The Delegates Lounge
Join us in The Delegates Lounge, an independent podcast on world affairs based in New York City at the United Nations, the hub of global insights in plain sight. We hope you’ll come back often to listen in on some fascinating conversations hosted by J. Alex Tarquinio, a veteran journalist who writes essays for Foreign Policy from her office across the hallway from the UN Security Council chamber.
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The Delegates Lounge
Victor Cha on Korea's Crossroads
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The Delegates Lounge podcast commences our third season in a timely conversation with Victor Cha, the well-known Korea watcher who is both president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a foreign policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. He served in an advisory role to the secretary of defense in the Joe Biden administration and served on the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration.
In this episode, we delve into the complex geopolitical landscape facing South Korea today, as the country heads into a critical special election on June 3. One month is all that separates the balloting next month from the selection of the candidates vying to replace impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol. What distinguishes this election cycle, however, is the unprecedented role of relations between United States and South Korea as a campaign issue. Unlike past elections, when the United States enjoyed consistently high approval ratings among South Koreans, the Trump Administration's tariff policies have created significant economic challenges.
This new dynamic creates challenges for the trilateral relationship between the United States, Japan, and South Korea. The historic Camp David accord reached in 2023 represented unprecedented cooperation, but its future remains uncertain with leadership changes in all three countries. While Japan and South Korea have made progress under Yoon's government in moving beyond historical grievances, the election outcome could determine whether this forward-looking approach continues or reverts to past animosities.
Perhaps the most alarming development in the region is the strengthening alliance between North Korea and Russia. North Korea's direct support for Russia's war in Ukraine by providing ammunition, missiles, and even troops that helped Russia regain parts of Kursk has yielded substantial benefits for Kim Jong-un's regime. The flow of money, food, fuel, and technology from Russia to North Korea has effectively broken the UN sanctions regime, placing North Korea in a much stronger position than when it previously engaged with the Trump administration.
Speakers:
J. Alex Tarquinio (host) is a resident correspondent at the United Nations in New York and co-founder of The Delegates Lounge podcast. @alextarquinio of @delegateslounge on X.
Victor Cha (guest) is president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Georgetown University professor, and a former member of the U.S. National Security Council. @VictorDCha, the @CSISKoreaChair @CSISGeopolitics of @CSIS on X.
References:
Our guest in this episode has his own podcast. Listen to The Impossible State on the CSIS website.
https://www.csis.org/podcasts/
Victor Cha is the author of eight books. His two most recent works are mentioned in this episode.
Korea: A New History of North and South
https://www.amazon.com/Korea-New-History-South-North/dp/0300259816
The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Box-Demystifying-Unification-Contemporary/dp/0231211090
Credits:
Music: Adobe Stock
Map: Adobe Stock/Sean Gladwell
Welcome to the Delegates Lounge. Pull up a chair. I'm Alex Tarquinio, a journalist based at the United Nations here in New York City and your emcee for this podcast featuring some of the most influential minds in the world today. Settle in for some riveting tete-a-tete, available wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome back.
Speaker 1:We're turning our attention towards Korea in this episode of the Delegates Lounge. It's a crucial moment in South Korea, where voters will head to the polls next month to replace former President Yoon Suk-yol. As you know, yoon was impeached in response to his imposition of martial law in the Republic of Korea in December, and the impeachment was upheld by the country's constitutional court in April. On Saturday, may 3rd, yoon's conservative party, the People Power Party, held a convention and selected Kim Moon-soo as their candidate for the snap election on June 3rd. He will face off against Lee Jae-myung, the candidate of South Korea's Democratic Party, who narrowly lost the last presidential election to Yoon. Both of the major political parties have their fair share of baggage. While emotions are still running high for the martial law and impeachment saga, li Jianming faces multiple corruption trials. Four debates are scheduled this month, with campaign issues touching on bread and butter, concerns, social affairs and the menace from North Korea. It turns out that Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin scratching each other's backs is mutually enabling. Their growing military partnership is increasing the threat level to neighboring democracies. In recent elections from Canada to Australia, arguably the Trump administration tariffs have also weighed heavily on voters' minds.
