1 00:00:00,840 --> 00:00:05,610 Thank you very much. Good morning. And good to be here. 2 00:00:05,610 --> 00:00:10,380 As you said, I'm going to be talking mainly about North Korea, 3 00:00:10,380 --> 00:00:16,980 questions of both North Korea's engagement with the global nuclear non-proliferation regime, 4 00:00:16,980 --> 00:00:25,080 but also what are the possibilities that might arise in terms of the East Asian region. 5 00:00:25,080 --> 00:00:29,670 Clearly, we all know that North Korea is a flashpoint in the region. 6 00:00:29,670 --> 00:00:39,810 It's a disrupter to ideas of regional stability in terms of nuclear stability, but also the global non-proliferation regime. 7 00:00:39,810 --> 00:00:47,970 And even from when North Korea showed some signs of complying with the non-proliferation regime, 8 00:00:47,970 --> 00:00:57,090 when it joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985 under pressure from the former Soviet Union. 9 00:00:57,090 --> 00:01:01,080 And even when the DPRK, under the rule of Kim Il sung, 10 00:01:01,080 --> 00:01:10,470 made clear in its pursuit of neutralisation was solely for peaceful nuclear energy, evidence pointed to the country, 11 00:01:10,470 --> 00:01:19,860 not least the revelation of the AQ Khan network and not least increasing evidence in two thousands of clandestine, 12 00:01:19,860 --> 00:01:26,640 highly enriched uranium and plutonium production moving to just flash forward over time. 13 00:01:26,640 --> 00:01:30,750 Who can forget the displays of the ICBM's? 14 00:01:30,750 --> 00:01:42,600 North Korea intercontinental ballistic missiles, not least the Hossan 16, the two stage liquid fuel mobile ICBM in October. 15 00:01:42,600 --> 00:01:54,210 Twenty twenty, the largest road mobile ICBM globally, although those debate limited perhaps in its efficacy by its weight. 16 00:01:54,210 --> 00:02:03,180 We've been talking about the threats and treaties and public understandings of nuclear weapons and surely to develop public understanding, 17 00:02:03,180 --> 00:02:07,920 we must understand, crucially, the value of nuclear weapons for North Korea. 18 00:02:07,920 --> 00:02:15,990 It's a simple question. It's an oft cited question, but rarely is it interrogated to the fullest extent. 19 00:02:15,990 --> 00:02:21,360 And, well, if we're talking about getting to a nuclear free world, perhaps, as the previous caller mentioned, 20 00:02:21,360 --> 00:02:31,020 but clearly the obstacles to doing so are in no small part emanating from, quote unquote, rogue nuclear states such as North Korea. 21 00:02:31,020 --> 00:02:35,880 And it is deterrence. But it's not just atones. 22 00:02:35,880 --> 00:02:44,910 What's crucial to understand is firstly how North Korea has framed its engagement with nuclear non-proliferation over time, 23 00:02:44,910 --> 00:02:48,150 but also the value it sees in its nuclear programme. 24 00:02:48,150 --> 00:03:03,510 The director general of the IAEA, Rossie, stated in September last year that actually the IAEA inspectors were ejected from Pyongyang in 2009. 25 00:03:03,510 --> 00:03:07,950 Ghosty stated that we will only be able to return to North Korea on some form of political understanding. 26 00:03:07,950 --> 00:03:15,660 Is that on this political understanding, on the part of the US, on the part of South Korea is simply not there. 27 00:03:15,660 --> 00:03:20,610 Even in the Biden administration's latest North Korea policy review, 28 00:03:20,610 --> 00:03:28,070 we've seen the US insist on the combination of stern deterrence and diplomacy, what that would look like in practise. 29 00:03:28,070 --> 00:03:36,420 I personally am quite sceptical, so I'd just like to highlight a couple of instances of North Korea taking advantages 30 00:03:36,420 --> 00:03:41,820 of the fissures in the global North Korea global non-proliferation regime, 31 00:03:41,820 --> 00:03:49,860 particularly after 1994, with the breakdown of the agreed framework between the US and North Korea, 32 00:03:49,860 --> 00:03:55,860 where North Korea agreed to freeze plutonium production at its Yongbyon nuclear facility 33 00:03:55,860 --> 00:04:01,980 in return for light water reactors and pledges of economic and diplomatic normalisation. 34 00:04:01,980 --> 00:04:12,000 The end of the arms were not provided, and North Korea declared the agreement null and void soon after the Bush administration took power. 