    [House Hearing, 112 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                        NORTH KOREA AFTER KIM JONG-IL:
                          STILL DANGEROUS AND ERRATIC

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

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                          ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                                 APRIL 18, 2012

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 112-149

                                   __________

            Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

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                          COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

                     ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman
    CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey     HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
    DAN BURTON, Indiana                  GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
    ELTON GALLEGLY, California           ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
    DANA ROHRABACHER, California             Samoa
    DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois         DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey--
    EDWARD R. ROYCE, California              deceased 3/6/12 deg.
    STEVE CHABOT, Ohio                   BRAD SHERMAN, California
    RON PAUL, Texas                      ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
    MIKE PENCE, Indiana                  GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
    JOE WILSON, South Carolina           RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
    CONNIE MACK, Florida                 ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
    JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska           GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
    MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas             THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
    TED POE, Texas                       DENNIS CARDOZA, California
    GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida            BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
    JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio                   BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
    BILL JOHNSON, Ohio                   ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
    DAVID RIVERA, Florida                CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
    MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania             FREDERICA WILSON, Florida
    TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas                KAREN BASS, California
    TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania             WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
    JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina          DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
    ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York
    RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina
    ROBERT TURNER, New York
                       Yleem D.S. Poblete, Staff Director
                 Richard J. Kessler, Democratic Staff Director

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page

                                   WITNESSES

    Mr. Frederick H. Fleitz, Managing Editor, LIGNET.com, Newsmax
      Media (former CIA Intelligence Officer and former Chief of
      Staff, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International
      Security, U.S. Department of State)............................     8
    Michael Green, Ph.D., Senior Advisor and Japan Chair, Center for
      Strategic and International Studies............................    20
    Mr. Scott Snyder, Senior Fellow for Korea Studies, Director of
      the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy, Council on Foreign Relations.    29
    Patrick M. Cronin, Ph.D., Senior Advisor & Senior Director of the
      Asia Program, Center for a New American Security...............    38

              LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING

    Mr. Frederick H. Fleitz: Prepared statement......................    10
    Michael Green, Ph.D.: Prepared statement.........................    22
    Mr. Scott Snyder: Prepared statement.............................    31
    Patrick M. Cronin, Ph.D.: Prepared statement.....................    40

                                    APPENDIX

    Hearing notice...................................................    64
    Hearing minutes..................................................    65
    The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress
      from the Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement..........    67

