North Korea’s Nuclear Program, With Jenny Town

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox. A CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is North Korea's nuclear program. 

With me to discuss North Korea's nuclear missile advances, is Jenny Town. Jenny is a senior fellow at the Stimson Center and the director of Stimson's 38 North Program. The 38 North website provides the gold standard on policy and technical analysis on North Korea. Jenny has written extensively on North Korea, U.S. relations with the two Koreas, and Northeast Asia regional security generally. Jenny, thanks for joining me.

TOWN:
Thanks for having me on the show.

LINDSAY:
Now, Jenny, there's a lot of news coming out of North Korea. Over the past year. Pyongyang conducted more than sixty ballistic missile tests in 2022. And another twenty-six so far in 2023. North Korea enacted a law last October that would authorize a nuclear first strike if the regime survival is threatened. North Korea's stockpile of weapons grade fissile material continues to grow. And the regime has recently tested its capacity to fire missiles from underground silos, which would make them harder to trace. And in the last week, Pyongyang has accused the United States and South Korea of bringing the peninsula to, let me quote them here, "the brink of nuclear war, with their military exercises and threatened again," let me quote them here, "offensive action." And just in the last couple of days, North Korea has halted at least temporarily the twice daily phone calls on an inter-Korean liaison channel. So just how dangerous are things on the Korean peninsula at the moment?

TOWN:
I think we are in a very dangerous place. We're caught in this spiral of U.S., ROK, U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises. And let's be fair about the situation. Yes, we are allowed to do these, but we are not doing them business as usual. This is not the way we normally conduct exercises of this nature. Prior to 2018, we used to have cycles, a spring cycle, a winter cycle, about six weeks at a time. It was set, it was predictable. And there was very few of these live fire demonstrations in between. What we've been doing since about May of 2022 is back-to-back live fire, large scale exercises. And the North Koreans have started to respond in a very different way than what we've seen in the past. In the past when we did exercises, it was normal for them to launch a couple of short range ballistic missiles and protests. But what we're seeing now is more operational drills, deployment drills of more aggressive nature closer to the border areas.

And also the most dangerous part of all of this is that they're not telling us their actual drills until after the fact. And so this really leaves a lot of room for misperception and miscalculation. And we seem to be kind of driving each other to the brink and sort of walking our way up to the steps of war. So I think we really need to be careful of how we justify what we're doing, and try and assess how we got to the point of being excessive where it isn't helpful anymore, but it's only agitating the situation.

LINDSAY:
So Jenny, help me unpack all of that. I think a lot of people listening to our conversation may not have a sense of what a live fire, military exercise or military drill is like. So just sort of give people a sense of what it is that the United States forces in South Korea in conjunction with ROK military forces are actually doing in these recent exercises.

TOWN:
So some of the exercises could range from bringing in strategic assets into the region, nuclear armed aircraft carriers, and doing bomber runs. The Vigilant Ace exercise that they did earlier this year, and I think once last year as well. These are air raid drills, air force drills that they actually do live firebombing, bombing runs, and this was the largest that they've done in history. And one cycle they did, they actually did a twenty-four hours of live firebombing of an island on the coast of Korea.

LINDSAY:
So they're using actual ammunition?

TOWN:
Actual ammunition.

LINDSAY:
But this is taking place not in North Korean airspace or territorial waters, correct?

TOWN:
Correct. This is all being done in South Korean waters.

LINDSAY:
So why is it that the United States and South Korea have returned to live fire exercises? And if I understand you correctly, really up their intensity. My recollection was that the Trump administration actually put a halt on such exercises. Indeed, I think President Trump himself insisted on it.

TOWN:
Yes, these kind of exercises, like I said, we used to do routinely. There was a set that they would do practicing a number of things because when we're talking about combined forces between the U.S. and South Korea, there is a certain level of practice that needs to be done in order to ensure interoperability, coordination, and just military readiness in general. 

During the diplomatic process, during the summit process, the live fire portion of these were halted. There were still some kinds of exercises done, but really scaled down to more tabletop exercises. So they were still working on coordination, but it wasn't in person. It wasn't live fire, it was much more scenario based and done computer simulations, things like that. That was actually put on hold for about two years, 2018, 2019. Even very few were done 2020, 2021 because of COVID-19. And so in 2022, that was really when we restarted doing these live fire exercises.

And I think part of this has been, and part of the excessive nature of this has been that we haven't done them in so long, and so we're trying to catch up on the coordination. South Korea has conscription, so you have new soldiers that you're training in and doing these drills. And I think some of the repetition and some of the intensity of it is trying to catch up for lost time or what they feel is lost time. But again, the question becomes is it really necessary to do so much? And some of what we're doing is planned, and some of what we've been doing over the past year and a half has been in response to different actions that the North Koreans have taken, such as their own drills and their own missile tests.