35 00:04:12,000 --> 00:04:20,640 So North Korea is the only state to have acceded and withdrawn from the NPT, albeit on self-imposed grounds. 36 00:04:20,640 --> 00:04:26,490 Yes, it cited Article 10 of the NPT. It cited that its sovereignty was jeopardised. 37 00:04:26,490 --> 00:04:27,150 But again, 38 00:04:27,150 --> 00:04:38,460 what we see from that moment in 2003 is North Korea seeking to exploit what it deems is is the importance of the global non-proliferation regime. 39 00:04:38,460 --> 00:04:47,490 And again, even in relation, we talk about treaties to the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons or North Korea's response in July. 40 00:04:47,490 --> 00:04:52,770 Twenty seventeen was that it typically described the US as the worst criminal nuclear state 41 00:04:52,770 --> 00:05:00,820 in the world and said that while the TPE and W is in fact null and void because actually. 42 00:05:00,820 --> 00:05:12,730 North Korean nuclear weapons is not a threat to purely for defensive purposes, a way of safeguarding the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula. 43 00:05:12,730 --> 00:05:17,530 So we see North Korea as simultaneously criticising the US, which it has done, 44 00:05:17,530 --> 00:05:25,150 especially over the past 30 years, and also the institutions of the UN for being so-called puppets of the US. 45 00:05:25,150 --> 00:05:37,330 So I'd like to broaden this because we've spoken about the deal, the US withdrawal from the display on the 8th of May in twenty eighteen. 46 00:05:37,330 --> 00:05:44,380 Well, one month later was to hold this summit between Trump and Kim in Singapore. 47 00:05:44,380 --> 00:05:56,200 And again, North Korea went into Singapore expecting some kind of deal, some kind of concessions on sanctions nearly a year later in Hanoi, 48 00:05:56,200 --> 00:06:04,300 in twenty nineteen, we saw that the even though North Korea pledge to concede on parts of the Yongbyon facility, 49 00:06:04,300 --> 00:06:14,230 remember, at Yongbyon, its first five megawatts, we are so critical in 1986, that wasn't enough from the Hanoi summit, 50 00:06:14,230 --> 00:06:21,100 which was as a sort of theatre of mismanaged expectations on the part of the US and the DPRK. 51 00:06:21,100 --> 00:06:25,990 So what does this mean for how we understand the global nuclear non-proliferation regime? 52 00:06:25,990 --> 00:06:32,950 And obviously the time constraints are so much more detailed we can go into about North Korea and its nuclear development, 53 00:06:32,950 --> 00:06:41,170 not only just North Korea, want to propagate the belief that the IAEA, the U.N., the merely puppets of US vested interest. 54 00:06:41,170 --> 00:06:49,480 It also wants to make it harder in terms of a solution to be found vis a vis states and utilise outside of the non-proliferation regime. 55 00:06:49,480 --> 00:06:58,840 Indeed, North Korea has made clear that Iran is doing a good thing by seeking to resist US sanctions. 56 00:06:58,840 --> 00:07:03,040 And this leads us to the broader question of the role of multilateral institutions 57 00:07:03,040 --> 00:07:06,790 within this so-called crisis of multilateralism and crisis of global 58 00:07:06,790 --> 00:07:11,560 governance that many scholars and policymakers have attributed to the current 59 00:07:11,560 --> 00:07:16,390 era of global governance in no small part to the US leadership under Trump, 60 00:07:16,390 --> 00:07:19,330 but not exclusively. 61 00:07:19,330 --> 00:07:29,230 And I'd like to just get a few minutes left just to finish off my remarks by talking about how North Korea views existing treaties. 62 00:07:29,230 --> 00:07:34,150 Obviously, North Korea views the NPT as far from the grand bargain as possible. 63 00:07:34,150 --> 00:07:40,360 But Kim Jong un in 2016 and in 2020 articulated the North Korean no first use policy. 64 00:07:40,360 --> 00:07:45,340 The DPRK would not use nuclear weapons first unless the forces of aggression 65 00:07:45,340 --> 00:07:49,180 that are hostile to us violate our sovereignty with their own nuclear weapons. 66 00:07:49,180 --> 00:08:00,010 Quote, certainly unusual policy, but the DPRK expounds that actually keeping and justifying its continued development of 67 00:08:00,010 --> 00:08:08,050 nuclear weapons is not simply something to do with a sort of decision made by the DPRK. 68 00:08:08,050 --> 00:08:14,770 It's a product of the external security environment in North Korea's perspective. 