Speaker 1:Yun, it will be remembered, was part of the historic Camp David summit with President Joe Biden and Japan's Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, who met two years ago to discuss strengthening trilateral relations. Then the Japanese and South Korean leaders attended the NATO Summit in Washington last year as Indo-Pacific partners of the Transatlantic Alliance. Now all three leaders have gotten the old heave-ho. The Korea question has long held a particular fascination for me. I was honored to be selected as a Kim Koo fellow in the Korea Society's professional lecture series in New York. I owe that entirely to my good fortune to be invited twice to South Korea by the nation's preeminent journalism organization. By chance, that's where I was in March 2018, when the news broke that Trump would meet with North Korea's leader. It was so unreal that, as one of only two Americans on the press tour, I initially thought they were teasing me. When they told me about it, it was immediately clear that we were entering a new era in US-Korea relations, although it's still unclear what that means. We couldn't find a better guide to this surprising new era than our guest in this episode.
Speaker 1:Victor Cha is president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington DC, often referred to as CSIS. He is also professor of government at Georgetown University. In 2021, he was appointed by the Biden administration to serve on the Defense Policy Board in an advisory role to the Secretary of Defense. He served on the National Security Council during the George W Bush administration from 2004 to 2007, when he was responsible for Japan, korea, australia, new Zealand and Pacific Island nations. He received two outstanding service commendations during his tenure at the NSC and served as the US Deputy Head of Delegation at the Six-Party Talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear program through negotiations involving the United States, north and South Korea, japan, china and Russia.
Speaker 1:Dr Cho is the author of eight books. His two most recent titles are Korea A New History of North and South A Popular History of the Korean Peninsula, published by Yale University Press in 2023, and the Black Box Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification in North Korea Korea, published by Columbia University Press in 2024. It's a scholarly study of the potential reunification of the peninsula, which Dr Cha believes will happen at some point. The history book is affectionately referred to as the pink book because of its bright pink cover with two snarling tigers, and the new book could be called a yellow book with its fluorescent yellow cover featuring a picture of Kim Il-sung, the first Supreme Leader of North Korea.
Speaker 1:Dr Cha also hosts a podcast. The Impossible State runs on the CSIS podcast platform, where each episode examines an aspect of the Korean Peninsula or the wider region relative to it. Since 2018, he and his colleagues have explored the challenges facing this crucial part of the world in more than 100 podcast episodes. We're honored that he was able to join us in the Delegates Lounge to share his thoughts on this pivotal moment in Korea with our listeners. Here's our conversation Victor Cha, thank you so much for joining us today in the Delegates' Lounge. It is a pleasure and an honor to have you, especially at this historically important time. Korea is heading into a very interesting election on June 3rd. There's a lot of polarization in South Korea right now, after the impeachment I think that's fair to say and some pretty vibrant protests, for lack of a better word. How much would you expect key issues to factor into the campaign, beginning with the obvious how each candidate is likely to handle Trump?
Speaker 2:It's a sprint to the finish. They have about 30 days to campaign and in South Korea it's a direct presidential election, so the people vote directly for their president. There is no electoral college and it's a simple majority, so it's about as direct a democracy as you can imagine. There is clearly the backdrop of the impeachment of the former president, and that will certainly be a topic that will be discussed during the campaign by the opposition party, in particular of pre-election campaigns. They have to do with the economy. They have to do with unemployment.
Speaker 2:Korea is famous for being an overeducated society in which it's been difficult for people with undergraduate and graduate degrees to get a full-time job. There's a lot of part-time jobs and it's hard to get a full-time job. The price of real estate in the capital city of Seoul is incredibly high now that even in a dual-income family, both of them being professionals a doctor and a professor, for example can't even dream of buying their own place in the capital city of Seoul because prices are so high. Questions about the dominance of the Chebel or the large conglomerates that are squeezing out small and medium-sized enterprises in terms of financing and broader opportunities for innovation these are kind of the bread and butter issues that we've always seen in current campaigns.
