    [House Hearing, 111 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

            SMART POWER: REMAKING U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IN NORTH KOREA

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                     SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA, THE PACIFIC AND
                             THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT

                                     OF THE

                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                         ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                               FEBRUARY 12, 2009

                                   __________

                                Serial No. 111-5

                                   __________

            Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

     Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/

                                     ______

                      U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
    47-419 PDF                WASHINGTON : 2009
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
    Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC
    area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104  Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC
    20402-0001

                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                     HOWARD L. BERMAN, California, Chairman
    GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York           ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
    ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American      CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
        Samoa                            DAN BURTON, Indiana
    DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey          ELTON GALLEGLY, California
    BRAD SHERMAN, California             DANA ROHRABACHER, California
    ROBERT WEXLER, Florida               DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
    ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York             EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
    BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts         RON PAUL, Texas
    GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York           JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
    DIANE E. WATSON, California          MIKE PENCE, Indiana
    RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri              JOE WILSON, South Carolina
    ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey              JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
    GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia         J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
    MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York         CONNIE MACK, Florida
    JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee            JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
    GENE GREEN, Texas                    MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
    SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas            TED POE, Texas
    BARBARA LEE, California              BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
    SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada              GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida
    JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
    MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
    BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
    DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
    JIM COSTA, California
    KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota
    GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona
    RON KLEIN, Florida
    VACANT
                       Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
                    Yleem Poblete, Republican Staff Director
                                     ------

          Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and the Global Environment

                ENI F. H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa, Chairman
    GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York           DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
    DIANE E. WATSON, California          BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
    MIKE ROSS, Arkansas                  DANA ROHRABACHER, California
    BRAD SHERMAN, California             EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
    ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York             JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
    GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
                   Lisa Williams, Subcommittee Staff Director
             David Richmond, Subcommittee Professional Staff Member
                 Nien Su, Republican Professional Staff Member
                           Vili Lei, Staff Associate

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page

                                   WITNESSES

    Mr. Selig S. Harrison, Asia Director, The Center for
      International Policy...........................................    10
    The Honorable Charles L. Pritchard, President, Korea Economic
      Institute (Former Ambassador and Special Envoy for Negotiations
      with North Korea)..............................................    40
    Victor Cha, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Director of Asian Studies
      and D.S. Song-Korea, Foundation Chair in Asian Studies and
      Government, Georgetown University..............................    45
    Mr. Bruce Klingner, Senior Research Fellow, Northeast Asia, The
      Heritage Foundation............................................    64
    Mr. Scott Snyder, Senior Associate, International Relations, The
      Asia Foundation................................................    77
    Mr. Peter Beck, Adjunct Professor, American University...........    89

              LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING

    The Honorable Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, a Representative in Congress
      from American Samoa, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Asia, the
      Pacific and the Global Environment: Prepared statement.........     7
    Mr. Selig S. Harrison: Prepared statement........................    13
    The Honorable Donald A. Manzullo, a Representative in Congress
      from the State of Illinois: Prepared statement.................    26
    The Honorable Charles L. Pritchard: Prepared statement...........    42
    Victor Cha, Ph.D.: Prepared statement............................    48
    Mr. Bruce Klingner: Prepared statement...........................    67
    Mr. Scott Snyder: Prepared statement.............................    80
    Mr. Peter Beck: Prepared statement...............................    93

                                    APPENDIX

    Hearing notice...................................................   112
    Hearing minutes..................................................   114
    The Honorable Donald A. Manzullo: Article entitled ``Red-
      Handed,'' Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005....................   115
    The Honorable Edward R. Royce, a Representative in Congress from
      the State of California: Article entitled ``Red-Handed,''
      Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005..............................   118

            SMART POWER: REMAKING U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IN NORTH KOREA

                                  ----------

                          THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2009

                  House of Representatives,
                  Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific
                                and the Global Environment,
                                  Committee on Foreign Affairs,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:05 p.m. in
    room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Eni
    F.H. Faleomavaega, (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. The Subcommittee on Asia, the
    Pacific, deg. and the Global Environment hearing will
    come to order, and before proceeding any further, because we
    have two votes that are pending right now and some of my
    colleagues will have to go and vote, I will give the time to my
    good friend and chairman of our Terrorism, Nonproliferation and
    Trade Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs, my good friend from
    California, Mr. Sherman. If you want to make an opening
    statement at this time, you are welcome to do so.
        Mr. Sherman. I thank you, Chairman Faleomavaega. Thank you
    for having this hearing. I think it is about the most important
    issue facing us in the Asia-Pacific region. The spread of
    nuclear weapons is perhaps the only thing that poses a national
    security threat to ordinary Americans and a threat to their
    safety and to our way of life.
        We should be prioritizing nonproliferation at a higher
    level. There is a lot of talk that we are going to reach a deal
    with North Korea because we are going to have great diplomats
    who have read all the books on how to negotiate. I do not think
    that reading a book on how to negotiate or reading 100 of them
    is the key. The key is we need more carrots and more sticks.
        The carrot that the Bush administration was unwilling to
    use is to offer a non-aggression pact. The reason that was
    given to me is the United States never does non-aggression
    pacts. The other reason is, well, we spent a lot of time
    banging the North Koreans over the head to convince them to
    stop asking for a non-aggression pact. Clearly what was at work
    in addition to just bureaucratic intransigents is a dream of
    Dick Cheney somehow overthrowing the Government of North Korea
    by force, a dream he did not want to give up. Well, he has
    left. I do not think we should dream of a successful new Korean
    War. We should instead be offering a non-aggression pact for a
    truly CVIP outcome, that is to say, complete, verifiable, and
    permanent foregoing of nuclear weapons.
        When it comes to sticks, our problem is we do not have
    enough and we are not being creative in how to get more. The
    key way to put pressure on the North Korean Government is to
    get the Chinese Government to put pressure, and the key way to
    do that is to at least begin to make Beijing believe that
    access to the United States market is contingent upon a greater
    level of cooperation on the North Korea issue, and if
    necessary, a Chinese Government willing to inform the North
    Koreans that continued subsidies from Beijing could be cut off
    if they will not move to toward a fair, verifiable and
    permanent renunciation of nuclear weapons, and abandonment and
    destruction of existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
        We have been unwilling to do that in part because we are
    unable to link one issue to the other. That seems to be too
    complex for the State Department. They do not like to do it in
    any sphere because it involves not only thinking about two
    things at the same time--our trade relationship with China on
    the one hand, our concern with North Korean weapons on the
    other--but it involves telling one part of the State Department
    that their priority may have to be tied to some other priority
    in the State Department.
        The other reason we do not do it is because of the total
    power of importers. The real money that is made in this
    country, the big money, the enormous money is to make something
    for pennies in China and sell it for dollars in the United
    States, and with that money comes power, the power to prevent
    the further accrual of the money, and for that reason it is not
    permissible in Washington to talk seriously about hinting to
    Beijing that their access to the United States market could be
    limited for various reasons, not the least of which is an
    insistence on greater pressure on the North Korean Government.
        The solution that the establishment has, that the State
    Department has to this concern is to parade diplomats in front
    of us, telling us that China is very helpful, do not worry
    about it, we are just a day or a week or a month away from a
    non-nuclear North Korea. I have been hearing that for more than
    8 years. It is a lie. It is a lie that gets Congress to stop
    asking questions that they do not want to hear.
        The fact is that North Korea still has nuclear weapons. The
    fact is the problem has not been solved, and the fact is that
    China's level of help has been insufficient, and it is about
    time that we take a look at ways to get both more carrots and
    more sticks and not settle for constantly being told that we
    should not worry about the problem.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. I thank the chairman of our Subcommittee
    on Nonproliferation for his opening statement, and I would
    welcome his return since I am sure that he will raise some
    additional questions with some of the most distinguished
    witnesses and guests that the subcommittee has invited to
    testify this afternoon.
        I will begin with my opening statement, and proceed
    accordingly. Without objection, the statements that have been
    submitted by our witnesses this afternoon will all be made part
    of the record. If there are any additional documents or
    materials that each of our witnesses want to submit to be made
    part of the record, you are welcome to do so.
        Never in our Nation's history have we faced a more pressing
    need to remake America at home and abroad, and who knoweth, as
    the good book says, whether or not President Obama has been
    raised up for such a time as this. What we do know is that,
    last November, America voted for change because America
    recognizes that these are no ordinary times. These are
    extraordinary days, and I commend the Obama administration and
    Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for sending a tremendous
    signal of the importance of the Asia-Pacific region to U.S.
    interests.
        By choosing to visit the Asia-Pacific in her first trip
    abroad, Secretary Clinton obviously is renewing America's
    stature and leadership in a region of the world the U.S. has
    too long neglected, in my humble opinion. I wish Secretary
    Clinton God speed, especially as she takes on the challenge of
    remaking United States foreign policy in North Korea.
        While diplomatic, tough-minded intelligent diplomacy will
    be the keystone of our new U.S. foreign policy, in her
    statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a
    nominee of the Secretary of State, Senator Clinton stated that
    we must use, and I quote, ``smart power,'' meaning the full
    range of tools at our disposal--diplomatic, economic, military,
    political, legal and cultural--picking the right tool or a
    combination of tools for each situation.
        I agree with this approach believing, like Secretary
    Clinton, that we must, and I quote from her statement, ``fire
    on all cylinders to provide forward-thinking, sustained
    diplomacy in every part of the world.''
        In the case of North Korea, in 2003, six governments,
    including the United States, North Korea, China, South Korea,
    Japan and Russia, began talks aimed at ultimately eliminating
    North Korea's nuclear programs. In 2007 and 2008, three
    agreements were reached; two by the six parties and one by
    Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and North Korean
    Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Dae Jung.
        The agreements constituted a deal to shutdown North Korea's
    plutonium production facilities in exchange for United States
    concessions, including removing North Korea from the sanctions
    provision of the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act, removing
    North Korea from the United States list of state sponsors of
    terrorism, and the promise of energy assistance to North Korea.
        At the end of the Bush administration, North Korea had
    completed about 80 percent of the disablement, and the United
    States, China, South Korea and Russia sent North Korea about
    800,000 tons of the 1 million tons of energy assistance it
    promised. Although Japan is withholding its quota of about
    200,000 tons of heavy oil due to the lack of progress in
    settling the issue of North Korea's kidnapping of Japanese
    citizens, the Bush administration did remove North Korea from
    the sanctions provisions of the terrorism list. However, North
    Korea now says it will only complete disablement when it
    receives the remainder of energy assistance.
        As Mr. Harrison, our first witness this afternoon, will
    testify, this is a very important turning point in United
    States-North Korea relations for, as he states, and I quote:

            ``For the past 18 years, the United States has offered
            the normalization of relations with North Korea as a
            reward for denuclearization. Now North Korea is asking
            us to reverse the sequence to pursue denuclearization
            through normalization.''

        The purpose of today's hearing is to discuss where we go
    from here considering that North Korea is also suggesting that
    any final denuclearization agreement with the United States
    must consider the future military presence in and around the
    Korean Peninsula. Also, North Korea is signaling that future
    denuclearization talks deal only with the dismantlement of the
    Yongbyon installation rather than with nuclear weapons.
        With North Korea's threat of a military confrontation with
    South Korea, and its refusal to completely denuclearize, the
    timeliness and relevance of today's hearing is underscored by
    North Korea's announcement less than 2 weeks ago that it is
    nullifying all inter-Korean agreements and reportedly seeking
    to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile.
        As Secretary Clinton noted this past Tuesday at a press
    conference held in the White House, and I quote from her:

            ``We are hopeful that some of the behavior that we are
            seeing coming from North Korea in the past few weeks is
            not a precursor of any action that would up the ante or
            threaten the stability and peace and security of the
            neighbors in the region. North Korea has to understand
            that all of the countries in East Asia have made it
            clear that its behavior is viewed as unacceptable.''

        Given these very serious developments, what tools should
    the Obama administration use to improve United States-North
    Korean relations? Should greater emphasis be placed on economic
    aid, human rights, and separate negotiations with North Korea
    over a Korean peace treaty to replace the 1953 armistice
    agreement? Is any of this possible given the Bush
    administration's failure to focus on North Korea's highly
    enriched uranium program or nuclear collaboration with Iran and
    Syria? What succession contingencies do we have in place given
    the recent health concerns of Kim Jong Il?
        However we proceed, let me conclude my opening statement
    with two clear convictions. First, the United States-South
    Korea alliance stands firm in its commitment to peace and
    prosperity on the Korean Peninsula. Secondly, North Korea
    should come back to the negotiating table immediately and
    reestablish its inter-Korean cooperative projects with South
    Korea to continue progress aimed at easing tensions and
    fostering mutual dialogue.
        I attended recently an Asia-Pacific parliamentary forum
    that was attended by several of our Asian countries'
    parliamentarians, and a resolution was proposed--calling upon
    North Korea to denuclearize the country in terms of its ability
    now to develop nuclear weapons. The only point that I raised at
    the time of the forum was that we have been trying for years in
    the Six-Party Talks to get North Korea to dismantle its
    nuclearization program, yet North Korea is already a member of
    the nuclear club. North Korea already has between four to six
    nuclear weapons, and now North Korea is about to test its
    capability in producing an intercontinental ballistic missile.
    I just wanted to add that as an observation for our witnesses
    that will be testifying this afternoon.
        I note also with interest that we have Ambassador Charles
    Pritchard who will be testifying here with us, and I understand
    you will be leaving later this afternoon to meet with your son,
    Major Jack Pritchard, who is currently on tour in Iraq, and
    certainly want to wish you, Ambassador Pritchard, and your
    family all the best as you are about to meet your son in
    Wiesbaden, Germany.
        Our first witness that we have this afternoon is no
    stranger, I am sure, to all of us for those of you who are
    experts in dealing with Asia-related issues, and this is none
    other than--I say that it is my honor to have met with him
    previously to the meeting--is Mr. Selig Harrison.
        Selig Harrison is a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson
    International Center for Scholars and currently director of the
    Asia program at the Center for International Policy. He has
    specialized in South Asia and East Asia for some 58 years as a
    journalist and scholar and is the author of five books, and
    published countless numbers of articles that relate to our
    political or foreign policy relationships with the countries of
    South Asia as well as Southeast Asia.
        He has visited North Korea about 11 times, most recently in
    January of this year, and also visited Iran in June 2007 and
    February and June of last year. His articles on Iran following
    his visits there in 2007-2008 included ``Iran is America's Best
    Hope for stability in the Gulf.'' I think we need to read that
    one, Mr. Harrison.
        His reputation for giving early warnings on foreign policy
    crises was well established during his career as a foreign
    correspondent. He made a prediction some 18 months before the
    war--the Indo-Pakistan war--and caused some problems there with
    many of the editors, wondering how in the world has Mr.
    Harrison made such a prediction so accurate, and the editors
    were complaining about why were they not informed about this
    prediction that Mr. Harrison made before the Indo-Pakistan war
    came about.
        More than a year before the Russians invaded Afghanistan,
    Mr. Harrison again warned of this possibility in one of his
    frequent contributions to the influential journal, Foreign
    Policy. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, he was one
    of the earliest to foresee that the Soviet Union would withdraw
    its forces and become a leading advocate of a two-track policy
    designed to promote a withdrawal through a combination of
    military pressure and diplomatic incentives.
        One of my predecessors who served previously as chairman of
    this subcommittee, my good friend, a former Congressman from
    the State of New York, Mr. Stephen Solarz, made this
    interesting observation concerning Mr. Harrison, and I quote
    this, in February 21, 1989, 1 year after the withdrawal, and
    this is what Mr. Solarz said: ``With each passing day his
    reputation,'' Mr. Harrison's reputation, ``as a prophet is
    enhanced. I am sure it wasn't easy for Mr. Harrison, in the
    face of a phalanx of analysts, academicians, and others who
    were all saying the opposite, to maintain his position, but he
    had the intellectual fortitude and moral strength to stick by
    his guns, his analytical guns, and I think he deserves credit
    for that.''
        And with that, Mr. Harrison, we will welcome your
    prediction as what will happen in the Korean Peninsula in the
    coming months and for next year.
        At this time I would like to turn the time now to Mr.
    Harrison for his presentation.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Faleomavaega
    follows:]

     STATEMENT OF MR. SELIG S. HARRISON, ASIA DIRECTOR, THE CENTER
                        FOR INTERNATIONAL POLICY

        Mr. Harrison. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is
    wonderful to have a chairman who actually reads my CV. As you
    said, for the past 18 years the United States has offered the
    normalization of relations as the reward for denuclearization.
    Now North Korea is asking us to reverse the sequence, to pursue
    denuclearization through normalization.
        But the issue dominating discussion of North Korea in
    Washington is, of course, whether North Korea will ever really
    denuclearize. So I decided before going to Pyongyang this time
    to frame my discussions there in a way that would help to
    clarify this issue. I submitted a detailed proposal to the
    North Koreans in advance. Here is what it was.
        North Korea would surrender to the IAEA the 68 pounds of
    plutonium already declared. The U.S. would conclude the peace
    treaty, that you mentioned, ending the Korean War. We would
    normalize diplomatic and economic relations with North Korea,
    put food and energy aid on a long-term basis, and support
    large-scale multilateral credits for rehabilitation of the
    North Korean economic infrastructure, and as I said, they
    would----
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Can we just suspend for a minute? Your
    microphone is still not on. Something is wrong with the
    electronics here. Can you try the other microphone next to you,
    see if that might work? Does it work?
        We will need to suspend the hearing.
        [Off the record.]
        Mr. Harrison. Well, that sounds like something.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. My apologies, Mr. Harrison.
        Mr. Harrison. Not at all. As I said, I submitted this
    proposal to the North Koreans to smoke them out. And the answer
    I got was categorical and explicit. I was told that their
    declared plutonium has ``already been weaponized,'' but they
    said they are ready to rule out the development of additional
    nuclear weapons in future negotiations. All four of the
    officials I met emphasized two key themes.
        First, North Korea wants friendly relations with the United
    States and hopes that the Obama administration will initiate
    moves toward normalized relations. Vice President Kim Yong Tae
    said:

            ``If the Obama administration takes its first steps
            correctly and makes a political decision to change its
            DPRK policy, the DPRK and the U.S. can become intimate
            friends.''