                        NORTH KOREA AFTER KIM JONG-IL:
                          STILL DANGEROUS AND ERRATIC

                                  ----------

                           WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2012

                      House of Representatives,
                                  Committee on Foreign Affairs,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 o'clock a.m.,
    in room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ileana Ros-
    Lehtinen (chairman of the committee) presiding.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. The committee will now come to
    order. Welcome to my fellow members of the committee, and of
    our distinguished panel of witnesses who are joining us today.
        After recognizing myself and the ranking member, my good
    friend from California, Mr. Berman, for 7 minutes each for our
    opening statements, I will recognize the chairman and the
    ranking member of the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific for
    3 minutes, followed by 1-minute statements from each committee
    member who wishes to speak.
        We will then hear from our witnesses, and I would ask that
    you summarize your prepared statements to 5 minutes each before
    we move to the questions and answers with members under the 5-
    minute rule.
        Without objection, the prepared statements of all of our
    witnesses will be made a part of the record, and members may
    have 5 legislative days in which to insert statements and
    questions for the record, subject to the length limitations in
    the rules.
        The Chair now recognizes herself for 7 minutes.
        Today we will examine the tumultuous events that have again
    consumed the Korean Peninsula. In a sense, negotiating with
    North Korea is similar to the endless repetition presented in
    the film Groundhog Day. Withdrawal from negotiations is
    followed by provocative action. Next, there is a wooing by the
    United States and its allies, with concessions offered. Then, a
    so-called breakthrough deal. Finally, another betrayal, often
    in the form of a missile launch or the disclosure of a secret
    nuclear operation.
        It was so with the Clinton administration, with the George
    W. Bush administration, and thus it has come to pass, as well,
    with the Obama administration. President Clinton's agreed
    framework ended with the disclosure of Pyongyang's highly
    enriched uranium program. President Bush's attempt at
    rapprochement, including the removal of North Korea from the
    list of state sponsors of terrorism, which I adamantly opposed,
    was met with the construction of a secret nuclear reactor in
    Syria, which Israel thankfully destroyed.
        And then, yet another betrayal. The Obama administration is
    confronted with the abject failure of its Leap Day deal on
    February 29th with North Korea, and has refused to send
    witnesses who were privy to the Beijing negotiations to testify
    today at our hearing.
        Old Kim, Kim Jong-Il, had of course responded to President
    Obama's inaugural overture of an outstretched hand by
    kidnapping two U.S. journalists, firing a missile, setting off
    a nuclear weapon, sinking a South Korean naval vessel, and
    shelling a South Korean island. His son, Kim Jong-Un, seems
    fully intent on fulfilling the old adage that the apple doesn't
    fall far from the tree. He has already tried a failed missile
    launch, and may be plotting yet a third nuclear test.
        The U.N. Security Council issued a presidential statement
    condemning the April 13th missile launch as a serious violation
    of Security Council Resolutions 1718, and 1874. No real
    consequences for North Korea's flagrant violation and action
    that threaten global peace and security.
        While the missile blew up soon after leaving the launch
    pad, as all of us know, it is said that, in international
    relations, measuring intent is just as important as measuring
    capability. North Korea's rhetoric should have told our
    negotiators all they needed to know. The military-first policy
    of starving the people to feed the army and supply the
    munitions industry remains. The South Korean Defense Ministry
    estimated this month that the North Koreans spent $850 million
    on the failed missile launch, enough to buy corn to feed the
    entire population for an entire year. Politics in North Korea
    remains all about the Kim dynasty and its needs, not about
    either the concerns of the United States or the welfare of the
    Korean people.
        A particularly unfortunate result of the Leap Day agreement
    was the combining of discussions of nuclear disarmament and
    food assistance at the same negotiating table. This was a
    departure from the approach of both the Clinton administration
    and the Bush administration, which held to the Reagan doctrine
    that a hungry child knows no politics. It also led to a highly
    embarrassing reversal on the food aid decision following the
    missile launch, even as administration officials insisted that
    there was no direct linkage between food assistance and the
    failed negotiations.
        Our distinguished panel of experts can shed light today on
    whether succession from the old Kim to the young Kim has really
    changed anything in North Korea, or is it merely an old Kim in
    a new uniform? Further, there is the pressing issue of how we
    should respond to future provocation, including another nuclear
    test. We also wish to examine how we should go forward in
    addressing the simmering North Korean crisis: A rogue state, in
    possession of nuclear weapons, working on delivery capability,
    engaged in murky proliferation activities with opponents of the
    United States and south Asia.
        The young general at Sunday's military parade gave every
    indication that trouble lies just ahead with North Korea.
    Dressed in a dark Mao suit, he viewed tanks, missiles, and
    goose-stepping troops as they paraded through North Korea's
    capital in a celebration of the hundredth anniversary of his
    grandfather's birth. In his first public remarks since assuming
    power, the young Kim bombastically warned that ``the days of
    enemies threatening and blackmailing us with nuclear weapons
    are forever over.''
        The new Kim looks and acts suspiciously very much like the
    old Kim. Here is a brief video clip, that will just take us a
    few seconds to line up, of the Cold War military parade held on
    Sunday in Pyongyang that clearly illustrates the nature and the
    priorities of the North Korean regime.
        If we could show the clip?
        [Whereupon, a video was played.]
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much. And now I am
    pleased to turn to my good friend, the ranking member of our
    committee, Mr. Berman of California, for his opening statement.
        Mr. Berman. Well, thank you very much, Madam Chairman, for
    calling a very timely hearing. It is interesting to note,
    before I begin my opening statement, that the parade that we
    just saw that clip from showed a truck carrying a North Korean
    missile that looked very much, it is reported, like a similar
    Chinese truck. There are U.N. resolutions regarding the exports
    of arms to North Korea at this point.
        Anyway, Pyongyang's failed missile launch, which is a clear
    violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions, and carried out
