of building peace, improving relations, which require different tools like diplomatic risk-taking and confidence building measures. And so, it was my desire to take a different view, that looks more at positive scenarios. How do we sustain diplomatic engagement? How do we take risks in diplomacy,

like the unilateral gestures that can help improve relations and reduce tensions on the peninsula? Again, tangibly, we need to see tangible benefits, comprehensive military agreements, reductions in pulling back of the no-fly zones, demilitarization of Panmunjom, right? Those are the things I'm looking for, right, which you're not seeing today. We're seeing the

undermining of all of those things like the CMA. Now, in running a peace game around the Korean Peninsula and tensions between North and South Korea, would it be impossible or is it a goal to to get inside the mind of the major players and try to anticipate what decisions they might make in a similar situation? It is, I mean that's the that's a difficulty in all simulations including war game in which you know DC does to significant levels right so the best we can do is to find participants in the simulation who are very familiar with the thinking of the government and try to act out their roles as consistently and faithfully as possible to the views of the government. So, for example, obviously, the hardest actor to try to fill is get North Korean defectors maybe who had high level positions in the government, but in general it's hard for a variety of reasons. So we had experts who are very familiar

with North Korean thinking, US experts but Chinese experts as well, play the role of North Korea in the simulation. If the person acting out the role of North Korea's leadership had a fundamental misunderstanding of how North Korea's leadership makes decisions, or let's say the difference between stated intentions of North Korea and actual intentions of North Korea, would that affect the outcome or compromise the value of the peace game? Absolutely. Absolutely. The peace game is entirely reliant on the views and actions of these participants. And again, we had four participants play the role of each country. So we had 16 participants total, right? Four is not a representative sample, right? And so if you conduct the peace game many, many times. You might have a more representative, maybe,

analysis of what might happen in these scenarios. And this is one simulation with four participants playing each country. So yeah, it absolutely could change the dynamics of the game, depending on the individuals involved. We tried to get participants who had disparate views. But again, we'll have to run the simulation many, many,

many times to get a more representative assessment. The longer I look at North Korea, the more it seems to me that completely opposite opinions or conclusions about the workings of North Korea can be sincerely held by completely reasonable people with reasons that sound plausible. Take, for example, Kim Jong-un's attitude towards the second Donald Trump presidency. We've got some commentators that say that Kim doesn't really care because he has Putin on his side now.

But there was an interview by a recent North Korean defective diplomat who said that Kim Jong-un is very keen to see Trump back in the White House. One of them is true and one of them can't be. Or both could be true, right? If things are not at the same moment, though. Well, again, it's not black and white, you can have mixed feelings, right? You can feel that everything else being equal, would you prefer Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? If you're Kim Jong Un, you probably prefer Donald Trump. He's already established a relationship with Donald

Trump, he understand how he probably thinks he understands how Donald Trump thinks. So it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that you have a preference for Donald Trump. That being said, you could also think that, ultimately it's not a decisive factor. And if it's not Donald Trump, then you're gonna move along with your own policies regardless, right?

So it can be this gray area. It doesn't have to be one or the other. I suspect that's the case that he's not going to shed a tear if Donald Trump is not elected, but if he could choose from one or the other, he would probably prefer Donald Trump. Have you run multiple peace games involving Korea in different differing levels of complexity and length and number of parties? I have conducted one. I've participated in two others, but I've participated in probably

10 war games. And that's just that's what happens in DC, right? Sure. Okay, well, sticking to the peace games that you have been involved in, then tentatively, what can you tell us that you've learned? Yeah, so I would refer listeners to our report you can find online at the Quincy Institute website. But I would highlight three main observations. One is that the US and North Korean teams that participated in the stimulation, these are diplomatic negotiations, they perceive potential losses greater than potential gains. So there was risk aversion

that was involved. Not surprising. That's how many people behave in negotiations. I think Dan Kahneman has written about that too. People are more concerned about loss aversion than what gain they may not get. It's a common psychological slash economic bias that people have. Right. So both sides in the simulation appear to magnify what they might be conceding while they were undervaluing the potential benefits that they might receive in return. So for example, in one of the scenarios, the North Korean side felt that giving up its Youngbyon nuclear facilities was irreversible and therefore excessive compared to what it perceived as insufficient sanctions relief and security guarantees. And then likewise, the US team focused on the potential degradation of military readiness caused by any suspension in military exercises, despite the scenarios

describing North Korea taking unprecedented denuclearization measures and offering to suspend their own military exercises. So that is this risk aversion. Fear-based thinking is something that pervades all sides in negotiations. It's difficult to overcome, but I think it perhaps can be mitigated through certain strategies like proceeding in a step-by-step fashion, which might minimize loss through incremental steps, using reversible measures to show that losses don't have to be permanent, lowering the risk of failure, underscoring the impact of loss aversion on policy innovation.