        I asked General Ri Chan Bok of the National Defense
    Commission whether United States forces could stay in Korea
    when and if relations are normalized. As you know, the
    traditional North Korean position has been that the United
    States forces have to get out, and here is what he said: ``When
    the time comes we can discuss that.''
        The second thing emphasized was that North Korea will not
    commit itself now as to when it will give up its nuclear
    weapons. Here are the words of nuclear negotiator Li Gun: ``We
    are not in a position to say when we will abandon nuclear
    weapons. That depends on when we believe there is no U.S.
    nuclear threat. We must proceed step by step, action for
    action.''
        Now, all of those I met said that North Korea has already
    weaponized the 68 pounds of plutonium acknowledged in its
    formal declaration, and that therefore the weapons can't be
    inspected since they are military.
        Sixty-eight pounds, as you know, is enough for four or five
    nuclear weapons, depending on the grade of plutonium, the
    specific weapons design and the desired explosive yield. What
    this means is that the objective of the Six-Party negotiations
    and United States negotiations directly with North Korea, which
    I think have to be the heart of our policy, should now be to
    cap, to cap the declared North Korean arsenal at four or five
    weapons by completing the disabling of the Yongbyon reactor to
    which you referred now in progress, and by negotiating the
    terms for completely dismantling the reactor which, of course,
    has been envisaged in the denuclearization scenario now being
    negotiated.
        In return for dismantlement, North Korea wants a binding
    commitment to complete the two light-water reactors for
    electricity promised under the 1994 agreed framework. That is
    sure to stir up controversy in Washington, but in Pyongyang it
    seems logical to the North Korea, first, because the reactors
    were promised; second, because nearly $3 billion has already
    been spent on them to the build the infrastructure at Kumho,
    and above all, because North Korea suspended its nuclear
    weapons program from 1994 until 2002, in return for that
    promise.
        North Korea suspended its nuclear weapons program from 1994
    until 2002 in return for the promise of light-water reactors.
        Well, to sum up, North Korea had adopted what to us will be
    a much harder line than before, and the question is why. Some
    say it is just a bargaining posture to strengthen its position
    with a new administration. But I would emphasize two other
    factors.
        First, Kim Jong Il did have a stroke. I learned from
    several well-informed sources that he has a greatly reduced
    work schedule. He has turned over day-to-day management of
    domestic affairs to his brother-in-law, Chang Song Taek, and
    foreign affairs and defense policy is now largely in the hands
    of hawks in the National Defense Commission which, of course,
    means a tougher nuclear policy.
        A second factor of great importance, which is not mentioned
    often but I think is very important, is the fundamental change
    in the posture of South Korea toward the North under its new
    President, Lee Myung Bak. President Lee has dishonored the
    North/South Summit Declarations of June 2000 and October 2007.
    He says he will ``review them but is not bound by them.'' This
    was a disastrous historic mistake.
        What Lee Myung Bak has done is to revive North Korean fears
    that South Korea, the United States and Japan want regime
    change and absorption because, of course, the summit
    declarations envisaged co-existence and progress toward
    confederation which is, of course, the opposite of a policy of
    absorption.
        So to make progress in the nuclear negotiations and avoid a
    revival of military tensions in the Korean Peninsula it is
    necessary for both the United States and South Korea to
    reaffirm their categorical, unqualified support of the June
    2000 and October 2007 summit declarations. I really think that
    is the most important step that is necessary to get this whole
    situation back on track. That means supporting co-existence and
    eventual confederation and giving up hopes of promoting a
    collapse and absorption of the North by the South, and, of
    course, all kinds of things are in the air, whether they are
    balloons being thrown into North Korea, all sorts of other
    things that indicate there are forces who have not given up
    those goals.
        In conclusion, the bottom line in shaping North Korea
    policy is that continued United States engagement with North
    Korea looking to normalization will strengthen the pragmatists
    in Pyongyang in their continuing struggle with military
    hardliners, and we must remember this is not a monolithic
    regime. You have two contending points of view and that is the
    central fact of life that we face in North Korea.
        If we fully normalize relations, we are more likely to get
    leaders there who will give up their nuclear weapons than if we
    do not engage. In the meantime, if the United States can deal
    with major nuclear weapon states like China and Russia in East
    Asia, can tolerate a nuclear armed North Korea that may or may
    not actually have the nuclear weapons arsenal it says it has,
    it may be bluffing. Just in case it has learned to miniaturize
    nuclear warheads sufficiently to make long-range missiles, the
    new administration, in my view, should couple a resumption of
    denuclearization negotiations, Six-Party Talks plus direct
    talks with a revival of the promising missile limitation
    negotiations that the Clinton administration was about to
    conclude when it left office.
        I pushed the idea of missile negotiations hard several
    times in my initial conversations in Pyongyang. At first Li
    Gun, with whom I spent the most time, a total of 6 hours, did
    not have instructions on this issue, it was quite clear. But
    after overnight consultations he said, ``If we can have nuclear
    negotiations, why not missile negotiations?''
        So I think the short-term first step of the Obama
    administration dealing with North Korea should be to try to put
    the resumption of the Clinton period missile negotiations on
    the table again, and at a broader level it should work with
    South Korea to reaffirm support for the summit declarations of
    2000 and 2007 because only through that reaffirmation can a
    real policy of rolling back regime change be implemented.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Selig S. Harrison
    follows:]

        Mr. Faleomavaega. Thank you, Mr. Harrison. I have some
    questions I want to ask. This is a new development since your
    meeting with four of the top leaders there in Pyongyang last
    month. I just wanted to ask you if you had a chance in sharing
    this information with some of the leaders of South Korea.
        Mr. Harrison. I am sorry. Have I shared what I found out in
    North Korea?
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Yes.
        Mr. Harrison. What I found out in North Korea?
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Yes.
        Mr. Harrison. Yes. Yes, I have discussed with some Embassy
    people what I found out.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. We all know that for 6 years now that
    negotiations have taken place in the Six-Party Talks, and in
    that period of time it seems to me that was when North Korea
    had the capability or now has in its possession four to six
    nuclear weapons. I never could understand clearly when they
    were tested. I believe it was in October 2006. Does North Korea
    definitely have nuclear weapons capability?
        Mr. Harrison. I do not think we know. They say they do.
    North Korea's great concern is to deter us from what they fear
    will be a United States preemptive attack, and they are
    particularly concerned about a nuclear attack because, although
    we talk about their nuclear capabilities, we have nuclear
    weapons in areas near North Korea, even though we say we took
    them out of South Korea.
        So from the North Korean point of view, their big task is
    to deter us from any military adventures in Korea. So their
    military wants us to believe that they have nuclear weapons.
    They are quite happy to have us think that they might even have
    a uranium program, which we could discuss later, which I think
    is a greatly exaggerated concern on our part. So the North
    Korean armed forces want to keep us thinking that they have a
    uranium program, whether they do or not, and I do not think
    they do, a weapons program, and they certainly want us to think
    that they have a plutonium nuclear weapons capability.
        I think we have to base our policy on the presumption that
    they do have some level of weapons development. We do not know
    what operational military form they are in a position to use
    nuclear weapons with, but we do know they have conducted a
    test. Whether that test was simply not a very successful test
    or was deliberately kept at a low level for various reasons in
    connection with miniaturization for warheads, as some people
    have said, we do not know.
        So I certainly do not pretend to know. I think our policy
    has to be based on worst case assumptions. We have all kinds of
    capabilities in the vicinity of North Korea that would make
    their use of nuclear weapons very self-defeating from their own
    point of view because we are right there to retaliate in a big
    way.
        So I think the short answer to your question is we do not
    know. U.S. intelligence accepts the idea that they have a
    nuclear weapons capability. What that means, they do not
    define, the intelligence community does not define. That is
    why, of course, there is so much interest in a possible missile
    test which, by the way, I do not see any clear evidence of. I
    mean, this alarm about the missile test is not backed up by
    very substantial intelligence yet although every day it gets a
    little bit more convincing, but certainly the North Koreans in
    the past have often tried to make us think they were going to
    do something to get our attention, and to make sure that we do
    not forget they are there.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Can you give us your sense of insight
    about the time when Madeleine Albright was hosted by Kim Jong
    Il, and during the Clinton administration? Do you think there
    were positives that came out of that dialogue or that meeting
    to the point where our Secretary of State was hosted by Kim
    Jong Il in North Korea?
        Mr. Harrison. Oh, yes. I think that there is no question
    that the Clinton administration made tremendous progress with
    respect to North Korea. As you know, there was no production of
    fissile material from October--from June 1994 until the Bush
    administration abrogated the 1994 agreed framework which opened
    the way for North Korea to resume its plutonium production. It
    gave the hawks in North Korea the opening they wanted. But as
    far as the Clinton administration was concerned, they had made
    steady progress, and it is a great tragedy, in my view, that
    Mr. Clinton did not go to North Korea to finalize some of the
    agreements that were then pending, including missile agreement.
        Secretary Albright's visit had been very successful. Her
    accounts of the visit were very encouraging in terms of her
    reaction to Kim Jong Il as somebody you could talk to at a
    rational level. Unfortunately, Mr. Clinton has said in his
    memoirs that Mr. Arafat had given him the impression that he
    was ready for some serious quick action on the Middle East, and
    Mr. Clinton concluded that he should give that priority over a
    North Korea trip. It was a very difficult time with the Florida
    recount going on and the very last days of his administration
    approaching.
        So to answer your question, yes, the Albright visit was a
    high point, and we can get back to that kind of a relationship
    with North Korea. We have to start with the U.S. Government
    arranging for the DPRK Symphony Orchestra to come to the U.S.
    to reciprocate the visit of the New York Philharmonic to North
    Korea. The North Koreans mentioned that. They said the next few
    months may be difficult but let us do the people to people
    stuff.
        So, I think if we are serious about getting to
    denuclearization we can, starting with small things like the
    DPRK Symphony Orchestra's trip to the U.S., other people to
    people exchanges, the resumption of direct talks, and the Six-
    Party Talks. I think the North Koreans are very much in need of
    normalized relations with the United States and Japan, and a
    restoration of positive relations with South Korea for economic
    reasons. But there are political factors, nationalism, pride,
    and the change in the internal balance of forces there, which I
    mentioned before, the advent of the hard-line group in the
    armed forces to a position of greater influence. These are
    holding things up, but I do believe we could get back to a very
    positive track with North Korea if that is our objective and if
    we are patient.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. I have always wondered why we had to have
    six countries negotiating with North Korea when my
    understanding all North Korea wanted to do was to negotiate
    with the United States only. Can you offer any reasons why we
    had to have six countries negotiating with one country?
        Now we have Japan demanding that this kidnapping issue be
    part--which is totally unrelated to the nuclearization threat
    or things that relates to the very issue why we are dealing
    with Korean.
        Mr. Harrison. I do not think the United States should let
    the Six-Party process get in the way of progress developed
    through bilateral negotiations which, as you said, is the main
    ball game because North Korea fears United States preemptive
    action, conventional or nuclear, and they feel that we are
    still number one despite our many problems, and therefore they
    need a relationship with us to legitimize their relationship
    with others.
        So I think that bilateral negotiations have to be the main
    arena, but the Six-Party process is valuable if we do not allow
    it to get in the way of our own objectives and Christopher Hill
    did not, he went forward with the removal of North Korea from
    the terrorist list despite Japan's objections.
        So up until now, in the latter days of the Bush
    administration when they got religion on this whole thing we
    have been pursuing a sensible combination of bilateral and
    multilateral negotiations. There are many advantages to keeping
    the Six-Party process in train because many of the things we
    have to do cost money, and the denuclearization process, to the
    extent it can be made multilateral, can be sustained
    financially, and without the Six-Party process this would be
    much more difficult. So, I think we should keep the Six-Party
    process going, recognizing that it is an auxiliary to what has
    to be a basically positive U.S. bilateral approach.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. You had mentioned that the summit
    declarations that were made by President Lee's predecessors, I
    think it was Kim Dae Jung and President Mo, you indicated in
    your statement that there could have been a better relationship
    created by the current administration, South Korea with that of
    the Kim Jong Il's regime. Do you think it can be corrected in
    any way?
        Mr. Harrison. I think if the United States has a clear
    sense of its own direction and makes very clear to South Korea
    that it is deeply dissatisfied with the repudiation of the two
    summit declarations, and would like to see South Korea return
    to a policy that declares its support for those declarations, I
    think things can get back on track. But you know, President Lee
    was in a political campaign and it is understandable that he
    wanted to differentiate his position from that of his
    predecessor, so he talked about bargaining a little tougher
    with North Korea. But he went far beyond that when he became
    the President because it is not just a symbolic thing.
        The basic issue in the Korean Peninsula is whether there is
    going to be a peaceful process of confederation and eventual
    long-term unification, or whether South Korea as the more
    populous and stronger economy is going to absorb North Korea,
    and the dominant feelings in South Korea were during the period
    preceding Kim Dae Jung to work for absorption.
        When Kim Young Sam became President and Kim Il Song died,
    Kim Young Sam's policy was to send subversive intelligence
    missions into North Korea to try to destabilize it, and the
    judgment of the South Korean intelligence community was that
    you could overthrow the North Korea regime because the great
    leader was the cement that held everything together.
        Kim Dae Jung represented a policy which was that that would
    be too expensive, and he sold the business community and the
    bureaucratic and the political and military leadership in South
    Korea, he created a consensus that for South Korea it would
    make much more sense not to do what had happened in Germany,
    which would be much too expensive, but to go for a long-term
    policy of coexistence, gradually bringing the two systems
    closer together, doing everything feasible to avoid a collapse
    in North Korea so that such a process could continue, and his
    policy was pragmatic, realistic. It was not--the word
    ``sunshine'' makes it sound like a goody-goody soft policy. It
    was a very pragmatic policy rooted essentially in the economic
    realities of what absorption would cost South Korea.
        So when Kim Dae Jung became the President he reversed the
    policies of the Kim Young Sam administration. He replaced the
    top people in the intelligence agencies, and he pursued a
    policy of coexistence, and the North Koreans considered that.
    They were very surprised that this had happened. They never
    thought this would happen. They were committed to the idea that
    South Korea was committed to absorbing them, and they were in a
    permanent confrontational relationship.
        Kim Dae Jung and Roo Moo Hyun strengthened the realists,
    the pragmatists in North Korea. Lee Myung Bak in one stroke has
    undermined everything that was accomplished, and I hope very
    seriously that South Korean public opinion will increasingly
    compel him to do more than make little speeches about how we
    are going to talk to North Korea and be nice to North Korea.
    The essence of the matter is repudiating the concept of
    absorption and collapse through reaffirmation of the 2000 and
    2007 summit declarations.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. What was your reading when you, as you
    mentioned earlier, in the middle of the Six-Party Talks, North
    Korea invites the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to come and
    have a concert. Does it sound like they are really trying to
    reach out for something?
        Oh, and by the way, I think they also want to send an
    orchestra to the United States to reciprocate.
        Mr. Harrison. Exactly, and they urged that that be done as
    soon as possible. Well, you see, there are two camps in North
    Korea. This was the main message in my testimony. There are
    reasonable pragmatic elements in the leadership who believe
    that without opening up to the United States--getting
    normalization with the United States, North Korean's economic
    survival will be in jeopardy.
        There are more traditional types and hardliners who have
    argued since all this began in 1991, when they first began
    reaching out to us, the hardliners have said you guys are very
    naive. The Americans, the Japanese and the Lee Myung Baks of
    South Korea will never accept us. They want to overthrow us,
    and they are just waiting for the opportunity.
        And so now that Kim Jong Il has had a stroke that tension
    within the leadership there is even stronger, but there is no
    question that there is a very strong view in important sections
    of the North Korean leadership that were encouraged and
    strengthened during the Clinton period, and undermined during
    the Bush period, that they must have an opening to the United
    States. It is not just something they want. They need it to
    make the regime stable, to get multilateral loans so they can
    rebuild their infrastructure. This is their number one
    priority.
        But the armed forces say, Look, you are very naive. These
    guys have nuclear weapons all over the Pacific very near us.
    They have cruise missiles; they have all kinds of things. How
    do we know what they might have hidden in South Korea? And so
    the armed forces who are basically in the dominant position
    there, they need Kim Jong Il because he is the link with Kim Il
    Song, but the armed forces ever since the death of Kim Il Song
    had been the most powerful force in North Korea, they dictate
    the security policy of North Korea.
        Kim Jong Il is a survivor. He wants to stay on top. He is
    number one. He manipulates all the different forces and
    factions in North Korea very, very cleverly, but he has to have
    the consent of the armed forces for his policies and that
    consent requires acceptance of their assessment that they must
    have a deterrent, they must deter the United States, either
    make us believe they have nuclear weapons or have them.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. So I sense from your testimony, Mr.
    Harrison, no matter what negotiations go on everything seems to
    be based on Kim Jong Il's good health or lack of good health.
    In terms of what is ever going to happen to the future of North
    Korea, it is going to be based on whether Kim Jong Il is going
    to live long enough.
        Mr. Harrison. That is not my view at all.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Can you elaborate? You have mentioned
    about his health as a factor, a basic factor.
        Mr. Harrison. I certainly believe that Kim Jong Il's death
    would not mean a collapse of North Korea, and if the United
    States has been pursuing up until that time and continues to
    pursue serious efforts to normalize relationships, that will
    strengthen the pragmatic elements in North Korea who will
    continue to be there even if Kim Jong Il should die.
        North Korea's stability does not depend on Kim Jong Il.
    They have the National Defense Commission, a group of generals
    who would have to hang together or hang separately, as Ben
    Franklin said, and so the incentive to stay together would be
    very strong. It is possible that things will fragment,
    instability will develop, but basically North Korea is not a
    highly--just one edifice that is going to fall down. The nine
    provinces of North Korea, the communist parties of each of
    those provinces are very strong, and you have a great deal of
    decentralization that has taken place in recent years.
        So I did not mean to give the impression that the death of
    Kim Jong Il, which by the way there is no reason to anticipate,
    he recovered from his stroke, and he is functioning. He has met
    the Chinese. He just does not have the day-to-day input and he
    can be--his influence over the hardliners is not as great, but
    I certainly do not think that scenarios of a collapse should
    be--I think the scenarios of a collapse in North Korea are not
    realistic.
        We do not know what will happen over time. We do not know
    how long if he were to die the leadership would stay together,
    but there is a structure there now and there is a
    decentralization that has already occurred, and I think we have
    to think in terms of dealing with a North Korea that is going
    to be there as long ahead as we can see.
        To the extent that we support elements who want to promote
    a collapse, and threaten the North Koreans by leaking stories
    about military scenarios, about what we are going to do the
    minute there is a slightest change in North Korea, we just feed
    all the destructive hard-line forces in North Korea.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Mr. Harrison, I had about 200 other
    questions I wanted to ask, but I want to welcome personally my
    good friend, the senior ranking member of our subcommittee, the
    gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Manzullo, if he has an opening
    statement he would like to make, and also welcome our good
    friend from California, member of the subcommittee, Mr.
    Rohrabacher, and Mr. Ed Royce also from California.
        Mr. Manzullo.
        Mr. Manzullo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I would ask leave to
    place my opening statement in the record.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Without objection.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Manzullo
    follows:]