LINDSAY:
So I take it you are skeptical about the utility of these ongoing tests, or maybe a better way to put it, you're concerned that they could be seen as being provocative. But one of the arguments I've heard for them, Jenny, is precisely that, they're intended to be provocative because what you're trying to do is to send a deterrent signal to North Korea that the United States and South Korea have combined military forces capable of ending the regime as a way to deter a regime that seems bent on threatening at a minimum South Korea, and increasingly because of its ballistic missile capability, the United States as well. What's wrong with that line of argument?

TOWN:
Well, if the goal is to deter North Korea, I don't think we need all of the drills that we're doing in order to deter North Korea.

LINDSAY:
Too much of a good thing.

TOWN:
If the goal is to signal to the North Koreans some kind of intimidation tactics, "We're so much stronger, don't try doing certain things," what happens is the North Koreans read that and respond in a way that says they're not going to be intimidated either. So it sort of does egg them on in the process. There is a role for military exercises. And there is a need for practice and coordination given the complex nature of our two forces working together. But if it's really the political signaling that we think we're getting out of this, if it's about South Korea, maybe that's helpful. And especially in trying to assure a special portion of South Korean military defense community. But the South Korean public doesn't really pay that much attention to any of this. It isn't the public demanding these signals. And if the North Koreans are reacting it in ways that are only upping the ante, it does seem like they're being counterproductive in what they're actually intended to do if the goal is to kind of signal to the North Koreans to not engage in that behavior anymore.

LINDSAY:
If we can, Jenny, I'd like to drill down on North Korea's nuclear capabilities, which my understanding are have continued to improve in recent years, even though North Korea has not carried out a nuclear test since 2017. Can you just give us a sense of what capabilities we believed North Koreans have developed?

TOWN:
So North Korea's been very busy on that front. We saw in January 2021, they laid out a new five-year plan that had specific goals for their WMD capabilities. And we've seen them kind of tick those off one by one throughout the past two years. And so this has included diversifying their missile delivery systems, including... They've demonstrated things like hypersonic glide vehicles, longer range missiles. Basically what they've done is over the past two years have demonstrated dozens of new missile systems that diversify their capabilities, that improve their ability to counter U.S. and South Korean missile defenses. They've improved their ICBM capabilities to be able to reach targets as far as the United States. And we know that they're working on such things as reconnaissance satellites and trying to also improve their own intelligence gathering capabilities.

LINDSAY:
As I mentioned, it's been about six years since the North Koreans last tested a nuclear device. And there've been a lot of rumblings over the last twelve months that North Korea may be gearing up for its seventh nuclear test. Will we have a sense that that's going to happen before it actually takes place? Or will it just be all of a sudden sensors will start going off in various listening posts around the world indicating that the North Koreans have tested a nuclear weapon?

TOWN:
From the open source community, we may or may not see anything coming. Certainly a lot of this speculation has come about because North Korea's nuclear test site, Punggye-ri, which was actually partially demolished back in 2018 as part of the diplomatic process, North Korea did start to reopen the site in 2022, about April of 2022. And this meant that the test tunnel complex, the test tunnels that they had originally exploded the entrances to, they started to excavate new entrances into. So the test tunnels themselves are likely still usable. And now they have built new entrances into them to be able to make them operational. What we saw last year was concerted effort in one of the test tunnels to reopen that test tunnel. And that's where all the speculation came from. They were getting ready to do a nuclear test. Since then, we have not seen any indication of a test.

We have seen a buildup of the support structure around the site, which kind of gives us a sense that they're long-term planning. But we haven't seen any of the moves such as trying to seal the entrance in order to do the actual test. But we also know that the North Koreans can do it without being seen, especially on commercial satellites, because they have done it a couple of times in which we were surprised, and weren't expecting it, and didn't see signs of it coming. So we may or may not see signs of it. We do not see signs of it yet, but it is always a possibility.

LINDSAY:
So this test site that was partially demolished back in 2018, that was a site that was partially demolished at the direction of Kim Jong-un as part of his conversations with Donald Trump, correct?

TOWN:
This was actually unilaterally done ahead of negotiations with the U.S. starting. And so back in 2018 when North Korea wanted to negotiate with us, they took several steps unilaterally to build momentum for the negotiations to start. And so they had released the American detainees. They had basically partially demolished the nuclear test site. They had started to dismantle the satellite launch pad at their main satellite launch station. And taken several steps like this just to show that they were ready, that they wanted to negotiate, that there was something that they were willing to do, and especially on the nuclear issue.