Speaker 2:But the one thing that I think will be different is that we have this huge issue of tariffs from the Trump administration, because they are being hit by like the quadruple whammy. There's a 10% baseline tariff, there's the auto tariffs and auto parts tariffs. There's a reciprocal tariff that 25% that Trump has put on South Korea, and then there's also the tariffs on Mexico, which are affecting Korean industry in a major way, because a lot of Korean manufacturing had set up shop in Mexico and was exporting into the United States. So, essentially, first time in a long time that the United States is a key issue in the campaign. It's not been the case, because generally, popularity in the United States is 80-85% among the Korean public. Tariffs will be an issue.
Speaker 1:Has that been affected by the so-called liberation? I don't know if you're feeling liberated yet, but in Trump's liberation day speech he didn't spare South Korea or Japan so much for the trilateral relationship. He announced a 25 percent yeah, so-called reciprocal tariff on Korea before pausing it to negotiate. However, you know, as the Trump administration well knows, during much of that negotiation period that 90-day period South Korea doesn't really have a government, and I think it's fair to call it a caretaker government now, before the June 3rd election, which doesn't leave much time to negotiate tariffs for the new government. So would you expect that to be a key factor in this presidential race?
Speaker 2:Sure, I think so. I mean the acting government now has sent a delegation to the United States to negotiate with Essence and with Jameson Greer. Whether they'll make any progress, it's very difficult to say. And it's very difficult politically for Korea because the acting president has sent the negotiating team to Washington and the opposition party and the head of the opposition party are actually now against the government, negotiating an agreement with Trump that they would then be stuck with if they took office. So it's an extremely complicated position on the one hand for green businesses and for consumers. Of course they would like the tariff exemptions to be permanent, not just 90 days, but the politics of the presidential election is complicating this very much the politics of the presidential election is complicating this very much.
Speaker 1:You know, trump is fond of talking about cards and having more cards. I mean, south Korea does have some cards and actually I was looking into maritime issues. I was kind of amazed. I knew there were a lot of big shipbuilders but actually that part of the world does almost all of the shipbuilding and South Korea is the largest shipbuilder among democracies, second only to China, and then Japan is third. So there you have it. Is this a bargaining chip in the tariff negotiation with Trump?
Speaker 2:The only way that this can be resolved is that the so-called trade deal would have to go beyond simply tariffs and non-tariff barriers and things of that nature, for two reasons One, because there probably isn't enough in terms of tariffs and non-tariff barriers, especially if that would satisfy Trump, and two, the US position is actually very rigid the 10% baseline tariffs will stay, steel and aluminum tariffs will stay, the auto tariffs will stay, but everything else is negotiable, which is like basically saying like here you can have a piece of the pizza pie, but you can only have this one bit of crust. That's about it. So it would have to be enlarged, and one of the ways to enlarge the negotiation would be to look at things like shipbuilding, where Trump has clearly expressed an interest in cooperating with others to ramp up US shipbuilding to compete with China. There could be things done on energy.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of energy in Alaska that Trump wants to sell to Asia. That might be another area. There's burden sharing on the security side, where Trump wants South Koreans to pay more for the cost of stationing US forces in Korea. South Korea pays about a billion a little over a billion dollars a year, but Trump says he wants more. So enlarging the negotiation into some of these things like shipbuilding, strategic energy defense, cost sharing and foreign direct investment might be one of those to try to come up with a package building blocks of alliances. There's the trilateral, the quad.
Speaker 1:Obviously, korea is not in all of those. Trump, of course, famously from his first term, made it clear he preferred bilateral talks. What is your hope for the whole Camp David process going forward? Obviously, all three leaders, their terms have ended, and not in happy ways President Biden, prime Minister Kishida and South Korean President Yoon. Do you think there is a continuation, a legacy of Camp David?