    in defiance of strong international pressure, demonstrates that
    North Korea, under Kim Jong-Un, is essentially the same as when
    it was ruled by his father and grandfather.
        Indeed, North Korean leaders have shown a remarkable
    consistency in reneging on commitments regarding their nuclear
    and missile programs, the latest being the February 29 Leap Day
    agreement. With the possibility of another nuclear test on the
    horizon, Pyongyang has shown its clear preference for
    provocative and destabilizing behavior. President Reagan
    famously remarked that, when dealing with the Soviet Union, we
    should trust but verify. With regard to North Korea, he might
    have said, ``Never trust, and never cease to verify.''
        The fundamental questions before us today are, how can the
    United States and the rest of the world change the North's
    behavior? Is change even possible? And if not, then what should
    be the appropriate course of action to mitigate the North
    Korean threat? Successive Presidents, both Republican and
    Democratic, as the chairman pointed out, have pursued a policy
    of ``tough engagement,'' with Pyongyang. Given North Korea's
    proclivity to break agreements before the ink has dried, does
    it make sense to continue this approach? If not, what is the
    alternative? Are there additional sanctions we could place on
    North Korea that would change their behavior, and does it make
    sense to tie food aid to specific actions taken by the North?
        At a minimum, I believe the U.S. should do everything
    possible to ensure that existing U.N. Security Council
    Resolutions on North Korea are fully implemented, and I welcome
    the recent Security Council presidential statement, indicating
    that additional entities involved in North Korea's
    proliferation activities will be sanctioned in the coming days.
    We must also continue to coordinate closely with our South
    Korean and Japanese allies on how to best address the North
    Korean threat, while maintaining a robust U.S. military
    presence in those countries.
        By virtue of history and geography, China remains one of
    the few nations with some leverage over North Korea.
    Regrettably, Beijing has been unwilling to use that leverage to
    persuade Pyongyang to change course. While China may have
    expressed its displeasure with the North's recent missile
    launch, the fact remains that Beijing serves as Pyongyang's
    economic lifeline, sending food and fuel to prop up the North
    Korean regime, and luxury goods to satisfy the North Korean
    elite.
        China continues to play this role because Beijing fears a
    flood of refugees from an unstable North Korea more than a
    North Korea armed with ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.
    My guess is that Beijing also likes having a buffer between
    itself and South Korea, a strong U.S. ally. But by enabling the
    North Korean regime's reckless and aggressive behavior, which
    threatens regional stability, China ends up undermining its own
    security calculus.
        And just what kind of regime is China backing? For the
    North Korean people, life under the young Kim is as bleak as
    ever, with the average citizen enjoying no real political,
    religious, or personal freedoms. Hundreds of thousands of North
    Korean political prisoners remain imprisoned in gulags. Others
    endeavor to escape by any means possible, even if it means
    crossing into China, where many refugees are forced into
    prostitution and hard labor.
        Despite the North's efforts to appear ``strong and
    prosperous'' this year, to celebrate the hundredth birthday of
    the country's founder, vast numbers of North Koreans continue
    to face starvation. Sadly, the North Korean regime's misguided
    priorities, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into its
    so-called space program, its nuclear programs, and its massive
    military, only underscore its cold-hearted callousness and
    blatant disregard for its own people. Chinese willingness to
    support such a wicked regime casts a dark shadow on Beijing's
    own international reputation.
        I thank the panel of experts for being here this morning,
    and look forward to their thoughts on how to make our policy
    toward North Korea more effective. I yield back.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, Mr. Berman. And
    taking Mr. Manzullo's spot, we will give 3 minutes to Mr.
    Royce, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism,
    Nonproliferation, and Trade.
        Mr. Royce. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Mr. Berman was just
    talking about the magnitude of the human rights abuses there.
    In terms of the numbers, this is the worst human rights abuser
    on the planet. And for any of us in these hearings who have
    heard the testimony or met up with defectors in China or in
    South Korea, it is truly appalling.
        Now, when you think about the cost of this launch, at least
    a $0.5 billion cost to this launch--I have been in North
    Korea--there is no way that regime could squeeze pennies out of
    the populace in North Korea. To get this hard currency
    requires, for the most part, a funding source outside of the
    country. And frankly, if China were bothered by North Korea's
    ICBMs, if it were bothered by North Korea's dual-track nuclear
    program, it would stop subsidizing them. It would stop funding
    these operations.
        A policy of tackling North Korea's illicit activities,
    which brings money from outside the country, whether it is the
    sale of their meth and heroin--they do a lot of that--or it is
    the sale of their missile programs, and bringing the hard
    currency back from that program, that is the way to weaken the
    regime.
        And, as we will hear today, until it was dropped in favor
    of an alternative course of action in 2006, the Treasury
    Department went after North Korea's funds parked in Macau bank,
    attacking its counterfeiting, attacking its other illicit
    activities through the Proliferation Security Initiative.
        If you will recall, on the high seas, many of these ships
    were stopped. It cut off the flow of currency into the regime,
    and that prevented--for a while--the government from paying its
    generals. It prevented for a while--according to the defectors
    we talked to, the missile program shut down. They couldn't buy
    gyroscopes on the black market for their missiles. I guess
    Japan had manufactured some gyroscopes, and you pay a premium
    on the black market to get those. They could no longer fund
    that, so for 8 months that program was shut down, until we
    reversed course and the money began to course back through the
    veins, back into the regime.
        And this is what their head propagandist who defected to
    the United States told us. The number one goal is to get access
    to hard currency. For what purpose? To fund their nuclear
    program and their ICBM program. So it would require some
    energy, it would require some creativity, some focus. And I
    would say that that has been disturbingly absent to date in
    terms of how we address this problem. But for those of us----
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you.
        Mr. Royce [continuing]. That would want to see a long-term
    solution to it, I think cut off the flow of illicit activities,
    look at what we did with Banco Delta Asia in terms of
    reinforcing that type of discipline, cut off the funding, and