69 00:08:14,770 --> 00:08:20,710 And I'd like to end by touching on this idea of threats and peace. 70 00:08:20,710 --> 00:08:25,060 While just peace on the Korean Peninsula look like a peace means a lack of direct conflict, 71 00:08:25,060 --> 00:08:33,780 then arguably one could argue we have had peace since nineteen fifty three for the occasional and increasingly frequent belligerence of North Korea. 72 00:08:33,780 --> 00:08:39,300 I'm not just talking specifically in relation to the nuclear aspect to. 73 00:08:39,300 --> 00:08:44,610 The abduction issue vis a vis Japan, for instance, is one particular concern. 74 00:08:44,610 --> 00:08:48,600 But before we talk about ideas, peace and ideas of threats, 75 00:08:48,600 --> 00:08:57,370 I'd like to add another challenge to existing understandings of nuclear weapons as purely bound by ideas of tones. 76 00:08:57,370 --> 00:09:01,900 We must not forget that North Korea's nuclear weapons have immense domestic value. 77 00:09:01,900 --> 00:09:11,670 And I've done lots of work on this regard. Ideology may be waning domestically, but it doesn't mean that it's useless in terms of domestic legitimacy. 78 00:09:11,670 --> 00:09:16,410 We must ask not just if North Korea were hypothetically to do, 79 00:09:16,410 --> 00:09:20,640 what would it mean in terms of its engagement with the nuclear non-proliferation regime? 80 00:09:20,640 --> 00:09:24,720 Although we should also ask, how would they justify this domestically? 81 00:09:24,720 --> 00:09:32,190 We cannot overlook the domestic narrative embedded within North Korea's nuclear weapons. 82 00:09:32,190 --> 00:09:35,790 So when we look at ideas, regional stability, yes, we have the US, 83 00:09:35,790 --> 00:09:42,240 Japan and US South Korean alliance, which has fluctuated over the years in its strength. 84 00:09:42,240 --> 00:09:48,300 We look at Japan and South Korea. South Korea is not immune from pursuing nuclear ambitions of its own. 85 00:09:48,300 --> 00:09:53,670 We've seen this in the 1970s under the government of Pakistan here. 86 00:09:53,670 --> 00:10:01,080 So what does this mean? Well, will we allow Japan and South Korea perhaps to have latent nuclear weapons capability? 87 00:10:01,080 --> 00:10:07,890 That's another scenario. So I know I'm running slightly over time. 88 00:10:07,890 --> 00:10:14,840 So I'd like to end by quoting from the Russian writer Alexander Hamilton, who is 1845 book Tofino. 89 00:10:14,840 --> 00:10:21,180 That translates into who is to blame, indeed, who is to blame for North Korea's advancement along the road, 90 00:10:21,180 --> 00:10:24,930 a road that it seems increasingly unlikely from which you can turn. 91 00:10:24,930 --> 00:10:30,630 But I think we are quite clear now that North Korea is a nuclear state in all but name. 92 00:10:30,630 --> 00:10:35,190 So we need to work out from a policy perspective moving forward. 93 00:10:35,190 --> 00:10:47,250 Is it realistic to pursue the ongoing US policy of complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement, or is there something additional we could do? 94 00:10:47,250 --> 00:10:52,770 Is there scope instead for an Iran style deal to peace treaty to end the Korean War, 95 00:10:52,770 --> 00:10:59,710 small concessions on the Yongbyon nuclear facility that Trump did not and would not accept on? 96 00:10:59,710 --> 00:11:08,920 Because North Korea is a nuclear power, it is a nuclear weapon state, it has no intention of taking the other road. 97 00:11:08,920 --> 00:11:16,260 And we may ask that over the years as the North Korean domestic economy struggles to recover from the effects of covid. 98 00:11:16,260 --> 00:11:19,860 Will Kim Jong un be forced to make a compromise with his nuclear programme? 99 00:11:19,860 --> 00:11:28,500 This seems unlikely. And so. Who is to blame for North Korea's advancement from the nuclear, of course, 100 00:11:28,500 --> 00:11:34,710 part of it is North Korea itself, but what can we do as the as the part of the international community? 101 00:11:34,710 --> 00:11:42,750 Surely it should be now about threat reduction rather than the pursuit of complete denuclearisation as a short term goal? 102 00:11:42,750 --> 00:11:46,194 Thank you. I'd like to end on remarks that.