Speaker 2:So I think the Camp David accord that was reached in August of 2023 between US, japan and South Korea was historic. I think that it cannot continue right now until South Korea has a new president. Japan also has its own upper house elections this summer, but once we get through those in June and July, I think there is the possibility that the three leaders could try to continue that tradition. I think the main reason for Japan and South Korea is self-evident, which is that this is a critical three-way relationship to balance against China and Russia and DPRK and Russia together.
Speaker 2:But what might entice Trump the most in terms of doing this? The thing that would be most interesting to him would be he would see it as a way of getting leverage over China that the United States, japan and South Korea are together. And if you talk to people in the first Trump administration, they very much feel that the whole trilateral effort was started when they were first in office and then Biden really took it to new heights. So they don't deny the successes Biden has had and I think there's an inclination to continue it. But for Trump it wouldn't be about common values, the three prominent democracies in Asia. It would really be about having leverage over Xi Jinping.
Speaker 1:What kind of leverage? Because obviously China has been courting US trading partners in the region well and all over the world since the Liberation Day announcement about the tariffs. It's hard to imagine how South Korea and China could have a larger trading partner relationship. They already have a huge amount of trade. So would this be gaining leverage over China economically? Because right now it seems to be moving in the opposite direction.
Speaker 2:So two things. One is, I think, on the security side, the idea that the three allies are coming together, they're doing missile defense, exercising together, they're intelligent, sharing together anti-submarine warfare, these sorts of things, I think, would certainly be seen by China as a sign of strength Of the three. That might make China less assertive, as it has been in the South China Sea, in the East China Sea, philippines, across the Taiwan Strait, into South Korean airspace and naval space. They've been quite aggressive and assertive. But your point on tariffs is absolutely right. I mean, I think that what these reciprocal tariffs are doing is they are giving an opening to China to try to find ways to improve their relationships with some of the US major allies in the region.
Speaker 2:So there was word that Xi Jinping is thinking of attending APEC, which is to take place in Korea this year.
Speaker 2:Xi Jinping never comes to these things it's usually the prime minister who comes, and so that's clearly a way to try to make inroads into the space that's been opened up by the tariff order against US allies and partners. China has also expressed an interest in free trade agreements that many in the Eastern Pacific the Colombians, the Japanese, the Australians and others have been talking about which the United States pulled out of, in the first Trump administration, something called CPTPP, in the first Trump administration, something called CPTPP. So the ultimate irony of all of this, of course, would be that all these countries could come together free trade area of the Asia-Pacific, with the United States not in there. I say this is the ultimate irony because the United States' aspiration has always been to create a free trade area in the Asia-Pacific of which the United States would participate. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but theoretically, the possibility is that that could come together, but it would not include the United States.
Speaker 1:That would really be turning the tables on the whole post-World War II economic order. But switching gears more towards security because you mentioned that that could be a part of the economic negotiations might also get into, for example, South Korea's burden sharing. Well, recently, Pete Hegseth omitted South Korea from the itinerary for his first Indo-Pacific trip as Secretary of Defense. Did that concern South Koreans, and might it have concerned them enough to be a campaign issue?
Speaker 2:This trip was happening at a time when Korea was it's in the middle of an impeachment crisis. This was before the Constitutional Court had ruled that the president should be impeached. They were not at that point yet. Maybe they thought politically it was probably a good idea not to stick their finger in the hornet's nest at that particular time, but clearly it doesn't send a good message. Some think it's a manifestation of a possible re. It was certainly noticeable that he skipped Korea and hopefully he'll make a trip sometime soon.
Speaker 1:Well, do we have any clarity yet on Trump's relationship with Kim Jong-un? Because of course, in his first administration he went all the way from Little Rocket man to the Singapore Summit and many Koreans actually favored the Singapore summit. Are they hoping for a sequel, or is that too hard to imagine now, with North Korea's direct support of Russia's war in Ukraine?