    begin the process of the right kind of----
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you.
        Mr. Royce [continuing]. Broadcasts into North Korea to
    begin the process of change internally.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Royce. Mr.
    Ackerman is recognized.
        Mr. Ackerman. I thank the chair. I think you kids have got
    it covered.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. Mr. Manzullo is
    recognized.
        Mr. Manzullo. Thank you, Madam Chair, for calling this
    important hearing regarding North Korea and the future of the
    Korean Peninsula.
        North Korea after Kim Jong-Il will remain just as dangerous
    and unstable as it was under his leadership. The glimmer of
    hope, no matter how minuscule, that Kim's successor, his son
    Kim Jong-Un, would pick a brighter path for his people, faded
    with last week's failed missile launch. Denuclearization of the
    Korean Peninsula remains a goal that the U.S. and the six-party
    partners must strive for. However, given North Korea's erratic
    behavior recently and over the course of the past several
    years, the goal of denuclearization seems further away than
    ever before.
        I commend the administration for halting assistance to the
    North, and I encourage the President and the Secretary of State
    to stand firm against any further destabilizing actions.
    Furthermore, if North Korea proceeds with testing a nuclear
    weapon, as they likely may do if prior behavior is any
    indicator, then all members of the six-party talks must
    forcefully condemn this behavior.
        The future of North Korea is bleak, and it is the people of
    North Korea that will bear the unimaginable hardship of Kim
    Jong-Un's tyranny. It is my firm belief that North Korea will
    never give up its nuclear weapons, because it is the weapons
    themselves that the regime is using to maintain its iron grip
    there.
        I hope our distinguished witnesses today will address the
    human rights tragedy, particularly as it relates to any
    possible negotiation with North Korea in the future. Madam
    Chair, again, thank you for calling this hearing. I look
    forward to hearing the testimony of our witnesses.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Manzullo.
    Thank you for your attendance, always. Ms. Bass is recognized.
        Ms. Bass. Thank you, Chairman Ros-Lehtinen and Ranking
    Member Berman, for holding this hearing. Over more than five
    decades, the U.S. has strengthened its alliance and bolstered a
    lasting relationship with South Korea. Efforts, however, to
    achieve peace with North Korea have proven elusive and globally
    frustrating. With the passing of one leader and the emergence
    of another, now more than ever the United States must hold
    North Korea accountable for its actions, which continue to
    undercut peace and reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula.
        I had the opportunity to go to the demilitarized zone, and
    looking at the--I don't know, it seemed almost like a scene out
    of history, looking back to the 1950s, at the level of tensions
    between the North and the South. And I am looking forward to
    comments that the panel might have about the new leader.
        The world recently watched as North Korea failed to launch
    a rocket that many believe will be used to wage war. Events
    like this shed lights on the reality of the North and a society
    where many live in fear. Thank you for coming today.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much. Mr. Chabot, the
    chairman of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia,
    is recognized.
        Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for
    calling this timely hearing. Since the Obama administration
    came to office, its foreign policy has been characterized by
    so-called engagement. The President has defined this policy as
    extending an outstretched hand, in the hopes that the mere
    gesture would cause some of the world's most brutal dictators
    to unclench their fists.
        The administration's engagement efforts with Bashar al-
    Assad of Syria, the brutal regime in Tehran, for example--those
    two are probably the best examples--have been complete
    failures. At best, they have not achieved their objectives, and
    at worst they have, in the eyes of the people in those
    countries, allied us with the regimes that brutalize them.
        As Einstein noted, insanity is doing the same thing over
    and over again and expecting different results. And yet, that
    appears to be precisely what this administration has been doing
    in North Korea, as well as in the Mideast. As soon as one
    dictator passed, Kim Jong-Il, this administration leapt at the
    opportunity to engage with his son, Kim Jong-Un, who appears to
    be a chip off the old block. This has not worked, it will not
    work, and it should be reversed.
        Thank you, Madam Chair.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, Mr. Chabot. And
    now I am pleased to recognize and introduce our panelists.
        We will first hear from Frederick Fleitz--did I do that,
    more or less? Fleitz. He is currently the director of the
    Langley Intelligence Group Network. He served as a senior
    analyst with the CIA for almost two decades prior, and was
    Chief of Staff to John Bolton, then Under Secretary of State
    for Arms Control and International Security. To top off his
    distinguished career in government service, he became a
    professional staff member with the House Permanent Select
    Committee on Intelligence in 2006, acting as a senior advisor
    to our good friend, Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra. Welcome
    back.
        Then I would like to welcome Dr. Michael Green, a senior
    advisor and the Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and
    International Studies. Dr. Green previously served as Special
    Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and
    Senior Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security
    Council in the George W. Bush administration. He originally
    joined the NSC in 2001 as Director of Asian Affairs.
        I would then welcome Mr. Scott Snyder, thank you, a Senior
    Fellow for Korean Studies and Director of the Program for U.S.-
    Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to CFR,
    Mr. Snyder was a Senior Associate in the International
    Relations Program of the Asia Foundation, where he founded and
    directed the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy and served as the
    Asia Foundation's representative in Korea from the years 2000
    to 2004.
        And finally, we welcome Patrick Cronin. He is a Senior
    Advisor and Senior Director of the Asia Pacific Security
    Program at the Center for a New American Security. Previously,
    Dr. Cronin was the Director of the Institute for National
    Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, and has
    had a 25-year career inside government and academic research
    centers.
        Thank you. We welcome our panelists today. I ask that our
    witnesses please keep your presentation to no more than 5
    minutes. And without objection, the witnesses' entire
    statements, written statements, will be inserted into the
    hearing record.
        So we will begin with Mr.----
        Mr. Fleitz. Fleitz.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Fleitz. Thank you.