There's different ways you can try to mitigate it that might be helpful. One thing we haven't mentioned yet is the role of the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission, or UNCMAC, since 1953 in maintaining the Korean War armistice so that the various parties can try to work out a peaceful solution through talks. Do you see value in the, in the UNCMAC mechanism? A theoretically there should be value, but the problem is that North Korea has devalued the military armistice commission, right? We have to recognize that it's the military armistice commission in which

UNCMAC United Nations command participates, right? And North Korea is just not talking through those channels. And I think they realize that they want talks at higher levels, not just military to military, they want senior level policy discussions. So potentially you could have military to military, say, KPA to the US Department of Defense, right, maybe discussions at that level. But it seems like North Korea is no longer willing to talk through the military armistice commissions at the strictly the military, the lower military levels. And yet, as far as I'm aware, that is the only hotline that's still being answered these days by North Korea. Right. I'm not even sure if they're answering those hotlines. Every day, apparently, according to an interview I conducted with Deputy Secretary of UNCMAC,

that is the only one that North Korea still answers and they do so daily to check whether the line is still working. That's encouraging, but again, it's probably some junior North Korean major or even a private who has no say except to just answer and maybe just relay information. Did you include Unkmak in your peace game? No. Again, we were trying to stay at that 30,000-foot level. So again, negotiations at the policy level, right? And not to minimize or devalue, you know, talks that happen at Pemunjom.

Certainly they're important leading up to the comprehensive military agreement. But we're looking at senior level policy discussions that would happen between a US special representative for North Korea, the Secretary of State, and even at the president level. And that gets to actually another takeaway from the peace game, which is that presidential leadership and political will were very important. We had three scenarios in the simulation. The first two, nothing much was happening. And it was because despite the fact that we said, you know, that all the size should be looking towards reaching some sort of agreement. There was, I don't know, reluctance, foot dragging, maybe because of the the loss aversion that I was referring to the unwillingness to take risks, maybe a

lack of clarity about what the leadership wanted. But in the third scenario, when we explicitly said there is a mandate from Kim Jong-un and President Trump that the two sides reach a deal, things move very quickly, right? Because they got explicit directions to do things from the leadership. And then we see that in present day as well.

When the leadership is not committed, then nothing happens, right? When you have President Trump and Kim Jong-un directly involved, I think things move very quickly. It doesn't guarantee a deal, especially when you don't have persistence on both sides, but I think a political will is a determinative factor in whether deals can be reached or not. Just picking up from that point, what happened or what went wrong then? I mean, it's a big question,

and we're late in the interview, but I just want to ask briefly that at the end of Hanoi, Donald Trump basically said, look, we couldn't reach a deal today, but I'm telling my people to talk to his people to work something out. So it seemed like that will was there that you talk about that directive was there, but it didn't go anywhere. Those working level talks didn't really reach anything. Why do you think that is? Well, yeah, first I have to say, I don't have insider information. I can only go off of accounts that I've read. One account obviously is from John Bolton's book, right? And he basically says that Trump, Kim Jong-un went to Hanoi offering Youngbyun for relief from all the major

UN Security Council sanctions post 2016. For the United States, that was too much. So we said, if you want relief from all of those sanctions, which the US views as the heart of our leverage and pressure against North Korea, then North Korea has to give up everything, not just Youngbyun, but all its covert facilities, chem, bio, missile, everything, the whole grand bargain, right? North Korea said no. And then Trump came back and said, okay, well, how about partial sanctions relief? John Bolton in his book said that was the worst moment of the meeting, because remember, John Bolton did not want an agreement, right? Kim Jong-un basically ignored that offer. They talked about other things, and then President Trump,

again, raised the possibility of partial sanctions relief, and Kim Jong-un said no again. And then things just sort of fell apart. And so there was political will that got the two leaders to decide, but we have to realize we were that close to an agreement. All it required was a head nod from Kim Jong-un to say, okay, partial sanctions relief.