Speaker 2:Based on everything that we've heard, donald Trump say he's interested in reengaging with Kim Jong-un. For what purpose, not clear. There are two things that we've heard him say. One is that he does consider Kim Jong-un to be his friend and he would certainly like to see him again. The other thing he keeps making reference to is that he talks about North Korea as a nuclear power, which some might say is just a slip of tongue, but it has real meaning because it's basically when the President of the United States says that North Korea is a nuclear power, it's effectively saying that the United States is recognizing North Korea as a nuclear weapon state, which has not been US policy for 35 years. Whether that's intentional or not is unclear.
Speaker 2:And, as you said, the other piece of this that's different from Singapore is that back when they met in 2018, 2019, the North Korean leader really wanted to meet the US president because he was trying to get sanctions lifted. He was trying to balance against, sort of, the dominant shadow of China that was hanging over North Korea. It's a very different situation today. The UN sanctions regime against North Korea is completely broken. Russia because of the war in Ukraine and North Korea's provision of ammunition, missiles and troops, troops, food fuel technology going from Russia to North Korea. North Korea is now in a much better position than they were in 2018 and 2019. And for that reason we have not been, at least for now, re-engaging with the United States. The Biden administration tried over 20 times to engage with North Korea and got no response. I don't know if Trump has tried to re-engage, but North Korea is in a much different position than they were when the last time the two leaders met.
Speaker 1:Well, in fact. I mean, North Korea's most recent missile test was on Halloween of all days, but it was also just a few days before the presidential election. Do you think? Was that Kim Jong-un's attempt at an October surprise?
Speaker 2:Well, they do like to do things on our holidays, so they've done things on July 4th, labor Day, halloween. That's not one that we've seen before. It's hard to say. We have seen a tendency of North Korea to increase their provocations, missile demonstrations, other acts of belligerence in US election years, and so, in that sense, this October 31st surprise is par for the course, and they have carried out a few other things since then as they wait to see whether the United States is going to re-engage. I mean, I think for North Korea, they're not yearning, they're not dying for re-engagement with the United States, given all they're getting from Russia. At the same time, they'll listen, like if the United States says you know, let's talk about X, y and Z. I'm sure they'll listen, but they feel they're in a much better, stronger negotiable position than they were in 2018-2019.
Speaker 1:You talked about all that North Korea is getting from Russia. I mean there are tangible benefits to their cooperation with Russia, both in military know-how, new weapons systems, getting real battlefield experience. Is that an issue, and is that another factor that could be an implication to the election?
Speaker 2:North Korea is, as you said, gaining real combat experience, practical combat experience, lots of technology. They probably completely replenished their munition stockpiles from vintage 1950s era ammunition to much more modern ammunition as they ramped up production at all their facilities for Russia, for giving millions of rounds of ammunition to Russia. So this certainly increases both the North Korean nuclear as well as their conventional threat, which the United States and South Korea really have not had a good response yet, in part because of the domestic difficulties in South Korea, in part because we haven't really seen the Trump administration's security policy when it comes to Asia. It's been largely domestic-focused immigration, fentanyl, and now it's focused on tariffs, but we really haven't seen a turn to. You know what is sort of the trademark security issue that Trump's going to focus on in Europe and the Pacific.
Speaker 1:So we're all still waiting for that shoe to drop. Now South Korean law, as I understand it, prohibits the direct exportation of weapons to an active conflict zone, but it has supported Ukraine in various ways and I don't know how much of that is also inspired or how much has begun since North Korea's cooperation with Russia was stepped up, but before the whole drawn out martial law impeachment saga, yun's government was supporting Ukraine. Can you talk a little bit about how they did that, and also, might the election change that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they were providing. You know, at the behest of NATO allies in the United States, they were providing a lot of economic and humanitarian assistance. They were providing some munitions, not directly to Ukraine. They were providing some munitions not directly to Ukraine because, as you said, their law doesn't allow them to provide ammunition directly to a warring party, but they were supporting other countries that were providing ammunition to Ukraine, including the United States and Poland, and it was the other country.