        Mr. Manzullo. And also an article by Mitchell Reiss and
    Robert Gallucci from Foreign Affairs made a part of the record
    also.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Without objection.
        Mr. Manzullo. I am sorry I was late. I was over in the
    Financial Services Committee trying to solve the world's
    financial problems. Now we come over here.
        Let me ask you a question. If you do not feel comfortable
    answering it, please tell me and I will not hold it against
    you, is that fair enough?
        Mr. Harrison. Sure.
        Mr. Manzullo. Some have said that Kim Jong Il had made
    agreements and concessions with the Bush administration through
    the tremendous efforts of Chris Hill working toward
    denuclearization. Some have said that sensing President Obama's
    popularity in the polls, and the fact that there would be a
    complete change in the Presidency in parties and perhaps
    philosophy, that Kim Jong Il pulled back from cooperating with
    the Bush administration hoping to get ``a better deal'' with
    the Obama administration. Again, this is not by way of
    criticism of the Obama administration. Would you care to
    comment on that observation?
        Mr. Harrison. Well, I think that what happened in the last
    days of the Christopher Hill negotiations was that the North
    Koreans had made considerable concessions leading to the
    disabling of the Yongbyon reactor, but we were pushing a line
    of trying to get verification access that the North Koreans
    felt had not been agreed upon, which is true, was not in the
    scenario that had been agreed upon when these negotiations set
    forth. Verification was to come in the third phase, and in my
    conversations there they discussed the terms for getting to
    verification.
        So, I think that, sure, they certainly were all aware that
    a new administration was about to begin, but I think that in
    terms of the objective realities of those negotiations they did
    not violate any undertakings by not agreeing to our
    verification demands. They felt that those demands were not
    required of them in terms of what had been agreed upon as to
    the procedures, and that is true. They had not been.
        So, I do not know whether I am answering you clearly or
    not. I guess my answer would be that it was kind of a mix of
    things. They were in no way obliged to go forward with
    verification, and they did not.
        Mr. Manzullo. My understanding is that verification, some
    type of verification besides ``I won't do it again'' or ``trust
    me'' was tied to North Korea being removed from the state
    sponsors of terrorism list, and that in fact did occur. They
    were removed from the list much to the voices of many people in
    opposition in this country.
        Mr. Harrison. I think that is a very perceptive question.
    It gets to the heart of what was a very complicated situation
    in the last phases of the Bush administration. Diplomacy,
    diplomats like to keep ambiguity, and there was ambiguity on
    both of the issues you are referring to. We did not commit, in
    all the documents prior to this last phase of negotiations, as
    to when we would take them off the terrorist list, and they did
    not commit as to when they would get into verification. It was
    not required until the third phase under the original scenario.
        So what happened was Chris Hill; I think he made two
    judgments. I think he did a very effective job with the brief
    he had and the situation he faced in the bureaucracy in
    Washington. I think he did an admirable job of moving things
    along.
        First, I think he concluded that the position that the
    Clinton administration had adopted, taking them off the
    terrorist list was justified in terms of their behavior since
    their terrorism ended a long time ago, and he tried to use it
    to get them to do something they were not committed to doing;
    namely, verification before the third phase because he had
    people in Washington telling him you have got to get them to
    agree to verification because otherwise it is going to look
    like we have just done a--we have been patsies.
        Well, he did his best. He did something that I think was a
    step forward in the whole process anyway. I mean, getting them
    off the terrorist list has kept the game open because that has
    given the pragmatists in Pyongyang something to hang on to.
    They got something out of negotiating.
        So, there is an argument in Pyongyang, they got politics
    too, you know, there is an argument in Pyongyang for keeping
    the process going because we took them off the terrorist list,
    and at the same time the pragmatists did not win the argument
    that some verification compromise should be made in return for
    that, just what Hill wanted, of course, because Kim Jong Il had
    had a stroke, and the day-to-day control of all this had
    shifted during the months when this was going on. The stroke
    was in August.
        And one very interesting thing, you know, Hill was trying
    to carry this thing forward and he got--he wanted to go to
    Pyongyang in the critical stage of this, and the hardliners did
    not want him to come, and the pragmatists worked out a
    compromise which was, okay, he will not come as a state guest.
    We will put him in the Potonggang Hotel which is one of the
    hotels in Pyongyang, and he will not be a state guest but he
    can stay in the hotel at his expense, U.S. Government's
    expense, and come over to see us and talk to us. That was the
    internal compromise in North Korea. So he went there and did
    not get what he had hoped he would get.
        I have given you a long answer but you have raised a very
    tricky question and a very raw nerve in the whole process, and
    I am not quite sure what Chris Hill would have said if he were
    sitting here, but that is the way I perceive it.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. The gentleman from California, Mr.
    Rohrabacher.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. I am sorry I was a
    little late in getting here. We did have votes on the floor,
    and Mr. Harrison, I think that we have a different way of
    looking at the world. From listening to your testimony today,
    it seems you are telling us that peace and progress in the
    world will come through accommodation with evil and tyrants and
    gangsters and murders and all the other scum of this world that
    prey upon decent people. Accommodations with them is going to
    make it a better world?
        Would not what you are proposing today would have left the
    Soviet Union in power had we just simply decided that we are
    going to have an accommodation rather than seeking change
    within the Soviet system? Correct me if I am wrong, that is my
    interpretation of what you are telling us.
        Mr. Harrison. I did not say anything, Congressman
    Rohrabacher, about a better world, and I do not like the North
    Korean regime anymore than you do.
        My testimony, if your voting schedule permitted you to hear
    it----
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Yes.
        Mr. Harrison [continuing]. Was that we should be capping
    their nuclear program rather than allowing it to grow beyond
    the four or five that the Bush administration's unrealistic
    policies had given us because we do not want North Korea to
    have nuclear weapons, precisely because we know that it is a
    regime that we have not made our peace with yet.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. I guess what I was referring----
        Mr. Harrison. So I do not think I said anything about
    nirvana developing from negotiations----
        Mr. Rohrabacher. I think I was referring to your statement
    that in order to deal with them that they are going to have to
    be assured that we do not want to change their government, that
    we do not want to have a regime change in North Korea; that we
    are not going to have progress as long as they have that fear.
        I believe the United States Government should put
    dictatorships in fear that they will be replaced by democratic
    government. I think that is part of our obligation as free
    people is to back up the people of North Korea and Burma and
    other type of dictatorships. Instead we have--have we not
    subsidized North Korea these last 10 years in terms of fuel and
    food? Without that, perhaps they would have collapsed on their
    own.
        Mr. Harrison. North Korea has changed a lot in the last 10
    years. I have been going there since 1972. And when I went
    there in 1972, the first of my 11 visits, it was a very
    monolithic dictatorship. Now you have a great deal of
    marketization. You have people trying to make a buck. You have
    access of information coming in from China and from South Korea
    in spite of the efforts of the regime to keep it from
    happening.
        The argument between us is not over our objective. We share
    the same values. I want to see this regime in North Korea
    evolve into something gradually closer to our concept of the
    way a society should operate, just as I would like to see
    China, and China has moved in that direction. I mean, dealing
    with China, I am sure you would have said the same thing back
    in the seventies when some of us were talking about----
        Mr. Rohrabacher. I hate to tell you this, but when I take a
    look at the liberalization in China, I do say the same things
    about China today, which is still the world's worst human
    rights abuse.
        Mr. Harrison. Well, the difference between China--you have
    what I think, I mean, you talk in tough terms, sir, but I think
    you are taking a very unrealistic view of things. You do not
    change societies, countries of 1 billion people overnight. The
    process is China has changed enormously since 1972 in the
    direction that is desirable in terms of our values, and I think
    North Korea will evolve in the direction of greater human
    rights and more open economy, more and more congruent with that
    of South Korea, more and more open to foreign influences to the
    extent that we helped open it up and let the winds of freedom
    blow in, and they are not going to blow in with a bunch of
    balloons from South Korea, or with tough rhetoric. The winds of
    freedom will get into North Korea to the extent that we engage
    them and gradually open them up as we have been doing, as we
    did very successfully during the Clinton administration. I do
    not mean that on a partisan level.
        So, I think the argument is kind of circular. We do want
    the same end result, that I can assure you.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, then we do have a disagreement.
        Mr. Harrison. If your end result is----
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Harrison. If your end result has to be that everything
    in North Korea collapses, and you have millions and millions of
    refugees going into South Korea and Japan in order to have the
    change----
        Mr. Rohrabacher. One last question. Do you think it was a
    good thing that the communist government in Germany, in East
    Germany, collapsed? Was that a good thing? And why should we
    not be trying to do for the people of Korea who deserve to be
    unified, deserve to live their lives in a modicum of decency
    and freedom, why should we not wish the same for them as we did
    for the people of Germany?
        Mr. Harrison. I think that the geopolitical factors that
    were at play then and the way in which Germany changed are very
    different from the ones in Korea.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay, thank you, sir.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. I thank the gentleman from California. He
    and I also have some basic disagreements, but we always agree
    to disagree. But my good friend from California and I visited
    Pakistan at one time, and I had to hold a 45-revolver and he
    had a shotgun for fear that somebody would come and kill us,
    but Dana, thanks for your questions. But it is always good to
    have this. This is why we have a democracy like this.
        I might also note for the record that my good friend from
    Illinois participated in celebrating the 200th anniversary of
    the birth of one of our greatest Presidents today, and that is
    good old Abe Lincoln. I wish he were here to solve some of the
    problems we are faced with now.
        Mr. Harrison, I know we have been really digging into a lot
    of the questions, and if you were to put a sense of priority
    about the nuclearization issue, where would you put North Korea
    with that to Pakistan?
        Mr. Harrison. Where would I put North Korea?
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Here is the problem that I have.
        Mr. Harrison. You mean in terms of the importance? Well, of
    course, Pakistan--you mean of denuclearization?
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Yes. Here is my problem. We are all going
    after North Korea. We must denuclearize North Korea. How come
    we are not doing the same for Pakistan?
        Mr. Harrison. Well, of course, that is the point. I
    referred to Russia and China because they were neighboring
    countries that have nuclear weapons. I think it is difficult to
    talk about this without making reference to the fact that the
    United States is a nuclear weapons power, and we are not
    prepared to give up our nuclear weapons, and that is a big
    obstacle because all the hardliners in North Korea and in Iran
    can say, Why are we called upon to give up our nuclear weapons
    when they are not even willing to sit down with Russia and
    start a serious problem of global arms reductions?
        So, I think that your point is well taken. They say, the
    North Koreans say, What is about us that is different from
    Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel? Why are you so hung up
    on us? And I think that all these years after the Cold War we
    have to ask ourselves the question why are we so hung up on
    North Korea.
        I think it is a country to be pitied rather than feared. It
    has got tremendous problems. For historical, cultural reasons,
    and because of the fact that it was left at the end of the Cold
    War as an orphan of the Cold War with no more subsidies from
    Russia and China has to reach out to the other countries for
    support, it does not pursue its relations with us in the way
    that we would like it to do. But I think that it is a country
    that we need not fear, and that we should be able to engage
    with without being hung up on the nuclear issue that does not
    impede our relations with many other countries.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Here is my problem, Mr. Harrison, and
    maybe you could help me. When India exploded is first nuclear
    bomb in 1974, the first thing that the prime minister of India
    did was to go to the United Nations, pleaded the case and say,
    Look, we can explode a bomb, too, but we are really serious
    about nonproliferation. So it is hypocritical for some to say
    that it is okay for some countries to have nuclear weapons in
    their possession, but it is not okay for the rest of the world
    to also have nuclear weapons. So India made its case pleading
    especially to the five nuclear powers who currently still have
    nuclear weapons, stating they are willing to dismantle or to do
    anything that will ban altogether nuclear weapons from the face
    of the earth. Since 1974, India has pleaded its case before the
    United Nations: When are we ever going to be serious about
    nonproliferation?
        So it is any wonder that you have countries like Iran, for
    fear that it might be destroyed by Israel, or North Korea for
    fear it might be destroyed by the U.S. stationed in South
    Korea, or any other country that wishes to defend itself from
    annihilation raising the ante or the parity or the equity of
    the whole idea of the argument? Are we not somewhat being
    hypocritical, the industrialized countries who do have
    possession of nuclear weapons telling the rest of the world you
    cannot do it? Does this not minimize North Korea or Iran or any
    other country for attempting to have nuclear weapons, and will
    it be then totally justifiable for the rest of the world
    community to say you cannot do this or we will destroy you?
    What is wrong with making that argument?
        Mr. Harrison. Well, you are quite right. I agree with what
    you are saying. The word ``hypocrisy'' though is not the issue.
    It is hypocritical, but the point is that it is very
    unrealistic. If we are serious about trying to prevent a
    nuclear armed North Korea, and a nuclear armed Iran, which I
    think are very desirable objectives, we have to be realistic
    about what motivates them, and what motivates them first and
    foremost is their feeling that we are applying a double
    standard, and this is the political reality, not a matter of
    hypocrisy or anything else, it is a political reality.
        I have had endless arguments with nonproliferation seminars
    and people saying, oh, we could take all our nuclear weapons
    away and they would still have theirs. I think that is very
    unrealistic, and in fact serious arms control dialogue starting
    with Russia, bringing in all the other nuclear powers, would
    have a definite impact over time in North Korea and Iran, and
    really the North Koreans always accompany everything they say
    with speeches of this kind, and they end up by saying, well, we
    have got to have a nuclear agreement in the Pacific area in
    which you participate.
        Now, I do not think they really mean that. I do not think
    that they really expect us to give up our nuclear capabilities
    in the Pacific, but they always say it, and there is no
    question that political cover for the realists in North Korea
    would be much greater if we were to listen to what you are
    saying.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. You would think then that the urgings and
    the pleadings would be heard of someone like the President of
    Kazakhstan who voluntarily dismantled the nuclear weapons that
    the Soviet Union had left in his country--by the way after 500
    detonations of nuclear weapons in Kazakhstan exposed some 1.5
    million Kazaks to nuclear radioactivity--not a pleasant story
    when I visited Kazakhstan to see what happened to this country.
        The point I just wanted to make is do you think it really
    is unrealistic to make an effort to dismantle nuclear weapons
    altogether? You do not think that is realistic?
        Mr. Harrison. Well, no. I think that many people, George
    Schultz, Henry Kissinger, lots of people, Sam Nunn, have been
    working lately to move toward a gradual process beginning with
    United States/Russian reductions down to 1,000, and then moving
    very slowly bringing in everybody else. You cannot expect the
    existing nuclear powers to give up their nuclear capabilities
    until they see that everybody is going to play ball, so it
    obviously would be a very slow process.
        But what is really unrealistic is to think that we can get
    away with a double standard and have our own nuclear weapons
    and not have others.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. So we should continue the double standard
    then because of the realities that we are faced with in this
    world?
        Mr. Harrison. No, I do not think we should continue the
    double standard at all. I think we should have a global policy
    of gradual nuclear arms reductions in which we make clear that
    we are prepared to go to zero, and there is a very
    significant----
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Trust but verify.
        Mr. Harrison. What?
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Trust but verify.
        Mr. Harrison. Yes, and bring together a nonproliferation
    and nuclear disarmament. There is a very significant movement
    now, it is called ``Global Zero,'' and you may know about it,
    Mr. Bruce Blair of the World Security Institute is organizing
    it. Many other people are very interested in global nuclear
    disarmament. It is not a soft issue. It is a hard issue because
    it is one of the most dangerous one in the world.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. The gentleman from California, Mr. Royce.
        Mr. Royce. Mr. Harrison, do you support Radio Free Asia and
    their broadcasts designed to change the nature of North Korea?
    What are your thoughts?
        Mr. Harrison. You know, I have not--I am not aware. I do
    not really know what the programming of Radio Free Asia is. I