LINDSAY:
Looking back at it, Jenny, why do you think it is that President Trump's diplomacy with North Korea, which was a major break from the way his predecessors approached the problem, didn't pan out? What was the sticking point at the end of the day?

TOWN:
There was a lack of follow through. I think Trump was willing to do things that previous administrations, previous presidents weren't willing to do. But didn't carry through with them, didn't put them into motion, was usually talked out of them by the time he got back to DC. So there was a lot of times where there were signals where Trump had basically committed to doing certain things verbally, it was never in writing. And by the time they got to the next negotiation or the next meeting, instead of delivering on the things that he committed, they started to renegotiate for the things he had already committed. When it got to Hanoi, I think one of the biggest problems was the U.S. administration spent so much time asking the North Korean, "Well, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want?" And Kim Jong-un came to the summit and actually told us what he wanted, and it was so far beyond the parameters of what we would consider a good deal, that they couldn't find a middle ground.

I do think it was a big mistake that we didn't follow up with that negotiation post Hanoi when we still had a window of opportunity to at least present a counter offer, even if it wasn't in a summit format, but at least through writing, and letters, and papers, or these working level meetings. And by the time it was over, it was really a moment of disillusionment for Kim Jong-un as well. Because here he'd gone through a process working top down and still came out with nothing. And after he had really gone out and built up domestic expectation inside North Korea, that this was going to be a breakthrough that was going to benefit North Korea and the people. And then having to take that long train ride home from Hanoi empty-handed was really a disappointing moment for him, and really an embarrassment, and really I think closed the door for a lot of future efforts for the near term. It's hard to imagine if you can't get the results top down, where do you go from there?

LINDSAY:
I'm glad you raised the issue of what it is that North Korea wants or what it is that Kim Jong-un wants, Jenny, because any negotiation part of what you're trying to determine is what the other side wants. So what is it that Kim Jong-un put on the table? What does he want?

TOWN:
Well, I think the number one is that they want tangible results quickly. So that's the first thing. I think we do have a sense-

LINDSAY:
What qualifies as a tangible result?

TOWN:
So for instance, leading up to Hanoi, there was a draft agreement that was made where there's several things on the agenda that were already agreed to before they got to Hanoi. These included things like cultural exchanges and some levels of aid. There were a number of things that they had worked out short of the nuclear issue and the U.S. response to the nuclear issue that they were willing to do, that were basically held hostage to. "We have to have it as a package agreement." So instead of doing some of these things upfront that would show wins along the way, that would build the momentum for continuing to negotiate, everything was sort of held hostage to this bigger package.

LINDSAY:
Okay. Nothing piecemeal, everything all at once?

TOWN:
Everything all at once. And certainly the North Koreans at that time were very focused on economic opportunities, building economic opportunities. They wanted sanctions relief. They wanted the ability to resume more of their economic activity and were willing to negotiate for it. Leading up to the summits, the policy had really been byungjin, the byungjin line, this idea that they wanted dual development of the nuclear deterrent as well as the economy. After they declared victory on their nuclear deterrent, they really focused on the economy, and they wanted economic opportunity, and thought that this was sort of a shortcut to that to be able to get some sanctions relief and be able to revive some of that economic activity.

When that was not going to happen, what we saw at the end of 2019 was Kim Jong-un's rhetoric about the opportunity really did change, and he really did start to talk about how he didn't believe that the relationship could change, and that it would bring about benefits for North Korea and opportunities for North Korea. And that instead that they really had to rebuild the economy in a way that was more resilient to a persistently hostile external environment. And that's when you saw this resurgence of self-reliance in a lot of the economic rhetoric as well. So there is a lot where Kim Jong-un was willing to take risks to create opportunities to show that he was a good negotiator, a good leader. That he could bring about some kind of prosperity. He had promised the people no more tightening of belts. And then had to go back later and tell them that actually no, you are going to have to tighten your belt again and hard times are coming.

LINDSAY:
It wasn't my sense though, Jenny, that in the negotiations that Kim had with President Trump, that Kim ever committed himself to being willing to denuclearize North Korea. And do we have any sense that denuclearization of North Korea is something that the North Korean government would ever agree to?

TOWN:
I mean, it depends on how you define denuclearization.

LINDSAY:
Okay. Walk me through the various definitions of denuclearization. Because I think that's important part of the conversation because people can use words, but they have very particular meanings that the rest of us may not be well clued into.