Speaker 2:But really, where the South Korean support meant the most was I don't think it meant as much on the battlefield, but where it meant the most was in terms of the potential for South Korean investment in reconstruction of Ukraine after the war. You know, I still think that's certainly a possibility. If there is some sort of peace agreement that's reached, south Korean companies will be very, very focused on helping to rebuild the infrastructure and the communications networks in Ukraine. But at the same time, if there is a peace deal that Trump negotiates that includes the lifting of sanctions against Russia, I can't imagine that there would be any peace deal in which Putin would not want the sanctions lifted. That Trump would accommodate.
Speaker 2:That also means that South Korea would be able to normalize its economic relations with Russia in terms of energy or in terms of South Korean production facilities that were in places like St Petersburg car factories. So in a sense, they would potentially be playing both sides of the fence, working with the Ukrainians, working to normalize the relationship with Russia. I honestly don't think that this will be an issue in the presidential campaign, in the sense that I think that neither of the parties would answer that question by saying I'm only going to support Ukraine, I'm only going to support Russia. It's just, you know, frankly, if the United States sort of reaches some sort of deal, as good or bad as it is, particularly for Ukraine, others, like Korea, will simply follow that trend and will try to take commercial advantage of the new opportunities that were created.
Speaker 1:How important still is the legacy, the historical legacy between South Korea and Japan? When you're looking at the trilateral relationships and their ability to work with the US, both economically and also in security, could be very critical in the coming years. How important is that which you've written about the legacy of animosity, particularly from the period of 1910 to 1945?
Speaker 2:So history never disappears between two countries that have the relationship that Japan and Korea did. Part of Korean identity is to identify as being anti-Japan because of the colonization of the country, but one of the things that the impeached UN government did was try to change the narrative on this and focus on the future of two democracies that share security interests in a very difficult part of the world, that are also at the cutting edge of technology and can help to define the future norms and rules of things like artificial intelligence and quantum computing. It was a very forward-looking narrative. Unfortunately, president Moon made decisions that got him kicked out of office, and it's an open question whether this election in Korea in June will result in a leadership that continues to try to push forward that new forward-looking narrative.
Speaker 1:Is that a topic that divides the two parties? I mean obviously previous president Moon Jae-in. He had a different attitude towards Japan and China than Yoon, very different, and I don't know how much that is the two individual politicians or whether that is the party doctrine that one party is more interested in the trilateral than the other.
Speaker 2:So I would say the inclination is that for the progressive party in Korea you know whose candidate is leading in all the polls right now they tend to take more of a traditional anti-Japan stance. At the same time, I would say the external situation compared to when the last progressive government was in power in Korea, you know, there wasn't a war in the Middle East and a war in Russia and Europe. There wasn't the sort of Chinese assertive behavior that we're seeing now. There wasn't the relationship between Russia and North Korea, where Russia has basically given a security guarantee to North Korea, and there wasn't a situation where the United States was as unpredictable as it is today. So my point is that, although there may be political inclinations to move in the direction of focusing on the past, the external environment has changed dramatically and that might override any sort of domestic political considerations.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So there's not one factor, it's not North Korea's participation with Russia's war in Ukraine, with Trump's tariffs or any of the other factors we've discussed today.
Speaker 2:It's the combination of those institutions are not performing well the UN, the UN Security Council, the WTO, the G20,. There's a lot of uncertainty out there and a lot of great power competition. A less reliable patron ally in the United States. The next Korean government needs to find friends in the region and Japan is the closest one that shares the most income.