And we could have been on often away to a more comprehensive talks. Right. But what I say we didn't have strong political will is remember, there was also reporting that at the same time of Hanoi, Michael Cohen, President Trump's former lawyer was providing testimony against President Trump, right? And he was concerned about that. He was focused on those testimonies. He was also hearing that if North Korea wasn't interested in deal, he wanted to be the one who broke up, not Kim Jong-un. And so President Trump was really interested in getting out of there if we couldn't

get a quick deal, right? So there was no was no perseverance. We think about that. It was basically a day and a half, two days in Hanoi. You think about, compare that to say 13 days that was required to reach the Camp David Accords or multiple, multiple meetings between Reagan and Gorbachev and Gorbachev and Bush that led to some of the major agreements in the 80s, right? So in that sense... Yeah, but that was 40 years ago. Nobody has time for long talks like that now, Frank. Oh, you absolutely do. You absolutely... If you have the political will, if you have the political will. It doesn't have to be, again, two weeks, but it could be more than two days, right? Last question, I promise promise because I know I've taken a lot

of your time here. Right now we're seeing a cycle of escalations and tit-for-tat between North and South Korea. North Korea of course has been sending these trash balloons south just today. One landed in front of the British Embassy. So South Korea turned on loudspeakers for 16 hours a day. What happens when one side or the other starts shooting at balloons or loudspeakers across the border? It escalates and it leads to potentially greater crisis.

We sort of saw that in 2015 when there was the landmine incident at the border and South Korea was blaring its loudspeakers and it really bothered North Korea and they finally met and agreed to stop the loudspeakers I think North Korea may have expressed regret about the injured South Korean soldiers so that Ended in a positive way, right? But it could also escalate into a negative situation You have to realize that our history

of getting into talks with North Korea and reaching agreements is always one of, or at least the track record suggests is one of crisis and violence, right? Think about, and I'm gonna give examples here, the North Korea threatening to withdraw from the NPT and turn Seoul into a sea of fire, this is the early 90s,

that culminated in greed framework, right? You had North Korea actually withdrawing from the NPT, the axis of evil language from George Bush, that led to the start of the six party talks. You had the 2010 provocations, Cheonan sinking and the, the Yeonpyeongdo shelling in 2010. That led to the talks in 2011 that led to the Lee Tae-Dong in 2012. And then you had the fire and fury period, the threats of totally destroying

North Korea, the bloody no strikes that led to the Singapore summit, right? That is our track record. That's a very unhealthy track record to be reproducing. We need to skip that violence and get directly to talks. How do we do that? Well, let's think of some creative, unconventional ways to do that. Now, in the current cycle that I'm talking about with the balloons and the loudspeakers, the United States hasn't been involved yet. What should the United States role in this particular cycle be? Well, I think the US wants to give obviously a loud latitude to South Korea to determine how it deals with its own security policy, especially when it's at that level. But I'm

sure there is some expressions of restraint trying to get South Korea to tamp things down, not escalate too much, keep its rhetoric not so provocative. We'll see how it goes. I think if there's signs that things are escalating in a hostile way, then we'll see more pressure from the US on South Korea to tamp down the loudspeakers, perhaps. Maybe North Korea could step it up beyond trash balloons to more provocative acts like satellite tests, maybe even a nuclear test. But then that gets to strategic level issues that bring in the United States. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I want to thank you once again for coming on

the show and being so generous with your time today, Frank Om. Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Jacko. Our listeners will be able to find you on Twitter at Frank Ong1 and also at the US Institute of Peace. That's usip.org. Yeah, thanks very much. And I wish you all the best with it. Thank you very much. Best sellers unveiled at NK News Shop. Step out in style with our top selling apparel from the NK News Shop. Fly high with the Air Koryo T-shirt celebrating DPRK's golden era of aviation in vintage airline chic. Explore the stars with our Nada hoodie inspired by North Korea's answer to NASA.

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