    am certainly not against a radio capability, but I would want
    to know what they are saying, what they are doing with it,
    which I do not know, before I would really----
        Mr. Royce. It may be problematic because they are actually
    telling people what is going on inside North Korea. For
    example, the gulags, and I do not know your view of that.
        Mr. Harrison. I am sorry?
        Mr. Royce. I call them gulags but the camps in North Korea.
        Mr. Harrison. Right. Well, as I was saying to Congressman
    Rohrabacher, I think that getting rid of the gulags is why we
    have to engage with North Korea. You are not going to get rid
    of the gulags with balloons sent up from South Korea or
    broadcasts over Radio Free Asia. You are going to get rid of
    the gulags if you open up North Korea through a sustained
    process of political and economic engagement, and arms control.
        Mr. Royce. Yes, if you can get the North Koreans to open
    up. If you cannot get the North Koreans to open up--and this is
    reminiscent of a conversation I had with a former North Korean,
    I think he was secretary general for international affairs for
    the party of North Korea, Hwang Jang-yop. He presented the
    argument, that in his time--and of course he served with both
    Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, was sort of fashioning propaganda
    for the regime--the strategy was to extract from the West many
    concessions. Hopefully $1 billion a year. The concept behind
    the attitude and the pose that they would strike on the world
    stage was intended to get that aid that the regime could use to
    prop itself up. In a sense the economic system that the regime
    was wedded to was not conducive for the long-term continuance
    of the state.
        So the state found another methodology. Just to go through
    some of the concepts--counterfeiting U.S. currency; basically
    gun-running or selling missile parts. To take a present-day
    example, putting up a nuclear reactor in the Middle East; drugs
    as a means of getting illicit hard currency into the country;
    and with all of this a concept of trying to extract in the
    middle of any negotiations. I was going to ask you; you talk of
    strengthening the ``pragmatists'' in North Korea. Let me ask
    you about those winds of change that you saw in North Korea.
    Could you explain those to me a little bit?
        Mr. Harrison. I too have had conversation with Hwang Jang-
    yop, about four or five of them, when he was in North Korea and
    after he has come to South Korea. I think that what you have
    said is not--I take exception to some of what you said but not
    all. Certainly it is true that the regime wants to survive, and
    therefore they want to get what they can get to survive from
    us, from others. But at the same time in order to survive they
    recognize that they need a lot of things. They need to change a
    lot of the way they do things, so that is why we have had
    economic reform, fits and starts, going forward, going back,
    and so he is riding a tiger. Kim Jong Il is riding a tiger; the
    leadership is riding a tiger. They want to keep the perks they
    have and the generals are all involved in economic
    conglomerates. One general controlling the gold exports, and
    another the zinc exports, and no questions that the leadership
    has--the elite has perks it wants to preserve.
        But their dilemma is that they have to make changes to keep
    the place going. When there is a famine they had to permit
    private markets to develop, and they did, and the ones who
    wanted to see things move in that direction used the famine to
    let that process start.
        Mr. Royce. Well, but let me a question here.
        Mr. Harrison. You cannot be a little bit pregnant, so there
    gradually is a marketization process. So anyway a complicated
    situation.
        Mr. Royce. But if we go back to Hwang Jang-yop, I think he
    gave me the number of 1.9 million. That is the number of people
    who starved in North Korea or he believed starved officially in
    North Korea because they were not wedded to the idea that they
    had to use it to feed that part of the population. As he
    explained to me, the aid was to go to the party to keep it in
    power. And one of the things that reminded me of it, just now I
    thought of this.
        Years ago I read a book by Jean-Francois Revel, How
    Democracies Perish. He talked about Lenin's new economic policy
    and Stalin's reforms, and how the real intention there was to
    bring in capital from Europe, from the U.K., from the West. Not
    with the intention of changing the regime, but with the
    intention of getting their hands on the hard currency while
    they built up the Red Army. And of course that is certainly--
    ever since we discovered the situation in Syria, on the banks
    of the Euphrates that there was sort of a carbon copy of the
    plutonium reactor; in the middle of negotiations North Korea
    was developing that offensive capability for another state. It
    really turns a lot of our thoughts to what might be done in
    terms of those proliferation networks, and especially with the
    tentacles really that they have on the criminal activity, the
    way in which they proliferate missiles, drugs and so forth,
    that gives them the network to do things like what they did.
        We do have initiatives to stop that kind of contraband,
    that illicit activity on the high seas, which then constricts
    the hard currency. It limits their ability to fund, according
    to some defectors that I have talked to who worked in the
    military operations, limits their ability to fund their missile
    productions, their nuclear weapons product. Because when they
    run out of the hard currency, I mean, when they seize--Banco
    Delta Asia, when those accounts were seized, not just there but
    when China shut down the accounts everything had to come a
    grinding halt inside the country.
        So I am just explaining the other part of this negotiation.
    I think when President Lee Myung Bak tries to establish a two-
    way street to negotiations and you say, Well, that is
    ``disastrous'' to try to do that. We have a great deal of
    experience with the one-way street going back many, many years.
    So I just raise these questions for your consideration.
        I have been on this committee since 1993. And I remember
    the framework agreement. I had high hopes. I have been to North
    Korea. I have been to South Korea many times in hopes that
    things would change. But the more I look at it the more I think
    that what this former secretary general for internal affairs
    told me might just be right.
        Mr. Harrison. I greatly appreciate these very thoughtful
    comments and I will certainly think about what you have said. I
    also--you know, when I met--I had written about my
    conversations with Hwang Jang-yop in my book, Korean End Game,
    and one of his points he made to me was that he thinks Kim Jong
    Il, he does not like Kim Jong Il because he found him a very
    manipulative man, and he did not get along with him. But he did
    say very clearly that Kim Jong Il recognizes the need for
    reform of the system, economic system in particular, in North
    Korea, but he is afraid to go too fast because he is sitting on
    a political volcano and Kim Jong Il is afraid where this may
    lead. So he is riding a tiger and he is trying to open the
    system up without losing power, and I think that was a very
    clear analysis by Hwang Jang-yop, and it is borne out by my
    impressions.
        You know, I have gone there now 11 times since 1972. You
    have been there. Each time there are a lot of things you cannot
    do, but there are some things you can do and you gradually
    build up various kinds of contacts, and there is no question
    the place has changed a great deal, and is changing. You know,
    in the days of cell phones and all the technology that has
    changed, and the fact that you have got a Chinese underground
    smuggling.
        Mr. Royce. Right.
        Mr. Harrison. And you have----
        Mr. Royce. I understand. I just did not see that change in
    the countryside.
        Mr. Harrison. All that stuff is coming in and the place is
    changing.
        Mr. Royce. But the change I saw was the amount of hard
    currency they now have to develop their ICBM program, to
    develop their nuclear program. And I notice that that has not
    changed, and the assertion made by former defectors that that
    has always been the plan leads us then with a certain
    conundrum.
        You say that you pushed the idea of renewed missile
    negotiations hard with the North Koreans. As I recall the
    negotiation, the North Koreans were asking for $1 billion
    annually to curtail its missile proliferation. Do you believe
    this is why we have seen missile activity from the North
    Koreans?
        Mr. Harrison. Well, they were trying to replace the--they
    wanted to have the income they would lose from the missile
    exports that you correctly call attention to, they wanted to
    have that lost income covered in some way, and various people
    like James Goodby, you may know of, the former State Department
    top arms control negotiator, has worked with Senator Lugar and
    others to try to develop at that time of these negotiations,
    develop programs for constructively diverting----
        Mr. Royce. Yes.
        Mr. Harrison [continuing]. Their capabilities to civilian
    uses, but you know, certainly what you said about hard
    currency, I would have to see it in writing, but there is
    certainly a lot to what you say, so I do not wish to suggest a
    one-dimensional approach on my part.
        Mr. Royce. I understand, and let me say that----
        Mr. Harrison. Let me tell you the place has changed a great
    deal and is changing a great deal. That is what we are working
    for, and that is what we have to keep our eye on.
        Mr. Royce. That is true, but the change that could be made
    if, for example, the Kaesong Industrial Park. If the money from
    Kaesong went not to the party, if it went instead to the
    workers, that might indeed begin to walk down a road of change.
    But instead we have this interesting arrangement very
    reminiscent of what happened, you know, in Russia in the
    thirties where the money is paid to the state. The money is
    paid to the government. It goes right to the party's account,
    and they then decide the pittance they will pay the workers.
        So getting change in that kind of an arrangement is much
    more problematic and that is why I think at times there has to
    be pressure brought to bear when it becomes too much of a one-
    way street. Hence the requirement, in my mind, that you
    actually get verification. Your concept there we give them $1
    billion, they do not proliferate. If we could verify that, it
    would be one thing. But since they have violated all the prior
    agreements, at least in my memory, they proliferate anyway in
    the middle of negotiations, the upshot could be they have $1
    billion for their new ICBM program, and we think we have got an
    agreement that they are going to not proliferate anymore while
    they do exactly what they did with respect to Syria. Hence my
    concern on this perspective.
        Mr. Harrison. There was no fissile material to make four to
    five to six nuclear weapons at the end of the agreed framework
    period. It worked.
        Mr. Royce. Plutonium, on plutonium. The question is
    enriched uranium, and you know the debate on that because----
        Mr. Harrison. Are you changing the subject? That is the----
        Mr. Royce. No, that is not changing the subject. That is
    ignoring a very important part of this subject which might be
    this: Maybe they are willing to give up the old reactor that is
    in plain view because we have found so much traces of enriched
    uranium on documents that they have actually got an enriched
    uranium program going simultaneously. Why else, why else would
    the Pakistani nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, be in consultation,
    be sending centrifuges to North Korea unless the concept was
    let us develop the kind of uranium enrichment program that will
    give us an alternative weapon besides the plutonium weapon.
    That is really what concerns us, is the fact that we do not
    have this ability to verify and they have a dual-track program
    apparently. Hence they might be willing to negotiate this for
    $1 billion, and put this into a program where they could
    develop an arsenal, miniaturize it, do the ICBMs, and suddenly
    we have compounded the problem.
        Mr. Harrison. If you ever have a chance to read it, I hope
    you will read the piece I did in Foreign Affairs in early 2005,
    I think everything I said in that piece about the exaggerated
    intelligence, about this uranium program has been fully
    vindicated, and I do not accept--I do not know how much time
    the chairman wants to give me and to take on this issue, but
    just to be very brief I do think that the----
        Mr. Faleomavaega. We have two more panels coming up, Mr.
    Harrison.
        Mr. Harrison. I know that. I am well known to believe that
    the assumption of any kind of weapons grade uranium program is
    not at all substantiated, and was basically used as an excuse
    to abrogate the agreed framework in December 2002 which has had
    disastrous consequences in allowing them to restart their
    plutonium program.
        Mr. Royce. Well, in 2007, the intelligence community told
    the Senate Armed Services Committee that there was ``mid-
    confidence level'' that North Korea still had an active HEU
    program. This provided ammunition for critics, I think, of the
    Bush administration, feeding a narrative that the Bush
    administration hyped the intelligence. But in the last days of
    the administration, National Security Advisor Steve Hadley
    revived the allegations on HEU. Now, this is our intelligence
    community. And they report ``increasing concerns that North
    Korea has an ongoing covert uranium enrichment program.''
        I did a lot of work on A.Q. Khan, and the part--you know,
    because I happened to chair that International Terrorism and
    Nonproliferation Committee. The aspect of Khan's engagement
    with North Korea, the trips up there by the Pakistanis and the
    number of trips, the exchange of information for missiles, the
    centrifuges. All of this convinces me at least that, yes,
    indeed they were in the process of trying to develop this. I
    must say what benefit of the doubt I was willing to give the
    North Koreans kind of evaporated at the point when the Syrian
    reactor turned out to be something they were doing under the
    nose of the international community. It seems to really verify
    the fact that dishonesty is part of the negotiation strategy on
    that side of the table. That is my perspective.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. I thank the gentlemen from California for
    his questions, and Mr. Harrison, I want to thank you. Dana, did
    you have anymore questions? Okay.
        Thank you again for coming to testify before the
    subcommittee, and we look forward continuing our dialogue and
    see where we need to go from there. Thank you again, Mr.
    Harrison.
        I am going to be a little flexible this afternoon by rather
    than dividing this into two panels, let us have all our next
    witnesses up here on the witness table. Ambassador Pritchard,
    Dr. Victor Cha, Mr. Bruce Klingner, Mr. Scott Snyder and Mr.
    Peter Beck, are all our witnesses here. We may be short of
    microphones here. Can we get another microphone there? We only
    have four microphones. Can we get another microphone?
        All right, we certainly want to welcome our distinguished
    witnesses this afternoon, and thank you so much for taking your
    time from your busy schedules to come and testify before the
    subcommittee.
        Ambassador Pritchard is the President of the Korea Economic
    Institute here in Washington, DC, and also he was the visiting
    fellow of the Brookings Institution. Ambassador Pritchard
    served as Ambassador and Special Envoy for negotiations with
    the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the United
    States, representative to the Korean Peninsula Energy
    Development Organization during the administration of George W.
    Bush.
        Previously he served also as special assistant to the
    President for the National Security Affairs and Senior Director
    of the Asian Affairs under President Clinton. He also has
    accompanied Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to North
    Korea for the meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
        Ambassador Pritchard holds a degree from Mercer University
    in Georgia and also a master's in International Studies from
    the University of Hawaii. Well, okay. And also a retired
    colonel in the U.S. Army, 28 years of service.
        Also with us is Dr. Victor Cha. Dr. Victor Cha received his
    doctorate from Columbia University as well as his bachelor;
    received his master's from Oxford University. I assume he has a
    British accent by now. He is the director of Asian Studies and
    holds the D.S. Song-Korea Foundation chair in the Department of
    Government and School of Foreign Service here at Georgetown
    University. He left the White House in May 2007 and served
    since 2004 as Director of Asian Affairs at the National
    Security Council, and was also responsible primarily for the
    Pacific region as well as Pacific Island nations.
        Professor Cha has also received an award for his latest
    work or book that he authored. It is called Alignment Despite
    Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle.
    Professor Cha is a former John M. Olin National Security Fellow
    at Harvard University, two-time Fulbright Scholar, and Hoover
    National Fellow at Stanford University.
        Mr. Bruce Klingner joined the Heritage Foundation in 2007
    when the Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons
    programs were re-energized by the Beijing Agreement.
        Mr. Klingner served for 20 years as a U.S. Intelligence
    Officer with the Central Intelligence Agency--did I say that
    correctly? And the Defense Intelligence Agency. In 1994, he was
    the selected as the Chief of the Korean Branch where he
    provided analytical reports on military developments during the
    nuclear crisis with North Korea.
        There is a whole bunch of stuff here. Graduate of
    Middlebury College in Vermont; active in the Korean martial
    arts. Sure hate to meet you in the dark alleys--attained a
    black belt status in tae kwon do and hapkido--wow. How about
    hikido?
        Mr. Peter Beck, Mr. Peter Beck teaches at American
    University here in Washington, DC and also Ewha University in
    Seoul, Korea, puts out a monthly column for Weekly Chosun and
    The Korean Herald. Previously, he was the executive director of
    the U.S. Committee on Human Rights in North Korea; has written
    over 100 academic and short articles in four languages. I
    assume English, of course, Korean, and it has got to be Chinese
    as well, graduate of the University of California at Berkeley,
    and UC San Diego's Graduate School of International Relations.
        Mr. Scott Snyder, welcome, is the Director of the newly-
    established Center for U.S.-Korea Policy at The Asia
    Foundation, and a Senior Associate at The Asia Foundation and
    Pacific Forum CSIS. He is also Adjunct Senior Fellow at the
    Korean Studies and Director of the Independent Task Force on
    Policy Towards the Korean Peninsula at the Council on Foreign
    Relations. He is based here in Washington, DC; lived in Seoul,
    Korea, as Korea Representative of The Asia Foundation, all
    kinds of goodies you have got here, Mr. Snyder.
        Received his undergraduate studies from Rice University, a
    master's in regional studies at Harvard, and a recipient of the
    Pantech Visiting Fellow at Stanford University.
        Gentlemen, welcome. After saying all of that, we will be
    very well informed by your testimonies this afternoon.
    Gentlemen, I know you have been sitting there for quite awhile.
    Forgive us for having to ask so many questions of Mr. Harrison,
    but I am sure you will correct some of the observations and
    some of the comments that he had made earlier.
        I think Ambassador Pritchard has a plane to catch. Who else
    has a plane to catch? Great. Ambassador Pritchard, why don't we
    not  deg.start off with you. As I said earlier,
    without objections all your statements will be made part of the
    record, fully.

      STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE CHARLES L. PRITCHARD, PRESIDENT,
     KOREA ECONOMIC INSTITUTE (FORMER AMBASSADOR AND SPECIAL ENVOY
                   FOR NEGOTIATIONS WITH NORTH KOREA)

        Mr. Pritchard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to
    discuss with your subcommittee an important foreign policy
    issue facing our Nation and our new administration. I commend
    the committee for holding this hearing and asking the witnesses
    today to address the issue of smart power because that is
    exactly what is required of the administration in formulating
    its policy toward North Korea. With your permission and to stay
    within the time allotted, I will present a summary of my
    prepared statement.
        North Korea presents a special challenge, one that has
    evolved and has become more dangerous over the past several
    years. Secretary Clinton and President Obama have indicated
    that they continue to value the Six-Party process and will
    enhance cooperation and coordination with our allies, South
    Korea and Japan. That is a good start.
        But let me suggest while the Six-Party process is focused
    on capping future plutonium production, it has failed to
    adequately address proliferation concerns. In World At Risk:
    The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD
    Proliferation and Terrorism, the commission concluded that
    unless the world community acts decisively and with great
    urgency it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass
    destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the
    world by the end of 2013.
        Proliferation should be one of our most important concerns.
    Unfortunately, the Six-Party process, unless modified to
    accommodate all our WMD concerns, has put us on a slow
    incremental path that ultimately does not guarantee the
    denuclearization of North Korea. Phase III, as you know, is the
    dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear facilities at Pyongyang.
    While dismantlement may be part of the ultimate and
    irreversible solution, it does not really get us any closer to
    our goal of actual denuclearization and it does not
    substantially improve the reality that disablement under Phase
    II has already capped North Korea's plutonium production
    capability.
        Do we really want North Korea to continue thinking of
    itself as a nuclear weapon state as we negotiate for the
    dismantlement of the facilities that are already shutdown and
    disabled? It will make the final decision by North Korea to
    give up its fissile material and weapons that much harder. I
    see no substantive reason to enter into a Phase III negotiation
    over dismantlement. It will most likely turn out to be an
    unnecessary waste of several years of negotiations. Both sides
    should move directly to what we both actually want--removal of
    fissile material and nuclear weapons from the DPRK in exchange
    for normalization.
        Now, that may not sound very palatable at first offering,
    but North Korea has been clear with United States negotiators
    and directly with me last April, Pyongyang does not intend to
    discuss let alone give up its nuclear weapons in Phase III. It
    intends to hold onto them as long as possible. It is in our
    interest to move boldly toward the end game as quickly as
    possible by agreeing to move directly to discussions over
    normalization. Issues that previously were put off for the sake
    of momentum must now be captured as part of the normalization
    agenda.
        That means we should have no hesitancy in discussing our
    concerns about Pyongyang's human rights shortcomings.
    Nonproliferation treaty exceptions for Pyongyang should cease,
    and we should insist on a normal and active role for IAEA
    inspectors.
        What I am suggesting is a more robust bilateral discussion
    between Washington and Pyongyang while remaining in the overall
    framework of the Six-Party process. This places a leadership
    responsibility on the United States that I believe is best
    accomplished by the appointment of a senior envoy who would
    navigate the complexities and interests of the many agencies
    that contribute to the development of a cohesive United States
    policy toward North Korea.
        Because there is actual value in the Six-Party process, the
    envoy would have the concurrent requirement to assist the
    Secretary of State in coordinating the common goals and
    objectives of the other members of the Six-Party process,
    particularly those of Seoul and Tokyo.
        The North Korea problem requires we understand our allies'
    concerns and be able to create a synergistic effect to maximize
    the probability for success. The promise of the Six-Party
    process has not yet been fulfilled. We cannot hope to succeed
    in our goal of denuclearization of North Korea without the full
    support of our close allies. An important challenge the United
    States will face in the coming months will be to assist and,
    where necessary, to insist that dialogue and relations between
    North and South Korea improve as dialogue and relations between
    the United States and North Korea improve. It is not productive
    nor reasonable for inter-Korean relations to deteriorate as
    United States-North Korea relations improve.
        The same is true for Japan-North Korea relations. Tokyo is
    looking carefully at the new U.S. administration and will want
    to know that we continue to value Japan's participation in the
    Six-Party process. Specifically, Tokyo needs reassurance that
    the Obama administration fully understands the emotional,
    political sensitivity of the abduction issue in the light of
    the removal of North Korea from the list of state sponsors of
    terrorism last October.
        One of the casualties of focusing exclusively on capping of
    North Korea's plutonium program has been the absence of a
    discussion about Pyongyang's maturing missile program. That has
    not taken place since November 2000. Cessation of Pyongyang's
    indigenous missile development along with their assistance to
    other countries must be part of our overall policy approach to
    North Korea.
        The challenges are great, the outcome is uncertain, but the
    requirement that we use smart power to the fullest is
    unquestioned. Failure to denuclearization North Korea is not an
    option.
        I look forward to your questions, sir.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Pritchard
    follows:]

        Mr. Faleomavaega. Thank you, Ambassador. Professor Cha.

     STATEMENT OF VICTOR CHA, PH.D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DIRECTOR
    OF ASIAN STUDIES AND D.S. SONG-KOREA, FOUNDATION CHAIR IN ASIAN
             STUDIES AND GOVERNMENT, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

        Mr. Cha. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the
    opportunity to appear before you today. I wanted to offer my
    personal thoughts on North Korea based on my experience working
    this issue for the White House on the National Security
    Council, and also as our deputy head of delegation to the Six-
    Party Talks, and also based on my research on the country as an
    author and academic. I will focus my remarks on next steps
    where we go with North Korea in Six-Party Talks and I will
    present a summary of my prepared statement to you.
        I think the United States would be best served by following
    the basic outlines of the policy that characterized the second
    term of the Bush administration with some notable exceptions.
    President Obama will inherit a Six-Party process that has
    effectively mobilized key regional players, most importantly,
    China, and has achieved a working disablement of the main
    nuclear facility at Yongbyon.
        President Obama's very capable Asian team will need to
    implement the verification protocol for the North Nuclear
    Declaration as early as possible to ensure that plutonium
    facilities at Yongbyon are constantly monitored and degraded.
    The administration should also consider widening the aperture
    to achieve disablement of other elements of the North's nuclear
    program at Yongbyon even as it negotiates a tough position on
    verification.
        The third phase or dismantlement negotiation will be even
    more difficult than the prior two negotiated agreements, the
    September 2005 agreement and the February 2007 agreement. A key
    priority will be to address the ambiguities left by the earlier
    agreements on North Korea's proliferation activities and its
    uranium-based nuclear activities.
        In addition to pursuing this Six-Party track, I believe the
    Obama administration needs to consider a paradigm shift of
    sorts in its overall policy toward the DPRK. This consists of
    three components.
        First, it must find a way to integrate a discussion on
    North Korea's ballistic missile program in the Six-Party
    process. Press reports show North Korea is plowing full steam
    ahead with its missile activities even as it negotiates a
    disablement of its nuclear program. This might be added as
    another working group in the Six-Party process in addition to
    the five that already exists. It is clear that Pyongyang will
    not give up its missiles for free so the United States must tie
    the missile negotiations to incentives in the normalization and
    energy working group processes.
        Second, the administration needs to consider a separate
    trilateral dialogue among the United States, South Korea and
    China. The North Korean leader's time in office is limited
    given his rather serious health problems. While the United
    States and South Korea have restarted discussions on how to
    respond to a sudden collapse scenario north of the 38th
    parallel, they also need to begin a quiet discussion with
    China. The purpose of such a discussion would be to create some
    transparency about the relative priorities and likely first
    actions by the three parties in response to signs of political
    instability in the North.
        Presumably we would be interested in securing nuclear
    weapons and materials. South Korea would be interested in
    restoring domestic stability. China would be interested in
    securing its borders against the massive influx of refugees.
    Coordination in advance helps to minimize misperceptions and
    miscalculation in a crisis.
        Third, the Obama administration should not make a
    presidential meeting or anything of that nature with the North
    Koreans, the banner of its policy as it did during the
    campaign. This is not in the interest of the United States or
    South Korea. Some may argue that an early meeting by the
    President or Vice President might be a good way to accelerate
    the negotiation process. In my own opinion, nothing could be
    further from the truth. The President of the United States is
    not a negotiator nor should he be treated as one.
        Only after the denuclearization process is near completion
    should a presidential meeting even be considered. Hardliners in
    Pyongyang will view the new Obama Presidency as weak since
    electoral victories do not resonate with dictators. They will
    also see it as inexperienced and completely overwhelmed by two
    wars and a financial crisis. To offer a high-level meeting
    amidst this very difficult situation would not only look
    amateurish, it would confirm the hardliners' views of American
    weakness and inexperience.
        There is no denying, however, that if we want to move the
    denuclearization process more quickly we do need to reach
    higher into the Kim Jong leadership beyond the foreign ministry
    officials that they have been trotting out for the last 16
    years.
        In the course of the Six-Party Talks, when the North Korea
    were slow to make decisions, we often challenged them to bring
    people from the Dear Leader's Office or from their National
    Defense Commission to their delegation in Beijing to make
    quicker decision, and we pointed to our own interagency team of
    State, the White House and the Pentagon. This is why President
    Obama needs to move forward with the appointment of a senior
    envoy for Six-Party Talks. The Congress has long sought a
    senior coordinator on North Korea policy from the Bush
    administration. Such an appointment, whether from the White
    House or State Department, would compel Pyongyang to bring
    forth members of its National Defense Commission and other key
    agencies to negotiate in earnest for a final solution,
    otherwise the same foreign ministry officials from Pyongyang
    will show up at Six-Party Talks to stall and to stonewall the
    negotiations.
        Sending the new American President to North Korea is not
    the answer, but challenging North Korea to bring people to the
    Six-Party Talks who can make real decision is.
        In sum, the new administration should not be wide-eyed
    optimists about North Korea. Instead, they should design a
    strategy that systematically tests North Korea but also
    demonstrates U.S. political commitment to the negotiation
    process. If Pyongyang is serious, then the Six-Party partners
    can press the negotiation harder, trying to move to the final
    phase of nuclear dismantlement. However, if Pyongyang balks,
    then it will be clear to all where the blame sits for the
    breakdown of the agreement. This, in turn, would make it easier
    to build or lead a multilateral coalition for a tougher course
    of action as needed.
        Thank you very much.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Cha
    follows:]

        Mr. Faleomavaega. Thank you Professor Cha. Mr. Klingner.

       STATEMENT OF MR. BRUCE KLINGNER, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW,
                NORTHEAST ASIA, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION

        Mr. Klingner. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
    distinguished members of the subcommittee for asking me to
    testify today. It is indeed a great honor to appear before you.
    With your permission, I will summarize some of the key points
    from my prepared statement in my oral remarks.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Please proceed.
        Mr. Klingner. Thank you, sir.
        The views expressed in this testimony are my own and should
    not be construed as representing any official position of The
    Heritage Foundation.
        In the dawn of a new year and a new U.S. administration, we
    can again be hopeful of a diplomatic solution to the North
    Korean nuclear problem, but of all the foreign policy
    challenges that Barack Obama inherited, North Korea may prove
    to be the most intractable. Neither the confrontational
    approach of the first 6 years of the Bush administration nor
    the largely unconditional engagement strategy of the final 2
    Bush years achieved success.
        But a U.S. policy that integrates a comprehensive
    diplomatic approach with accompanying pressure may prove
    successful, particularly if closely coordinated with our
    allies--South Korea and Japan. Still, prudence demands that we
    remember the broken promises and shattered dreams that litter
    the Korean landscape. North Korea has already sent an early
    shot across the Obama administration's bow by raising
    outrageous new demands for fulfilling its previously agreed
    upon denuclearization commitments.
        And Pyongyang's vitriolic attacks, military threats, and
    near severing of relations when South Korea and Japan merely
    requested conditionality and reciprocity bodes ill for those of
    us hoping North Korea will accept future requirements during
    the Six-Party Talks. Pyongyang is clearly signaling that it
    will not adopt a more accommodating stance despite the change
    in U.S. administrations.
        Although there will be a perception of a major shift in
    U.S. policy, President Obama will largely maintain the policy
    of the final 2 years of the Bush administration. Although
    President Obama may be more willing to engage in senior-level
    diplomatic engagement, it is questionable whether such tactical
    changes will achieve verifiable North Korean denuclearization.
    After all, during the past 2 years the Bush administration
    engaged in the kind of direct bilateral diplomacy with
    Pyongyang that President Obama now advocates. Yet there has
    been continued North Korea intransigence, noncompliance and
    brinkmanship.
        And turning to verification, creating a sufficiently
    rigorous verification system is critically important as the
    best defense against North Korea violating yet another
    international nuclear agreement. U.S. national technical means,
    including imagery satellites, are useful, but they are no
    substitute for on-site inspections. It is now clear that the
    Bush administration, in return for maintaining a sense of
    progress, was willing to abandon key verification requirements
    such as short-notice challenge inspections of non-declared
    facilities. The United States simply cannot allow North Korea
    to play a nationwide nuclear version of Whack-A-Mole or Three
    Card Monty.
        Washington's premature removal of North Korea from the
    terrorist list angered key allies Japan and South Korea, who
    now see the United States as unwilling to consider their
    security concerns. In particular, Tokyo felt betrayed by
    President Bush breaking his personal pledge that the United
    States would keep North Korea on the terrorist list until
    progress was achieved on the abduction issue. Tokyo has now
    lost considerable leverage in its attempts to get North Korea
    to live up to its commitment to reopen the kidnapping
    investigations, and of course the abduction issue is already
    part of the Six-Party Talks as one of the working groups.
        The verification agreement also undermined South Korean
    President Lee Myung Bak's attempts to impose conditionality,
    reciprocity, and transparency on Seoul's previously
    unrestricted economic largess to North Korea.
        As President Obama attempts the difficult task of making
    real progress in North Korean denuclearization, he should look
    to history for guidance, and history clearly advises that he
    should avoid several current recommendations. Specifically, he
    should not double down on a losing hand. The limited action-
    for-action strategy of the Six-Party Talks has failed, so some
    advocate broadening the scope of benefits to offer North Korea
    on an even larger deal.
        Secondly, provide concessions to strengthen so-called North
    Korean engagers. North Korea intransigence has been depicted as
    a short-term manifestation of a hard-line faction, with Kim
    Jong Il having fallen under the influence of North Korean
    neoconservatives. Based on my service in the United States
    intelligence community, I believe that that concept has been
    overplayed and in actuality is largely a North Korean
    negotiating tactic.
        Third, use creative ambiguity to maintain ``progress'' in
    negotiations. U.S. negotiators have repeatedly acquiesced to
    North Korean demands for vague text rather than clearly
    delineating requirements and timelines.
        And fourth, sacrifice U.S. allies on the alter of
    denuclearization.
        Now, what should be done? President Obama and Congress
    should emphasize that the United States seeks to use diplomacy
    to achieve North Korean denuclearization, but not at the cost
    of abandoned principles or dangerously insufficient compliance.
    Specifically, the U.S. should affirm the U.S. objective is the
    complete and verifiable denuclearization of North Korea and
    unequivocally state that Washington will not accept North Korea
    as a nuclear weapon state, as Secretary Clinton did during her
    confirmation testimony.
        Two, use all the instruments of national power. It has a
    new label now of ``smart power,'' but it is a concept that has
    been around before and previously was know as using all the
    instruments of national power. The U.S. military even had an
    acronym of DIME, D-I-M-E, diplomatic, informational, military,
    and economic, in the sense of a coordinated integrated
    strategy. The United States and its allies should also
    simultaneously use outside pressure to influence North Korea's
    negotiating behavior.
        Third, insist that North Korea fulfill its existing
    requirements.
        Fourth, realizing that talking is not progress. The U.S.
    should resolve issues rather than repeatedly lowering the bar
    simply to maintain the negotiating process.
        Fifth, insist on a rigorous and intrusive verification
    mechanism.
        Six, define red lines and their consequences. The Bush
    administration's failure to impose costs on North Korea for
    proliferating nuclear technology to Syria undermined U.S.
    credibility and sent a dangerous signal to other potential
    proliferators.
        And seven, establish deadlines with repercussions for
    failing to meet them. North Korea must not be allowed to drag
    out the Six-Party Talks indefinitely in order to achieve de
    facto international acceptance as a nuclear weapon state.
        In conclusion, it is not a question of whether the United
    States should engage North Korea, rather it is a matter of how
    to do so. Engagement is a means rather than an ends, and it is
    also important to control the ways in which it is applied.
    While the United States should continue to strive for
    diplomatic solution to the North Korea nuclear problem, the
    Obama administration should also accept that there may not be a
    magical combination of inducements that ensures North Korea
    abandons its nuclear weapons.
        Therefore, the United States should quietly even now begin
    contingency planning, in conjunction with our Asian allies, in
    the event of a failure of the Six-Party Talks to achieve full
    North Korean denuclearization.
        Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I
    look forward to your questions, sir.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Klingner
    follows:]