Speaker 1:Now it's interesting you mentioned the UN Security Council because of course, last year we had a. Now it's interesting you mentioned the UN Security Council because, of course, last year we had a rare it may have been the first time, but it was certainly a rare occurrence where both Japan and South Korea were on the Security Council. Of course Japan cycled off. They ended their two-year term. They seem to work together okay. I mean, given these past histories we were just talking about, does that give you any hope that they could work together in that environment on the Security Council? Or has the Security Council been so? It hasn't really been central to any major geostrategic issue recently. So is that an important factor or not?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I think it's important for countries like Japan and Korea to work together. Like-minded countries in the UN to work together especially now because Russia and China have the ability to obstruct any actions by the UN Security Council and the United States is a bit unreliable and unpredictable. This means that these like-minded countries, they may not be able to push through UN Security Council resolutions, but they can coordinate their policies, whether it's coordinating sanctions on Iran or whether it's coordinating sanctions on Russia or North Korea or China. They have the ability to work together outside of these global governance institutions, not with mandated UN Security Council resolutions, but with coordinated policy, constant communication. That's about all they can do. I understand that that's what's already taking place in the UN among like-minded countries, precisely because they can't get anything through the Security Council.
Speaker 1:Well, there are many threats that you can talk about emanating from North Korea, and each one of them could fill an episode, and in fact, you have a podcast like that, the Impossible State, on the CSIS channel. Can you talk a little bit, maybe, about the issues that you address in your podcast?
Speaker 2:So we try to address all of these issues in a multifaceted way in the bi-weekly podcast at CSIS. The Impossible State A lot of the focus lately has been on Russia and DPRK. The impossible state A lot of the focus lately has been on Russia and DPRK. The nature of this relationship that constitutes threats to the United States and allies and partners in the region and around the world. I mean, the most amazing thing about this DPRK-Russia tie is that North Korea is now a security factor in the heart of Europe, which is something that no one ever could have imagined, and yet it's very present today in ways that are incredibly beneficial both to the Russians and to the North Koreans who could have imagined just a short while ago that we would have North Koreans fighting with Europeans in Europe?
Speaker 1:Now this might be a good time to ask you about your latest book, the Black Box, demystifying the Study of Korean Unification in North Korea. You believe that unification will happen, but just aren't certain. When Is that a fair summary of your position? But just aren't certain. When Is that a fair summary of your position? Yes, when you look at reunification, are you also looking at the German model, or is the situation too different in Korea? I mean difficult as it was with the Stasi, they didn't have anything, quite like the ruling Kim family.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right. I think it's a metric of comparison only in the sense that I think it's a metric of comparison only in the sense that it's going to be much harder than it was in the case of the two Germany, because of the relative size of the population that would have to be absorbed by the South Koreans compared to the West Germans, the economic gap between the two is much wider. And then in the German case, there was still interaction between the East and the West and there's no interaction between the North and the South.
Speaker 1:Polls do show that support for reunification declines among younger South Koreans, so is it more likely to happen sooner and not perhaps later?
Speaker 2:Well, we don't know the answer to that question, just like we didn't know when the Arab Spring was coming until after it came, or the collapse of the Soviet Union until after it happened. But I do believe that the division of the Korean Peninsula is a historical aberration. Thousands of years of history of Korea in this division have only been since 1945. So it was a very successful period for South Korea, but one that will always be remembered, where the Korean Peninsula was divided, which is not the natural state of things. So I do think that at some point it will happen.
Speaker 2:People like to tell me oh, look at how long North Korea lasted. There's no way it's going to collapse. It's very stable. We say this about every autocratic regime until it collapses. Right, North Korea is stable up until the day it collapses, in which case everybody then says, oh, it wasn't stable at all. And in terms of the younger generation, I think that's true. The younger generation. They don't understand the division of the Korean Peninsula. It's something they read about in history books. South Koreans have grown up in a very affluent Korea, an affluent, educated Korea that is cutting in from technology to pop music and Netflix dramas and academy award-winning movies, so they have no relationship to north korea but actually I wanted to ask about, I mean parasite, all of them, I mean um, parasites, squid game, you know a lot of those have this underlying tension which, okay, north Korea is in the background.