TOWN:
Yeah. If you mean denuclearization as in North Korea comes to the table, puts its weapons on the table and says, "What can I get for this?" No, that is not how they would negotiate. If you say, is North Korea willing to take steps in that direction as steps are taken to improve the political and security environment? Yes, the North Koreans have actually shown a willingness to do that. The problem is that usually by the time we get to the table, we can't agree on what an adequate first step actually is. How much is enough? How big does it have to be? How big of a gesture does it have to be to get the ball rolling? And what we saw, even with the inter-Korean negotiations that were going on parallel to U.S.-DPRK negotiations, there was a general sense of here are the goals that we're going to try to achieve that were set out in the Panmunjom Summit declaration within the intention to continue negotiating on them to work out the details.

With the U.S. and North Korea, where we really wanted the greater detail upfront, which is hard to do when you're negotiating during a summit itself and leader to leader to have a technical discussion like that between the two. But also, again, there was just no agreement on what constituted enough on the denuclearization front to continue to say, "Okay, let's get this, get it off the table. Let's start moving towards it and keep negotiating for more." The way the North Koreans have always talked about denuclearization is that it is a process. And that the giving up nuclear weapons comes at the end of the process. But in the meantime, the political relations, the security situation has to improve in order for them to make that decision. Whereas the U.S. approach tends to be the opposite of the, you can have a better political and better security situation after you denuclearize. And so we're kind of fundamentally at odds at where we start as well as where we end up.

LINDSAY:
What I often hear, Jenny, at least among some quarters of people who watch North Korea, is that North Korea is going to insist as it's negotiating bottom line, that the United States recognize it as a nuclear state. And the problem with that position is that the United States will never recognize North Korea as a nuclear weapon state, for among other reasons, it would unravel the whole non-proliferation regime. Assess that argument for me.

TOWN:
The North Koreans are not asking to be recognized, to be honest. They've already self-declared themselves in nuclear armed state. And what does it actually mean? What would recognition actually look like even? And there's no agreement on that either if there's specific things we would do or say that would convey that sense of recognition. The North Koreans go through phases of how they view themselves, where they see opportunity, and what they're willing to do in those moments to capture those opportunities. They're very pragmatic about it. And it kind of doesn't... Their self-perception does not require validation from us. So they will continue down this path until they see an opportunity that gives them greater benefits than what they're getting now. But they have to believe it's attainable as well and have pretty high confidence in that, that they can get different results if they try again. Which at the moment we give them no indication of.

LINDSAY:
So how is all of this playing in South Korea, Jenny? I'll note that when President Trump was president, and when Joe Biden first came into office, you were dealing with President Moon considered to be representing the liberal faction in South Korea. Big fan of Sunshine Policies, if I can put it that way. Now, of course, we have a new government, new president, President Yoon in South Korea, conservative, more skeptical of Sunshine Policies. I'm hearing that there's debate among South Koreans as to whether or not South Korea should look toward acquiring nuclear weapons of their own or asking United States to base nuclear weapons on South Korean soil. I guess there is a fear in some portions of South Korean political society of abandonment that the United States at the end of the day won't trade San Francisco for Seoul. What do you make of the politics in South Korea when we talk about North Korea's nuclear program?

TOWN:
Well, certainly in South Korea, they watch the situation and they see that it's not getting better and that we don't necessarily have an answer for that. And there is a lot of concern about their own security future, especially as North Korea's capabilities grow. Something that has grown in popularity in South Korea's talking about South Korea getting their own nuclear weapons, because North Korea has nuclear weapons. And I think this was really emphasized by Russia's invasion of Ukraine the first time we've seen really a nuclear weapon state attack a non-nuclear weapon state and threatened to use nuclear weapons. And so I think this really brought back the sense that nuclear use is possible. Whereas I think for a long time, no one ever expects that we'll actually use them. But it's revived this also anxiety about the only thing that really deters nuclear weapons is nuclear weapons.

And the idea that the U.S. nuclear umbrella is dependent on U.S. decision making, I think makes a lot of South Koreans very nervous about if and when the U.S. has to make that decision, how will they make that decision? When will they make that decision? Will they make that decision early enough, quick enough, or too hastily? That dependency on someone else making the decision of nuclear use on the Korean peninsula, I think, is more and more seen as undesirable in something that they want to have more control over their own future.

And I think a lot of this is being fed not only by the Russia-Ukraine example, but also during the Trump years. Trump was incredibly antagonistic towards South Korea. Towards alliances in general, but especially towards South Korea. He did threaten to pull troops out of South Korea. It isn't the first time the U.S. has ever threatened to pull troops out, or considered pulling troops out, or reducing, further reductions of troops in South Korea. And so it fuels all of these anxieties. And especially now with U.S.-China competition and the plausibility of a contingency happening over Taiwan. There's also questions about what happens if there's a multi-front conflict in the region. Where do U.S. resources go? And not only would the U.S. respond, but would the U.S. be able to respond in that kind of situation?