        Mr. Faleomavaega. Thank you, Mr. Klingner. Mr. Snyder.

    STATEMENT OF MR. SCOTT SNYDER, SENIOR ASSOCIATE, INTERNATIONAL
                     RELATIONS, THE ASIA FOUNDATION

        Mr. Snyder. I also want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
    opportunity to testify before this subcommittee, and my remarks
    will also be based on my testimony that I have submitted.
        I think the North Korean challenge has in fact grown more
    difficult with the transition to a new administration. The
    North Koreans have sought to make permanent a new status quo in
    which North Korean's nuclear weapon status is recognized by the
    international community while leading analysts are increasingly
    skeptical that North Korea can be convinced to give up its
    nuclear weapons. This is a dangerous dynamic which must be
    corrected by a policy that shows continuing efforts to address
    denuclearization in the context of a comprehensive approach to
    North Korea, not simply by pursuing the denuclearization only
    approach that has characterized the administration's early
    statements on the North Korea issue.
        A comprehensive approach, I would agree with Mr. Pritchard,
    will require effective coordination across the government to
    lead interagency coordination, promote coordination with allies
    and other stakeholders, and negotiate with North Korean
    counterparts, and so we do need a point person, I think, for
    the Obama administration who has the capacity to carry-out
    these functions following a similar approach to that which the
    administration is using in the Middle East and in Afghanistan
    and Pakistan.
        Past administrations have attempted over the course of the
    past two decades to present two paths to North Korea: To
    dramatize the need for the North Korea to make a strategic
    choice with the idea that either rewards will be forthcoming if
    North Korea chooses the right road or that isolation and
    sanctions will be imposed if North Korea chooses the wrong
    road.
        But this model has failed to mobilize sufficient will on
    the part of the United States and other parties to backup the
    assertion that North Korea has reached a decision point and has
    place the onus on North Korea to decide while allowing North
    Korea to harbor false hope that such a choice might be deferred
    or avoided.
        At this stage I think a better approach would be to seek
    affirmation from other members of the Six-Party Talks that the
    principles embodied in the Six-Party Joint Statement of
    September 2005 now represent the only viable outcome acceptable
    to all the parties in the region, and that there will be only
    one road available by which to move toward that objective, via
    the consensus that is embodied in the Six-Party framework.
        I think that this is the path that Secretary Clinton
    rightly affirmed in testimony at her confirmation hearing, a
    path that will employ bilateral talks in tandem with the Six-
    Party process. Via these channels North Korea should no longer
    be presented with an opportunity to make a strategic choice but
    rather with a situation in which the strategic choice is
    recognized as a fait accompli, and the common task is to
    implement the consensus that all the parties have already
    agreed upon.
        Simultaneously the United States should be in coordination
    with allies and partners in Northeast Asia to foreclose any
    perceived North Korean alternative paths that might allow
    Pyongyang to sidestep negotiations or to arrive at the
    conclusion that there is a viable path for the North to survive
    as a nuclear weapon state.
        These coordination measures will be necessary to underscore
    to Pyongyang that there is no only one path available that will
    assure North Korea's viability in the long run.
        As long as North Korea's public commitments to the
    denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula as outlined in the
    Six-Party Joint Statement remains in place the administration
    should affirm its commitments to achieving normal diplomatic
    relations with a denuclearized North Korea in accordance with
    the principles embodied in the joint statement.
        In my statement I also discuss several other elements of
    the smart power approach to North Korea. One, which is
    emphasized in this one-road approach, is related to aligning
    U.S. alliances and partnerships, but there are three other
    elements that I would like to also highlight.
        One is our strategy related to international development as
    focus on North Korea has prioritized the provision of
    humanitarian aid but it has not allowed the opportunity to
    promote development assistance, and I think the net result of
    that approach has been anything but smart. It has promoted
    North Korean dependency on international welfare rather than
    encouraging them to learn how to work for themselves, and so I
    think we need to find ways of tying certain forms of
    development assistance to the denuclearization process as a way
    to open up North Korea.
        Secondly, I think in the area of public diplomacy we should
    be much more actively promoting exchanges and training with
    North Koreans without regards to what is happening in the
    negotiation process. It is important to provide opportunities
    for the North Korean technical specialists to come and
    experience other systems. I think that they will take back that
    experience and that approach is necessary in order for North
    Korea to be able to build the capacity to support change if
    indeed the regime comes to a point where it decides it would
    like to move in the direction of change.
        Then lastly, I want to highlight the promotion of North
    Korea's economic integration into Northeast Asia and I think
    that one way of doing that is for the DPRK and the World Bank
    to begin discussions about the requirements for membership in
    the World Bank. Those requirements require a certain level of
    conditionality which is going to be very difficult for the
    North Koreans to accept. It will take time for that process to
    play itself out, but that discussion in and of itself, I think,
    can be an important lever for encouraging North Korean reform.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Snyder
    follows:]

        Mr. Faleomavaega. Thank you, Mr. Snyder. Mr. Beck.

       STATEMENT OF MR. PETER BECK, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, AMERICAN
                               UNIVERSITY

        Mr. Beck. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate this
    opportunity to get to participate in this effort to try and
    find a more effective strategy for dealing with North Korea.
        I would like to start by presenting you with seven
    propositions that I think help define where we currently stand
    with North Korea and constrain our policy options. The first
    is--I am personally agnostic when it comes to whether the North
    is really prepared to completely give up its nuclear programs,
    materials and weapons. I believe anyone who tells you with
    conviction what the North is or is not prepared to do is
    telling you more about their own world view than about
    Pyongyang's intentions.
        As time goes by and as North Korea's nuclear arsenal grows,
    I grow increasingly pessimistic, but that does not mean that we
    should stop trying to engage the North, alas any nuclear deal
    with the North would indeed to be to borrow from Samuel
    Johnson's adage about remarriage, the triumph of hope over
    experience.
        Second, one thing I am reasonably certain of is that, and
    there are a few things that we can be certain of when it comes
    to the North, is that they will undertake one or more
    provocative acts in the coming weeks and months. The rumor de
    jour is a long-range missile launch. A second nuclear test
    cannot be ruled out either. Given how poorly the previous
    missile and nuclear test went it is difficult to say which
    system in the North is more desperate to test.
        As a Californian, I do not stay up at night worrying about
    North Korean bombs raining down on my family and friends. A
    military skirmish with the South cannot be ruled out but I
    think it is less likely if for no other reason than it would
    highlight and give us further confirmation of the North's
    military inadequacies.
        Third, I think we must assume that Kim Jong Il has made a
    full recovery from his probable health problems last summer.
    Since he will soon be 67 or 68, depending on who you ask, and
    he is still not the picture of perfect health, we must be
    prepared for a serious disruption in any negotiations that we
    undertake, particularly given the underwhelming nature of his
    three sons and not, coincidentally, the lack of a clear
    succession plan. As long as he is reasonably healthy, I find
    assertions about a divide between hardliners and softliners in
    the North to be highly speculative at best, and at worst,
    disingenuous.
        The notion of factions in a one-man totalitarian system is
    almost absurd. This is not to say that the military has not
    played a more prominent role of late, but I think this is most
    likely by design. The North is probably playing a game of good
    cop/bad cop.
        Fourth, having made several visits over the past 5 years to
    the China/North Korea border where I have spoken with dozens of
    Chinese and North Koreans, the North is not on the precipitous
    of famine. There are two reasons for this. The North has had a
    decent harvest this past year, and China is covering much of
    the shortfall along with the world food program. That is not to
    say that there is sufficient food or that there are not pockets
    of hunger but wide-scale famine is not in the cards unless
    Mother Nature strikes hard.
        That means that the modest humanitarian assistance that the
    United States is currently providing, 500,000 metric tons of
    grain, is unlikely to provide much in the way of leverage over
    the North. The U.S. and the rest of the world have sought to
    maintain the Ronald Reagan principle of a hungry child knows no
    politics, but the reality is that the northern good behavior
    almost always precedes increased assistance.
        Fifth, while the human rights situation is as abysmal as
    Congress Royce just described, it must invariably take a back
    seat to our national security interests. The nuclear
    negotiations are too complex and difficult for the issue to
    become a focal point, but that is not to say that this issue
    should merely be given lip service by our diplomats. I was
    encouraged by this committee's efforts to re-authorize the
    North Korean Human Rights Act last fall. It took awhile but we
    finally put our money where our mouths are when it comes to
    making it easier for North Koreans to resettle in the United
    States.
        Increasing Korean language radio broadcast to the North is
    also a most worthy endeavor. The folks working at Voice of
    America and Radio Free Asia are impressive. I have listened to
    their broadcasts. I have evaluated those broadcasts. They are
    effective, and I have talked to North Korean defectors who have
    listened to them. They do have an impact.
        My biggest hope is that the funds will be more
    expeditiously allocated than they were in the original act and
    I hope that a full-time human rights envoy will be appointed
    instead of a part-timer residing in New York. I think two can
    play the good cop/bad cop game.
        My sixth proposition is that Japan will continue to be part
    of the problem in our engagement efforts rather than part of
    the solution. Despite being one of our most important allies,
    by allowing the abduction of a handful of citizens decades ago
    to dominate all policy considerations when it comes to the
    North Tokyo has become irrelevant at the Six-Party Talks. Most
    importantly, Japan took the biggest carrot the world had to
    offer the North, billions of dollars in development assistance
    in lieu of reparations for its colonial rule off the table.
    Pyongyang is either unwilling or unable to provide Tokyo with
    the evidence it demands. Removing North Korea from the list of
    state sponsors of terror did not weaken our negotiating
    position with the North as it was essentially a symbolic
    gesture, but it did lead to a sense of betrayal in Japan.
        My final proposition arguably describe the biggest
    constraint on our North Korea policy options. There are
    virtually no conditions under with Beijing will curtail much
    less cut off its assistance to North Korea. The Bush
    administration liked to insist that the reason North Korea came
    back to the negotiating table in late 2006 was because China
    had gotten tough at the North by backing the U.N.'s sanctions
    resolution. While Beijing was clearly not happy, the bottom
    line was that China never implemented the resolution nor was
    there any interruption in economic assistance from China.
        For China, stability on its northeastern border is far more
    important than denuclearization. Even in the face of a global
    economic crisis, Beijing appears willing to spend several
    billion dollars a year to prop up the North.
        These seven propositions leave us in an undeniably
    difficult but not impossible place. I would like to suggest a
    smart power strategy for negotiations with the North. It may
    very well be that in the end the North will try to play it both
    ways--continue to negotiate for goodies while never fully
    giving up its nuclear power. After all, that is what they have
    really been doing for the last 17 year. We may have to live
    with the fact that the talks are little more than crisis
    management mechanism, but managing a crisis is far better than
    ignoring it, and remarriages happen all the time. I am the
    product of three of them.
        At the core of smart power is leveraging our alliances. The
    one country I have left out of my discussion so far is the one
    government we can closely coordinate a potentially more
    effective policy with them and that is Seoul. Ironically, even
    though South Koreans have opted for a more conservative
    President and legislature and Americans the opposite, the
    prospects for effective coordination have never been better.
    That is because based on the world views President Obama and
    Lee Myung Bak have espoused to date and the foreign policy
    teams that they have put together both are pragmatic moderates.
        President Lee is a businessman, not an idealogue. I have
    met with him and his foreign policy team countless times.
    Liberals in Seoul and Selig Harrison blame them for the North's
    increasing bellicose policy toward the South, but really all
    President Lee and his team have done is recalibrate an
    unconditional engagement policy that has yielded Seoul little
    in return. A strong majority of the Korean public, to the
    extent that they even care about North Korea, continue to favor
    a more balanced policy toward Pyongyang. In fact, Seoul's
    approach is no different than the Obama administration's is
    likely to be.
        Given the lack of a major shift in South Korean policy, why
    has Pyongyang become so bellicose? For the simple reason that
    the North potentially has much to gain and little to lose.
    Despite all the North's rhetoric, the joint industrial complex
    in Kaeseong expanded its output by more than 20 percent last
    year, and South Korean NGOs have maintained their projects with
    the North. Like Obama, Lee refuses to let his antagonists get
    him worked up and has repeatedly stated that he will wait until
    the North comes around.
        What does the North have to gain? Really, the North has
    lost nothing. What do they have to gain? Besides trying to
    drive a wedge between us and Seoul, the North seeks a return to
    the era of ``No strings attached'' largess. The North only see
    Seoul as a cash register, not as a nuclear negotiating partner.
    Moreover, they also know that if they cut a deal with
    Washington, Seoul will have little choice but to pay for it.
        A second component of smart power is trying to engage our
    adversaries in negotiations, both multilaterally and
    bilaterally. Bilateral negotiations will likely prove to be the
    key to a breakthrough, but maintaining the Six-Party Talks and
    reinvigorating trilateral coordination between Washington,
    Seoul and Tokyo will also be vital. Even if we are essentially
    on the same page with the South, there are still fears that the
    Obama administration could get out in front.
        Before talks resume, it is imperative that the Secretary of
    State select a capable negotiator that has experience with the
    North. We simply do not have time for a new envoy to get to
    know his counterparts and learn how to effectively negotiate. I
    can think of at least six former government officials that
    would fit the bill, one of them is sitting at this table right
    now.
        However, given the daunting nature of the job, it may not
    be easy to find a taker. The North has no peers when it comes
    to insults and brinkmanship. Moreover, the heavy diplomatic
    lifting has only just begun. Based on the eight-stage
    negotiating formula that I worked on for the International
    Crisis Group a few years ago, we are only at the beginning of
    Phase III.
        I would like to close by sharing with you my favor Korean
    proverb, which can serve us not only in dealing with North
    Korea, but also in the broader economic challenges that we
    currently face, and that you will be voting on soon, ``Even
    when the sky comes crashing down, there is a hole through which
    we can pass.'' Please help the Obama administration find that
    hole. Thank you for your time.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Beck
    follows:]