Speaker 1:I think it's clearly a metaphor. In Parasite, the basement is North Korea. So maybe North Korea may not be experiencing that wave of the K-pop and the K-drama, but it is part of the metaphor, it's part of the context. It may be some of what gives the tension or the interest to those cultural productions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there actually are a lot. There have been a lot of movies and dramas that use the division of the Korean Peninsula as a way to tell a story. So another one that's very popular on Netflix was something called Crash Landing on you. It is essentially a Romeo and Juliet forbidden love story that uses the division of the peninsula as a backdrop. So sure it figures. Not something that can wish or will away, it's something that could happen. It could happen very suddenly, because history shows that everything happens suddenly. It doesn't happen gradually.
Speaker 1:And looking at it from the other end. North Korea is often called the hermit kingdom, but in fact they may not be as isolated as they once were. With the internet, I mean, some information is, or more information is, getting through to them these days, isn't that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's largely coming through China and through markets in North Korea, from China. A lot of this was shut down during the COVID pandemic, when the government actually tried to tighten things up. They used the pandemic and quarantine as a way to try to tighten things up. But you know, the pandemic lockdown has been lifted. The border with China is open, you know, and all these things start to come in creating music, bootleg, copies of movies, where they get to see in the background the city of Seoul, and they can't believe that this is what the other side of Korea looks like. So it's hard to really keep all that information out. It's obviously not as free-flowing as it might be, it's still man-infested.
Speaker 1:And, of course, the internet. You've written about the cybersecurity threat from North Korea. I was curious if you had more to say on that, especially as we've been hearing, with some of the cuts in the US, that they're looking at cutting back the cybersecurity efforts. Is that a concern or is that going to make it harder to track North Korean cybersecurity threats?
Speaker 2:The North Korean cyber threat really only came onto the radar for the world when the North Koreans hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment because of the movie the Interview and because they took offense at this movie. That was sort of ridiculing the North Korean leader.
Speaker 1:It was classic political satire in fact, but I guess, how you look at the movie, the interview is also a bit of a Rorschach test for how you feel about North Korea, how serious you think the question is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I would say that in North Korea there's very little tolerance for political satire, particularly of the leader of the country, probably more severe in terms of how they feel about it than the chinese were hypersensitive about any jokes about she's in pain.
Speaker 2:But what's interesting is that, first, north koreans cyber force extremely good is larger than that of the united states wow that's amazing right there is larger than that of the united states yeah, yeah, they have a huge cyber force, um, but it's largely been focused on petty theft. They've used it largely to try to uh get into cash accounts, uh, teller machine cryptocurrency, particularly heightened during the pandemic when all of their trade with china was shut down. And then they also operate not just out of North Korea, they operate out of China, they operate out of Russia. So it's a very serious, real problem from a perspective of cybercrime. But the Biden administration made a statement that they believe that at least a good part of this currency is going to finance weapons of mass destruction programs. So now it's not just a cybercrime threat, but it's a proliferation threat.
Speaker 1:We covered so much ground and I'm sure this will be very illuminating for our listeners. Thank you for visiting us in the Delegates' Lounge.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me on the show.
Speaker 3:And that's it from the Delegates' Lounge. We'd like to thank our esteemed guests, who've graciously allowed us to share their hard-earned insights into what really matters. And then there's you, our listeners, who we hope are sufficiently edified to clamor for more of the same. Do drop in for a weekly episode on Thursday, or from time to time if we're on the road, for special events, in which case there'll be a bonus episode. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and, if you like what you've heard, please take a moment to rate or review the show, as it helps others who share your abiding interest in world affairs to find their way to the Delegates Lounge. You can connect with us on many popular social media platforms or reach out to us directly at infothedelicateloungecom. We're a small team so we can't respond to every message, but we will read them. Our show this week was written and produced by the host and by yours truly executive producer, frank Radford. Until next time, keep calm and curious.