So there's just a lot more. I think the range of contingencies that could happen have really come to light in the past couple years and have really raised the anxieties. The debate in South Korea about whether or not they should have nuclear weapons is not new. It didn't just pop up. It's been something of active debate over the past, at least decade. But has really gained support in say the last five years or so.

LINDSAY:
Jenny, if we may, can we bring the conversation back to Washington and talk about what it is the Biden administration should be doing going forward? I will note that when Joe Biden came into office, his administration very early on decided they wanted to continue with the existing sanctions on Pyongyang while the administration pursued, what it like to call a calibrated practical approach, that would seek North Korea's denuclearization as an ultimate goal. I think that language was very deliberately chosen. It suggested we didn't have to get denuclearization in one fell swoop. We could get there sort of piecemeal. 

My understanding is the administration has said publicly and privately through many different channels to the North Koreans, "We are happy to meet, to talk to you about issues. Name the place in time." And the response has essentially been crickets. So while it is true, certainly on the military front as we discussed at the beginning, the administration has been leaning forward. It has also been leaning forward on the diplomatic front, but getting absolutely nowhere. What does the administration do in this circumstance where it's saying hello and it's getting no answer?

TOWN:
Well, I think there's a difference between saying we'll meet anytime anywhere, which is open-ended. And generally the North Koreans perceive that as to talk about nuclear issues, which they're obviously not willing to talk about right now, at least not as the beginning of a conversation. I think Washington has a negotiating strategy. If the North Koreans make the decision to come back to the table, this calibrated and practical approach and being willing to again, try and figure out a first step versus full denuclearization in one swoop, that I think they understand and they've come to terms with that it has to be a process. But we don't have a strategy for creating that diplomatic opportunity for resuming diplomacy. And certainly they've sent out this message numerous times of any time anywhere. But the way that the North Koreans negotiates, anytime, anywhere, that formula doesn't work. They have to have a much more specific understanding of what the possibility is.

And given the failures of the Hanoi Summit, they're going to have to have pretty high confidence that they can get results. Results that would be different and actual results in a relatively short amount of time in order to come back to the table. And so I think we need to be thinking and looking for much smaller opportunities at the moment. More along the lines of tension reduction, risk reduction, things where we can offer and indicate like, "Here, we're willing to do something specific. Let's negotiate on something specific." That would build their confidence that if they come back to the table, there's something that they could get quickly in order to justify continuing to come back to the table.

And I think a lot of what we do wrong with North Korea is that their negotiators are under the pressure of if they agree to negotiate. It isn't like the U.S. where we can just go and see what the opportunity is and come back and say, "Oh, we tried. It didn't work." We saw what happened to the negotiators after the Hanoi Summit. After all of the buildup of expectation and getting nothing, all of those negotiators are gone. Some have never been seen again.

LINDSAY:
Yes, I would imagine failure is not a good outcome in the North Korean political system.

TOWN:
Failure is pretty high stakes in North Korea. And so if we don't create the opportunities that the build confidence that there is something to be had. We're not getting North Koreans back to the table anytime soon.

LINDSAY:
Jenny, one final quick question. Any chance the Chinese intervene and help the United States on this score? After all, I can't imagine that Beijing really wants a much bigger North Korean nuclear arsenal because missiles pointed to the East can also be pointed to the West.

TOWN:
I mean, the problem is that Washington and Beijing fundamentally disagree on how to deal with North Korea at this point in time. The U.S. is still on a very kind of punitive approach, pressure oriented. Whereas the Chinese really believe we need to incentivize them to come back and pull them back into the mix. 

The other problem now is because of U.S.-China competition, Beijing is also watching very closely the deepening of, the strengthening of security cooperation between the U.S. South Korea and Japan as sort of a security block. And are looking at their own need for a reciprocal security block in which North Korea then becomes an important security partner, especially as Russia's influence and power starts to weaken. So the idea that China's going to get on board with our approach, and what we want, and help us in the way that we want them to, the prospects are pretty low.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guest has been Jenny Town, senior fellow at the Stimson Center, and director of Stimson's 38 North Program. Jenny, thanks for the excellent conversation.

TOWN:
Great. Thanks for having me here.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And leave us a review. We love the feedback. A transcript of our conversation is available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on cfr.org. As always, opinions expressed in The President's Inbox, so solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks go out to Michelle Kurilla for her research assistance. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.