        Mr. Faleomavaega. Can you say that in Korean?
        Mr. Beck. [Speaking Korean.]
        Mr. Faleomavaega. [Speaking Korean.]
        Well, now that Secretary of State Clinton is fully weighted
    now with all the tools that she needs before she goes to her
    trip in Asia. I want to thank all of you gentlemen. I think
    your statements were most eloquent and very insightful in terms
    of the issue that this committee is considering and looking and
    reviewing, and I certainly want to thank you for your
    testimonies. I am going to withhold my questions for now and
    turn to my faithful compadres here, to our ranking member, Mr.
    Manzullo, any questions?
        Mr. Manzullo. I had a chance to look at most of the
    testimony. I just want to make a couple of comments.
        First of all, Professor Beck, when I went to American
    University, I was the recipient of the studies of the Lord
    Lyndsey of Berker, who had just established the School of Asian
    Studies at American University, and William Yandolette who
    would have been Nixon's secretary of state had he won that
    election in 1960, and it was a very interesting time in
    American history.
        I had never realized that I would be in the position to be
    on that very committee studying some of those issues we had
    studied back then, but let me just throw something out to you.
    We have five scholars here, and we have press from all over the
    world, and most of them followed me when I brought Chris Hill
    out to Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois. I have gotten to
    know Ambassador Hill quite well, and the tremendous work that
    he put into the Six-Party Talks, moving incrementally, and
    under quite a bit of criticism from Americans on both sides of
    the political spectrum, which is the way things work when you
    have free and open press.
        Let me throw this out and anybody wants to handle it, you
    can do it. If you were in North Korea in a position of
    authority and understood the English language quite well, and
    listened to this distinguished panel and the comments made,
    what would you do if you were in charge of the next round of
    talks? Who would like to take a stab at that? Ambassador
    Pritchard is terrorized that he might be made the next
    Ambassador there, so if you do not want to handle it, that is
    possible, Ambassador. Yes?
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Will the gentleman yield?
        Mr. Manzullo. Yes. Yes.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. I would suggest that you be the leading
    envoy representing President Obama on both sides.
        Mr. Manzullo. Yes.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Okay.
        Mr. Manzullo. Who wants to take--who wants to be on the
    spot?
        Mr. Klingner. To paraphrase an old phrase, that analysts
    and fools go where angels fear to tread, I will jump in, sir.
        If I were advising Kim Jong Il, so thinking as a North
    Korean, what I would advise Kim Jong Il is that as much as he
    wants to ratchet up tension, as much as he wants to use his
    usual playbook of forcing either the South Korean or a United
    States leader to jump to his tune, that instead North Korea
    could be far more effective if they did not engage in
    brinkmanship right now. If they reached out to the U.S. and
    even adopted conciliatory approaches and offered concessions to
    the United States. That would invigorate engagers in the U.S.
    who would say this clearly shows that the problem has always
    been with the Bush administration. The problem did not lay at
    all with the North Koreans, and that this would lead the Obama
    administration to adopt a softer or more engaging or more
    conciliatory, whatever words you want to use, approach to North
    Korea than if North Korea is bombastic and threatening as they
    look like they are going to be.
        So if North Korea was more conciliatory, I think they would
    precipitate greater engagement not only in the Six-Party Talks,
    but perhaps in parallel lanes in the road of other
    negotiations--missiles or whatever. So I think a North Korean
    advisor could advise that but I do not think that is what Kim
    Jong Il will tend to do.
        Mr. Pritchard. If I may, the North Koreans do follow these
    hearings. They will look them up and they will read the
    testimony, so they will have the benefit of the discussion here
    today. But the one thing that they will go away with is a sense
    that this panel and your questions are leading to the path has
    been a little bit too narrow, and we certainly here have
    recommended opening that up, including more issues, whether it
    is missiles, proliferation, the question of HEU has to be
    brought up.
        So if you were sitting in Pyongyang, you would be re-
    calculating what you needed to do when the next American
    delegation came because it will not be where things left off,
    at least I do not think so. So they are going to have to think
    a little bit more broadly on how to handle all of these issues.
        Mr. Cha. I think that--I mean, I probably have this kind
    of--I have had the most recent experience of actually
    negotiating with the North Koreans in Six-Party Talks, and I
    have to say if I were them right now I would feel as though my
    long-term objective is well on the way to being achieved, which
    is to be accepted as a nuclear weapon state and to try to
    achieve as much of a working relationship with the rest of the
    world, including the United States, as I could, and I think we
    really hit a very important point in the verification
    negotiations in December 2008, because that would be the point
    at which the North really would have to show its cards. There
    are a lot of card-playing analogies, show its cards about
    whether it was serious about denuclearization, and I think it
    disappointed everybody, all the parties at the Six-Party Talks
    when they came in December 2008 and clearly were not ready to
    talk about verification.
        Mr. Snyder. I think that the North Koreans probably believe
    that their crisis escalation approach is working. I think they
    feel that they can keep this process going without facing a
    situation where they are going to have to make a real choice,
    and so I imagine that basically what Kim Jong Il and his
    advisors are looking for are the divisions that they can
    exploit. That is the reason why in my testimony I suggested
    really that we needed to focus on mobilizing a coalition,
    providing a way out but blocking the fire escape.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Mr. Beck, did you want to comment?
        Mr. Beck. I am ready for another question.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Dana?
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        I would like to raise an issue that I think is of utmost
    importance for us to look at rather than ignore. It is a very
    easy issue to ignore because it is only dealing with perhaps a
    small number of people, and the scope of the actual issue at
    hand seems to be tiny, but I believe that sometimes there are
    issues like this that can be of great importance because they
    relate directly to let us say the moral status or the moral
    situation at the heart of what is going on at the challenge,
    the heart of the challenge that people face. So let me just get
    right to it.
        Mr. Beck, you mentioned in passing how the Japanese
    Government has made such an issue over these kidnapped victims,
    their citizens who have been kidnapped by the Koreans and the
    North Koreans will not let them come back. Nobody else seems to
    think that is an important issue.
        Let me state for the record right now that I admire the
    Japanese for the fact that they will not simply ignore that 12
    of their citizens were kidnapped by this brutal gangster regime
    in North Korea, and that the North Koreans will now not give
    them back, and that they are willing to take a stand on that. I
    think that speaks very well of the Japanese, and I think it
    speaks very poorly of other people in this world who would
    simply gloss that over and say that does not matter.
        Well, it does matter. It matters because if we have a
    regime in North Korea which is basically headed by gangsters
    who would go and kidnap people from other countries, and then
    not give them back once they are trying to say, you know, we
    want to have a better relationship but we are not going to give
    back these people that we kidnapped, well, then that says we
    should not necessarily be treating them as a legitimate
    government. We should not be treating them as decent people or
    try to make deals. How can you make a deal with a regime in
    North Korea that refuses to even release 12 or 15 kidnapped
    victims from Japan? How can we trust them with the lives of
    hundred--not hundreds, but thousands, even tens of thousands
    and millions of people, in which an agreement with Korea would
    affect our security and certainly the security of South Korea
    and Japan, how can we trust them if they will not even give
    those people back?
        Now, that is number one and I would like to just throw that
    out to the panel, but make sure that this is clear. Our last
    witness, I respect him, he is obviously an expert, but he just
    exemplified that theory about trying to--just try to be nice.
    It is smart power--that is what we are talking about here--if
    smart power means just being nice and trying to get along and
    be cuddly, and warm and cuddly to the dictators and gangsters
    of this world, thinking that that is going to make us safer,
    they will fail, and quite usually--usually, I might add, the
    policy behind a warm and cuddly relationship with dictators
    usually there is some U.S. corporations that are benefitting
    behind that, I might add. Usually what you have got are
    corporate interests who are making a profit off dealing in a
    monopoly relationship with those decisions with that dictator,
    but I do not know about that in terms of the Korean situation.
    But I do know that the North Korean Government is still run by
    people who would not agree to give back kidnapped victims.
    Should that not be part of our consciousness when we are trying
    to make a deal with them?
        Mr. Beck. I certainly think it is important, but I think we
    have to establish priorities, and if we stick to this moral
    principle that until they completely come clean on this issue,
    and that prevents us from making progress on the nuclear issue,
    then we are undermining our own national security. The nuclear
    problem, you know, the first 6 years of----
        Mr. Rohrabacher. But how can you trust them to be honest
    with us on a nuclear issue when they will not even be honest
    with us for 12 kidnapped victims?
        Mr. Beck. You know, we could go into detail, but they
    actually did start the process of coming clean on this issue,
    and it was actually the Japanese that slept under the rug the
    evidence about Yokota Megumi that the remains that they
    received--we do not know whose remains they are. The Japanese
    Government reached its conclusion that they are not hers, but
    they are cremated remains. You cannot conduct a DNA test on
    cremated remains, yet they maintain that they are not her
    remains, and this fiction has been put onto the Japanese
    public.
        The North Koreans feel burned. They feel like they gave
    back remains, and let family----
        Mr. Rohrabacher. I have got to tell you something. When I
    see the nature of the Japanese Government and the amount of
    freedom they have in Japan as compared to the oppression and
    brutality of what is going on in North Korea, I am not going to
    give the benefit of the doubt to the North Koreans, that they
    are the ones who are in the right side of that argument, and it
    is the Japanese who are burning these sincere North Koreans who
    are trying to solve an issue.
        I have seen so much duplicity, and you always find this
    among gangsters and dictators. They are duplicitous. You cannot
    trust their word on things like this or anything else because
    they are willing to murder their own people. This regime that
    we are talking about in North Korea they are willing to starve
    their own people. The average height of the North Korean is two
    inches shorter than the people in South Korea because they have
    been squandering all the money that should be going to food for
    their people on weapons to give themselves power and leverage
    over other human beings.
        I think when you take moral stands, even when it is related
    to 12 people who have been kidnapped, that that moral stand
    will help guide you in big decisions that will be important
    like the nuclear weapons thing you are talking about. Cannot
    make a stand on one, you certainly cannot make a stand on the
    other.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. I thank the gentleman from California.
    This is why we have a democracy. Everybody is entitled to their
    opinion.
        Mr. Royce.
        Mr. Royce. Well, it is not always democracy, Mr. Chairman.
    There was not one in the Soviet system but Andrei Sakharov, one
    of the dissenters there, spoke along the same lines that Mr.
    Rohrabacher just spoke. He said, you know, the way in which a
    country mistreats its own people--in terms of concentration
    camps is what he was talking about--might tell you a lot about
    the way that country will treat its neighbors, and hence that
    takes us to some of the concerns here. I know that it is not
    popular to put that into the calculus in terms of how North
    Korea is going to react.
        I wanted to ask Mr. Klingner. Specifically, I wanted to
    raise a couple of points because, one, there were 100 items
    related to uranium enrichment that North Korea was buying. Many
    of those came, as I reported earlier, from A.Q. Khan, who we
    investigated.
        Khan himself described the transfer of those centrifuges to
    North Korea. That presents a certain problem. A.Q. Khan says he
    gave them the centrifuges. We know how many trips A.Q. Khan
    sent north from Pakistan to North Korea. A year ago the
    Director of National Intelligence McConnell testified that,
    while North Korea ``denies a program for uranium enrichment and
    they deny their proliferation activities, we believe North
    Korea continued to engage in both.''
        And then you have got the very real problem that the
    aluminum tube samples that they gave to prove to us that they
    were not involved in highly enriched uranium business had HEU
    traces all over it. So also the 18,000 pages of Yongbyon
    operating records were covered with what? Highly enriched
    uranium. That is a problem.
        So, Mr. Klingner, you have a background in intelligence.
    Give me your thoughts on that, if you would.
        Mr. Klingner. Yes, sir, thank you. I think people have been
    dismissive of the small amount of information that has leaked
    out to the public domain about the highly enriched uranium
    program that North Korea was pursuing, and then say they are
    not convinced by that evidence that North Korea was or is
    continuing to pursue such a program. It is presumptuous for any
    of us outside of government now to assume that what has been
    reported in a few newspapers is the totality of the information
    that the United States intelligence community has on North
    Korea's pursuit of an HEU program.
        The DNI has said that, prior to the confrontation in 2002,
    all 16 components of the intelligence community had assessed
    with a high level of confidence that North Korea was pursuing
    an HEU program. After the confrontation, when we obviously let
    them know we knew of this pursuit, the intelligence community
    continued to have a medium-level of confidence. That did not
    mean the U.S. intelligence community was lowering its
    assessment, it was merely that after North Korea was confronted
    with it there was less level of confidence that they were
    continuing to do so, either because they realized they had been
    caught and perhaps were stopping it, or more likely they now
    knew we were on to them and they were able to prevent
    continuing acquisition of intelligence.
        As you pointed out, in addition to the various tidbits that
    have leaked out, there are others. There is the 20 tons of
    aluminum tubes that the Germans and others intercepted. There
    was not only Prime Minister Musharraf who said that A.Q. Khan
    or Pakistan had provided centrifuges, but also Prime Minister
    Bhutto said that in the early nineties she transported computer
    disks with information on uranium-based nuclear weapons
    program.
        So these are the tidbits that have leaked out, and I assume
    that the information, some of which I saw when I was still in
    service, you know, is of a far greater totality. So we do not
    know how far along the program is but I think they clearly were
    pursuing it, which is a violation of four international
    agreements for them to denuclearize, so it is certainly
    something of grave concern to the United States and its allies,
    and I think as part of the verification regime that we need to
    have, that we not only must focus on plutonium but we also must
    focus on the HEU program as well as the proliferation
    activities that occurred clearly with Syria and perhaps with
    others.
        More recently there was a North Korean fight from Burma to
    Iran that was stopped----
        Mr. Royce. Intercepted by the Indians.
        Mr. Klingner. I am sorry?
        Mr. Royce. Intercepted by the Indian Government.
        Mr. Klingner. Yes, sir, and the U.S. invoked the
    proliferation security initiative to do so, and the PSI only
    pertains to WMD or missile.
        Mr. Royce. Right.
        Mr. Klingner. So clearly even late last year the U.S.
    Government believes North Korea is attempting to proliferate
    something to Iran.
        Mr. Royce. Well, I would like to go to another argument.
    Mr. Harrison had pointed to his 2005 Foreign Affairs article on
    North Korea's HEU program. There is a rebuttal to that in
    Foreign Affairs magazine written by Mitchell Reiss and Robert
    Gallucci. It is a bipartisan article rebutting the claims, and
    I would just like to--we will put it in the record. But I would
    just like to focus on the point on A.Q. Khan. They say,

            ``A.Q. Khan, who ran a black market nuclear supply ring
            for Pakistan, has confessed to providing North Korea
            with centrifuge prototypes and blueprints which enabled
            North Korea to begin its centrifuge enrichment program.
            North Korea's decision to begin acquiring materials in
            larger quantities for uranium enrichment facility with
            several thousand centrifuges suggests that its R&D
            level enrichment endeavors have been successful.
            Likewise, its procurement of equipment suitable for use
            in uranium, hexoflorid feed and withdrawal system also
            points to planning for uranium enrichment facility.''

    This was back in 2005.
        Now we have subsequently got the hard evidence. They argued
    at the time,

            ``To focus solely on the more visible plutonium program
            would mean turning a blind eye to a parallel program
            that has the potential to provide North Korea with a
            covert steady supply of fissile material for the
            fabrication of nuclear weapons or export to terrorist
            groups. To start a new relationship, North Korea must
            foreswear its nuclear ambitions and the Six-Party Talks
            offer the best opportunity for resolving this issue
            through peaceful multilateral diplomacy.''

        It is that underlying problem of constant proliferation,
    constant duplicity, as I said, going back to the 1994 framework
    agreement. Those of us who have been on this committee and have
    in the past given the benefit of the doubt to North Korea have
    over time witnessed only one strategy--a street that goes only
    one way. And bringing up again this question about the way a
    society treats its own citizens. When you begin to liquidate
    people, and they allowed 1.9 million to starve, but hundreds of
    thousands have been worked to death in those camps. I have
    never seen photographs like the ones of some of the children in
    North Korea that exist in those camps other than the ones my
    father took with his brother's camera when they liberated the
    camp at Dachau. That is exactly how people looked--not two
    inches shorter--six inches shorter. I have been in North Korea.
    They are a half-foot shorter because of malnutrition. Fifty
    percent of those kids have malnutrition to the point where it
    is affecting their physical ability to really function as an
    adult, and you see that and you see the starvation, and you
    realize that people who are sent to those camps are sent there
    to be worked to death. In this day and age the international
    community should, frankly, find the time and effort to
    broadcast into North Korea the kind of information we broadcast
    into the former Soviet East Bloc, and let people know fully
    what is actually going on in that society. As one of those
    North Korean politburo members said, ``If you are not listening
    to those broadcasts, you are like a frog in a well'' because
    you don't actually know what is happening in the rest of the
    world.
        Our goal should be to have the people inside North Korea,
    besides the head of state, understand what is going on in their
    country, and understand what is going on in the rest of the
    globe, and bring the pressure to bear to get some kind of
    change. You know, we wish the people well, but transferring
    another $1 billion to this government so it can send people
    into camps like that, I do not know where that is going to go.
    My fear is that the hard currency is going to be used instead
    to develop ICBMS to miniaturize these nuclear weapons, and they
    certainly are going to use their network out there that they
    proliferate with abandon given what they have done in Syria.
        Mr. Chairman, that is my view, but I appreciate the
    opportunity to talk to the witness.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. I thank the gentleman for his questions
    and his thoughts on this issue.
        I think in fairness to Secretary Clinton I thought I would
    get portions of her statement that were made before the Senate
    Foreign Relations Committee in defining what ``smart power''
    means because we seem to have a difference of interpretation
    here from my friend Mr. Rohrabacher. I just want to quote a
    portion of the statement:

              ``The President-elect and I believe that foreign
            policy must be based on a marriage of principles and
            pragmatism, not rigid ideology. On facts and evidence,
            not emotion or prejudice. Our security, our vitality
            and our ability to lead in today's world oblige us to
            recognize like overwhelming fact of our
            interdependence. I believe that American leadership has
            been wanting but is still wanted. We must use what has
            been called `smart power' meaning the full range of
            tools in our disposal, diplomatic, economic, military,
            political, legal and cultural, picking the right tool
            or combination of tools for each situation. With smart
            power diplomacy must be the vanguard of foreign
            policy.''

