Thank you very much. Good morning. And good to be here.
As you said, I'm going to be talking mainly about North Korea,
questions of both North Korea's engagement with the global nuclear non-proliferation regime,
but also what are the possibilities that might arise in terms of the East Asian region.
Clearly, we all know that North Korea is a flashpoint in the region.
It's a disrupter to ideas of regional stability in terms of nuclear stability, but also the global non-proliferation regime.
And even from when North Korea showed some signs of complying with the non-proliferation regime,
when it joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985 under pressure from the former Soviet Union.
And even when the DPRK, under the rule of Kim Il sung,
made clear in its pursuit of neutralisation was solely for peaceful nuclear energy, evidence pointed to the country,
not least the revelation of the AQ Khan network and not least increasing evidence in two thousands of clandestine,
highly enriched uranium and plutonium production moving to just flash forward over time.
Who can forget the displays of the ICBM's?
North Korea intercontinental ballistic missiles, not least the Hossan 16, the two stage liquid fuel mobile ICBM in October.
Twenty twenty, the largest road mobile ICBM globally, although those debate limited perhaps in its efficacy by its weight.
We've been talking about the threats and treaties and public understandings of nuclear weapons and surely to develop public understanding,
we must understand, crucially, the value of nuclear weapons for North Korea.
It's a simple question. It's an oft cited question, but rarely is it interrogated to the fullest extent.
And, well, if we're talking about getting to a nuclear free world, perhaps, as the previous caller mentioned,
but clearly the obstacles to doing so are in no small part emanating from, quote unquote, rogue nuclear states such as North Korea.
And it is deterrence. But it's not just atones.
What's crucial to understand is firstly how North Korea has framed its engagement with nuclear non-proliferation over time,
but also the value it sees in its nuclear programme.
The director general of the IAEA, Rossie, stated in September last year that actually the IAEA inspectors were ejected from Pyongyang in 2009.
Ghosty stated that we will only be able to return to North Korea on some form of political understanding.
Is that on this political understanding, on the part of the US, on the part of South Korea is simply not there.
Even in the Biden administration's latest North Korea policy review,
we've seen the US insist on the combination of stern deterrence and diplomacy, what that would look like in practise.
I personally am quite sceptical, so I'd just like to highlight a couple of instances of North Korea taking advantages
of the fissures in the global North Korea global non-proliferation regime,
particularly after 1994, with the breakdown of the agreed framework between the US and North Korea,
where North Korea agreed to freeze plutonium production at its Yongbyon nuclear facility
in return for light water reactors and pledges of economic and diplomatic normalisation.
The end of the arms were not provided, and North Korea declared the agreement null and void soon after the Bush administration took power.
So North Korea is the only state to have acceded and withdrawn from the NPT, albeit on self-imposed grounds.
Yes, it cited Article 10 of the NPT. It cited that its sovereignty was jeopardised.
But again,
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.
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.
Twenty seventeen was that it typically described the US as the worst criminal nuclear state
in the world and said that while the TPE and W is in fact null and void because actually.
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.
So we see North Korea as simultaneously criticising the US, which it has done,
especially over the past 30 years, and also the institutions of the UN for being so-called puppets of the US.
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.
Well, one month later was to hold this summit between Trump and Kim in Singapore.
And again, North Korea went into Singapore expecting some kind of deal, some kind of concessions on sanctions nearly a year later in Hanoi,
in twenty nineteen, we saw that the even though North Korea pledge to concede on parts of the Yongbyon facility,
remember, at Yongbyon, its first five megawatts, we are so critical in 1986, that wasn't enough from the Hanoi summit,
which was as a sort of theatre of mismanaged expectations on the part of the US and the DPRK.
So what does this mean for how we understand the global nuclear non-proliferation regime?
And obviously the time constraints are so much more detailed we can go into about North Korea and its nuclear development,
not only just North Korea, want to propagate the belief that the IAEA, the U.N., the merely puppets of US vested interest.
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.
Indeed, North Korea has made clear that Iran is doing a good thing by seeking to resist US sanctions.
And this leads us to the broader question of the role of multilateral institutions
within this so-called crisis of multilateralism and crisis of global
governance that many scholars and policymakers have attributed to the current
era of global governance in no small part to the US leadership under Trump,
but not exclusively.
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.
Obviously, North Korea views the NPT as far from the grand bargain as possible.
But Kim Jong un in 2016 and in 2020 articulated the North Korean no first use policy.
The DPRK would not use nuclear weapons first unless the forces of aggression
that are hostile to us violate our sovereignty with their own nuclear weapons.
Quote, certainly unusual policy, but the DPRK expounds that actually keeping and justifying its continued development of
nuclear weapons is not simply something to do with a sort of decision made by the DPRK.
It's a product of the external security environment in North Korea's perspective.
And I'd like to end by touching on this idea of threats and peace.
While just peace on the Korean Peninsula look like a peace means a lack of direct conflict,
then arguably one could argue we have had peace since nineteen fifty three for the occasional and increasingly frequent belligerence of North Korea.
I'm not just talking specifically in relation to the nuclear aspect to.
The abduction issue vis a vis Japan, for instance, is one particular concern.
But before we talk about ideas, peace and ideas of threats,
I'd like to add another challenge to existing understandings of nuclear weapons as purely bound by ideas of tones.
We must not forget that North Korea's nuclear weapons have immense domestic value.
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.
We must ask not just if North Korea were hypothetically to do,
what would it mean in terms of its engagement with the nuclear non-proliferation regime?
Although we should also ask, how would they justify this domestically?
We cannot overlook the domestic narrative embedded within North Korea's nuclear weapons.
So when we look at ideas, regional stability, yes, we have the US,
Japan and US South Korean alliance, which has fluctuated over the years in its strength.
We look at Japan and South Korea. South Korea is not immune from pursuing nuclear ambitions of its own.
We've seen this in the 1970s under the government of Pakistan here.
So what does this mean? Well, will we allow Japan and South Korea perhaps to have latent nuclear weapons capability?
That's another scenario. So I know I'm running slightly over time.
So I'd like to end by quoting from the Russian writer Alexander Hamilton, who is 1845 book Tofino.
That translates into who is to blame, indeed, who is to blame for North Korea's advancement along the road,
a road that it seems increasingly unlikely from which you can turn.
But I think we are quite clear now that North Korea is a nuclear state in all but name.
So we need to work out from a policy perspective moving forward.
Is it realistic to pursue the ongoing US policy of complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement, or is there something additional we could do?
Is there scope instead for an Iran style deal to peace treaty to end the Korean War,
small concessions on the Yongbyon nuclear facility that Trump did not and would not accept on?
Because North Korea is a nuclear power, it is a nuclear weapon state, it has no intention of taking the other road.
And we may ask that over the years as the North Korean domestic economy struggles to recover from the effects of covid.
Will Kim Jong un be forced to make a compromise with his nuclear programme?
This seems unlikely. And so. Who is to blame for North Korea's advancement from the nuclear, of course,
part of it is North Korea itself, but what can we do as the as the part of the international community?
Surely it should be now about threat reduction rather than the pursuit of complete denuclearisation as a short term goal?
Thank you. I'd like to end on remarks that.