        I just wanted to make clear because I purposefully used
    that phrase ``smart power'' as the basic topic of our
    discussion this afternoon.
        Ambassador Pritchard, I know you have been sitting there
    quite patiently. You recommended that there should be a
    continuation of the Six-Party Talks. My question is how long
    are we going to continue talking? There has got to be some
    point--we have already done this for 6 years now, and I suppose
    for the hawks in Pyongyang they love talking for the next 30
    years as long as they continue getting what they want and
    nothing from us. So could you comment on this?
        Mr. Pritchard. Well, Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that we
    have not been talking for 6 years. We have probably been
    talking for about 2 years out of the last 8, and part of my
    testimony, as I mentioned, that I am not anxious to see us
    continue talking for the sake of talking, and my concern, as I
    mentioned, is this Phase III as a continuation of these
    discussions and negotiations that really does not get us where
    we need to go, and that, as you point out, potentially years
    more of negotiations.
        So what I have offered up is a suggest that we just skip
    that and move directly to the end game of negotiations and
    determine whether or not North Korea is willing to give up
    their fissile material, their nuclear weapons. Are we willing
    to provide that degree of normalization that they are seeking?
    And can we do that in a very prompt matter of time?
        I do not put a timeline on that, but I certainly do not
    want to see this drag out for another 4 years.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Would it be predictable that--I ask
    Professor Cha--would it be predictable for me to say now that
    as far as denuclearization issue is concerned it is a
    stalemate, it will not happen?
        Mr. Cha. Much as I would hope that I could disagree with
    you, I cannot. I think that many of the things that Mr.
    Harrison was talking about in his earlier testimony about non-
    aggression pact, normalization, if people go back and read the
    2005 joint statement, we have put a lot of those things in
    there. In fact, there is a statement--if you go back to the
    2005 joint statement, it says that the United States will not
    attack North Korea with nuclear or conventional weapons.
        I remember when we sent that language back to Washington
    from Beijing overnight to get approval I did not think it was
    going to get approved. It came back the next morning approved,
    and I think many of us were quite surprised, including the
    Russian delegation, and the Russian delegation actually asked
    for a separate meeting with the North Koreans to say to them
    the Americans are serious because we tried to get this language
    from them during the Cold War and could never get it from them.
        So, I think that they have many of the statements that they
    want from us. They have the--as laid out in the joint
    statement--the prospect of normal political relations. They
    have the promise of energy and economic assistance. They even
    have the vision of a Northeast Asian peace and security regime
    in which they would live after they gave up their nuclear
    weapons.
        But in spite of putting all those things on the table they
    do not appear to be very interested in doing more than simply
    disabling portions of their program and not moving forward to
    the final end game--the fissile material and the full
    dismantlement of those programs.
        So, you know, I think that we will be stalemated for
    awhile. I do not think that means that we should give up on
    negotiation because what it does do is it enables us to keep
    people on the ground in North Korea at these facilities, to
    keep them disabled and slowly degrade them, and that is
    important. We need to be able to do that. We do not want them
    to restart some of these programs.
        If I could make one point on human rights as well. I think
    Congressman Royce is absolutely right, that when you have a
    regime that treats its people the way that North Korea does, it
    is very difficult to trust them, and I think one of the
    mistakes of the policy in the Bush administration was we tended
    to separate the human rights discussion from the
    denuclearization discussion because people were concerned if
    you upset the North Koreans on human rights you are not going
    to make progress on denuclearization.
        I think the fact of the matter is I would take very small
    steps by the North Koreans on denuclearization if they were
    also making big steps on human rights. That is a lot more
    credible than big steps on denuclearization with no change in
    the human rights policy. So, I think those two things actually
    come together a lot more than we did in the past.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Mr. Klingner?
        Mr. Klingner. I think if 20 years from now we are still
    discussing the size and shape of the table, as we seem to be
    doing now, then U.S. diplomacy will have failed. I think we do
    need to set deadlines and timelines and a roadmap toward
    achieving denuclearization. The actual denuclearization may
    take some time, but I think we do need to have a more clearly
    defined blueprint and strategy for getting there.
        If North Korea is allowed to continue to drag out talks and
    continue to have agreements which are vaguely worded enough
    that there are very large loopholes so they do not have to
    comply, then they will have achieved their objective of
    achieving de facto, of not de jure recognition as a nuclear
    weapons state.
        So, I think that we should continue to seek a diplomatic
    resolution to the North Korean nuclear problem. That is one of
    the aspects of smart power. But also I do not think we should
    abandon other avenues of trying to influence our negotiating
    opponent, including continuing law enforcement efforts. I do
    not think we should abdicate enforcing U.S. and international
    law against counterfeiting, drug running, and other illegal
    activities by the North. That should not be negotiable. Just as
    I do not think humanitarian assistance should be linked to
    to  deg.progress in the denuclearization. I do not
    think enforcing our laws and international laws should be
    linked to denuclearization. It is something that we should do
    anyway.
        Also, I think we should begin implementing U.N. Resolution
    1695 and 1718, which the United Nations Security Council passed
    but which has largely been held in abeyance for over 2 years.
    North Korea has been in violation of two U.N. Security Council
    resolutions for 2 years. I think we should begin implementing
    that, so along with that pressure you also have diplomacy.
        The Chinese military strategist San Tzu said never surround
    your enemy totally because they will just fight all the
    fiercer. In this way the avenue of exit is the Six-Party Talks.
    You pressure them but you also say we are willing to meet with
    you, we will not insult you, we will not threaten you, but we
    are opening negotiations but we will not allow those to go on
    indefinitely.
        We can pick a deadline. I could say after the Obama
    administration has got all its officials in place and its North
    Korea policy all set, we could say, why not give a year? There
    is nothing magical about a year, but why don't we not
    deg.say, a year after the Obama administration has said we are
    ready to engage, why not evaluate at the end of that year?
        It is not a binary decision in which we call diplomacy to a
    halt on the 366th day, but I think after a year we would have a
    very good sense of whether we feel North Korea has changed its
    tactics, its strategy, its approach with the new U.S.
    administration.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Mr. Snyder, since you like smart power so
    much, what would be your recommendation to Secretary Clinton on
    her upcoming trip to Asia, especially in dealing with the North
    Korean situation?
        Mr. Snyder. Well, what I have been trying to emphasize
    today, which is really I think my core recommendation is that
    we need to--the United States----
        Mr. Faleomavaega. No, I think you made a very good point.
    We ought not to continue having North Korea to be totally
    dependent on foreign assistance programs, becoming a welfare
    state, and then continue without becoming independently self-
    sufficient if you want to put it in those terms. So, how can
    the world community or the United States for that matter, give
    that kind of assistance?
        Mr. Snyder. Well, with regard to the negotiations, I think
    that it is important for the United States to work with our
    allies and partners to mobilize support, active support to
    block North Korea from continuing to move in this direction.
        What I also tried to do, I think, and recommend is a kind
    of de-linking of some of the issues that we have not been able
    to move forward on in the area of development and in the area
    of economic integration from the negotiation process in a very
    selective way. And so, you know, bringing North Koreans out to
    learn about specific technical processes should not be
    underestimated.
        In the previous administration we played a tit-for-tat
    game. If they imposed restrictions on United States access
    inside North Korea, the U.S. Government did the same. But I
    think that we should unconditionally be trying to support
    engagement of North Koreans understanding of what is happening
    in the outside world quite apart from a nuclear strategy.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. I do not speak for my colleagues but I
    have been always a strong, strong supporter of Foreign
    President Kim Dae Jung's sunshine policy, the idea that some
    way or somehow the two Koreas work things out together. I am
    one of the two members that have visited Kaesong Industrial
    Complex, and I come away very, very impressed about the fact
    that a seed has been planted. Of course, the money goes to the
    government, but at least giving some 40,000 North Koreans an
    opportunity to work for, whatever is opening the door to some
    sense of commerce to be established between the two Koreas.
        Now I know that some of my colleagues do not agree with
    that policy, the sunshine policy, but I certainly for one
    believe in that. Mr. Beck, I note with interest your mention of
    Japan's non-help providing the 200,000 tons of heavy oil--that
    was because of the kidnapping situation. Help me, how did we
    ever come about in saying that with North Korea we need to have
    five other countries to negotiate with, but with Iraq, full
    speed ahead?
        There seems to be some ideological play here, at least, and
    correct me if I am wrong on this, Ambassador Pritchard. On the
    one hand we practice unilateralism, and then on the other hand
    we practice multilateralism. Was there any possibility that
    maybe we could have handled the situation differently with Iraq
    than we did with North Korea of having Six-Party Talks? Could
    we have done the same thing in bringing Iran and Jordan and
    Egypt and the other countries in the Middle East who do have a
    direct interest of what we were about to do with Iraq before we
    went ahead preemptively and attacked Saddam Hussein who, by the
    way, never attacked us on 9/11?
        But let me ask Mr. Beck. As I try to figure what really--
    what national interest, what really--real important interests
    that Japan has toward this whole thing dealing with North
    Korea. Of course, the security--Russia, PRC, because China is
    next to North Korea; South Korea obviously because of our
    security alliance with South Korea. So as you mentioned in your
    statement that Japan has become somewhat irrelevant because
    what it is demanding from North Korea is not in anyway related
    to the question of the denuclearization efforts that we are
    supposed to be making as part of our foreign policy here.
        Mr. Beck. I have talked to numerous Japanese officials who
    in private have told me that they share my views that privately
    that they feel that they have been hamstrung by the issue. The
    problem is public opinion----
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Mr. Beck, I am informed that Ambassador
    Pritchard has to catch a flight, and please convey to your son
    my best regards. Tomorrow, I am going to be seeing my soldiers
    in Kuwait, and I know the feeling, Ambassador, and I think all
    of us here have relatives, brothers and sisters, wives,
    husbands, who have been involved in this terrible conflict that
    we have been involved in with Iraq, and God speed to you, Mr.
    Ambassador, if you have to catch a flight.
        Mr. Pritchard. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
    appreciate the opportunity to speak here, and thank you for
    allowing me to leave.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Please. Mr. Beck.
        Mr. Beck. I was just going to say, I have spoken with many
    Japanese officials who are privately very frustrated with the
    position that they have been placed in because they would like
    to be relevant to the Six-Party Talks and do feel that 120
    million Japanese citizens takes light presence over 12 people.
    Principles are great, but the reality is we have to deal with
    Nazi regimes unless we want to potentially undermine our own
    national security.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Well, I could add that 200,000 Asian
    women who were abducted and raped and forced into prostitution
    during World War II by Japanese soldiers, that is not a very
    pretty picture to recite or to explain what happened
    historically. I did not mean to----
        Mr. Beck. No, no, you are quite right. The Japanese are not
    morally pure either when it come to this issue. They have their
    own past that they still have not confronted, I think, in a
    responsible manner.
        But I, like you, I have also visited the Kaesong complex a
    couple of times and was very impressed. It is very frustrating
    because you really cannot talk to anyone there that is actually
    working there. I have tried and I get shooed away every time.
    But I too was very impressed with the prospects for
    cooperation. But the fact is the North Koreans are, I think,
    seriously contemplating scraping Kaesong.
        We can debate whether they are just bluffing but they have
    sent military officials to Kaesong and I have talked to South
    Korean officials that say--you know, I ask them, do you think
    the North Koreans are bluffing? No, we do not. Even a person
    working in the Kaesong complex said they are not bluffing. This
    is a dilemma for them to accept South Korean companies, 90 some
    South Korean companies, have hundreds of South Koreans,
    thousands of South Koreans working there. They like the money
    but they do not like having the exposure that their people,
    even in limited numbers are getting to this complex, and we
    like to say that the Chinese have the most leverage with North
    Korea, and that is what really constrains our policy, and even
    the neocons realize that they could not go it alone. They could
    more or less on Iraq, but they really could not go it alone on
    North Korea, and particularly without China's support. Any get-
    tough measures just are not going to work with North Korea, and
    in the meantime we are risking more, so we really do not have
    any choice but to negotiate, and unfortunately I mistakenly
    thought that the South had developed leverage over the North
    with Kaesong, with the tourism, with all the trade. South Korea
    is North Korea's second leading trade partner. The North
    Koreans seem perfectly willing to turn their backs not only on
    South Korea but potentially even China, and when you have a
    regime that is willing to starve its own people, and do what is
    not in the best interest of its country, it makes it very hard
    to negotiate with them. No question. But again, I do not
    think--it is still our least bad option and I do not think we
    have any other choice but to continue trying.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Have we done any studies, Professor, Cha,
    on the potential value of the minerals, all that is there in
    North Korea? I am told that it is pretty substantial. I do not
    know about oil and gas, but other things that are of value
    there as far as North Korea is concerned. Do you know anything
    about that?
        Mr. Cha. I do not know if there are any official studies.
    There may be some private U.S. companies that have looked it.
    One group that we know has looked at it very carefully has been
    China because the Chinese have been working very hard to keep
    their fingers in and their interest, economic interests in
    the----
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Like they have done in Africa and almost
    every other place in the world.
        Mr. Cha. Yes. So I think that they certainly have been
    quite interested in that.
        If I could answer your earlier question about Six-Party. I
    think one of the reasons that the Bush administration became
    interested in the concept of a multilateral dialogue on North
    Korea was that there was a realization that while the North
    Korean nuclear problem was an American problem, it was also a
    regional problem, and that there was a need for other parties
    to play a role both in terms of incentives as well as
    disincentives, and the two key countries that had the levers in
    many ways both in terms of incentives and disincentives were
    the Chinese and the South Koreans, and I think for that reason
    it was very important to try this multilateral process and try
    to mobilize regionally support in getting the North--persuading
    the North Koreans to take the right path.
        With regard to Japan, while I certainly understand the
    concerns that many people have about Japan being hamstrung by
    the abductions issue, we also have to remember that for the
    Japanese people the whole question of whether citizens were
    abducted was a rumor that was out there for decades that,
    frankly, most of the Japanese public did not take seriously.
        Then to have this movement where the Japanese Prime
    Minister goes to North Korea and the North Korean leader admits
    that they undertook these actions, I think, was really a shock,
    a heartfelt shock by many Japanese, and I think for that reason
    there was an emotional reaction that has colored the total
    political landscape in Japan.
        I think that there is a separate Japan-North Korea Working
    Group within the Six-Party process, and there has been an
    effort to try to move Japan-DPRK relations forward both through
    that formal process as well as through informal contacts, but
    the North Koreans really do not want to do anything on this
    abduction issue and that, of course, makes it politically very
    difficult for the Japanese Government to move.
        Mr. Faleomavaega. Well, gentlemen, there seems to be a
    consensus from your statements that the first thing the Obama
    administration needs to do is to appoint an envoy of George
    Mitchell's caliber, maybe to be part of the delegation in
    conducting the negotiations. Perhaps that could be our offered
    recommendations or suggestions to Secretary Clinton. Whether
    she does it before or after the return from her trip, we will
    see what happens. But I have a couple other questions but I
    think we have taken so much of your time already, and look
    forward to calling you back again when we see what might happen
    not only in North Korea, but maybe other areas in Asia.
        Thank you very much for your coming. The hearing is
    adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 4:07 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

                                A P P E N D I X

                                  ----------

     Material Submitted for the Hearing Record

    Material submitted for the record by the Honorable Donald A. Manzullo,
            a Representative in Congress from the State of Illinois

     Material submitted for the record by the Honorable Edward R. Royce, a
            Representative in Congress from the State of California