        STATEMENT OF MR. FREDERICK H. FLEITZ, MANAGING EDITOR,
    LIGNET.COM, NEWSMAX MEDIA (FORMER CIA INTELLIGENCE OFFICER AND
      FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF, UNDER SECRETARY FOR ARMS CONTROL AND
           INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE)

        Mr. Fleitz. Thank you, Madam Chairman, Ranking Member
    Berman, members of the committee. It is an honor to be here
    today. And Mr. Chandler, it is a special honor to be----
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Could you put that microphone a
    little closer?
        Mr. Fleitz. Sorry. It is a special honor to see you here
    today. I enjoyed working with you on the House Intelligence
    Committee staff. My name is Fred Fleitz, and I am Managing
    Director of the Langley Intelligence Group Network, a
    Washington, DC-based global forecasting and intelligence
    service, and I formerly worked for the CIA and the State
    Department.
        My remarks today will focus on North Korea's WMD and rocket
    program. Last week's multi-stage rocket launch that North Korea
    claims was intended to lift a satellite into orbit but was
    probably a test of an ICBM surprised some experts and U.S.
    diplomats. However, this launch was consistent with past North
    Korean behavior.
        Although it may seem counterproductive, coming just weeks
    after a food aid deal was reached with the United States, North
    Korea has done this before, apparently in the wrongheaded
    belief that provocations strengthen its ability to prevail in
    future diplomatic talks. There has been a cycle of apparent
    North Korean agreements, followed by provocations, cooling-off
    periods, and then new agreements. Pyongyang has learned that,
    no matter how badly it acts, the United States will eventually
    come back to the negotiating table, usually with new
    concessions.
        It is possible that last week's missile launch was intended
    to test American resolve. Since the February 29th food deal
    with the United States was quite generous and placed limited
    restrictions on the North Korean nuclear program, Pyongyang may
    have been tempted to see how far it could push Washington.
    North Korea may have believed, with the United States
    distracted by Afghanistan and Iran, U.S. officials would be
    reluctant to confront Pyongyang over the missile launch.
        It is worth noting that international reaction to the
    launch was fairly weak. The U.N. Security Council this week was
    only able to pass a non-binding Presidential Statement, the
    usual response when the United States and its allies cannot get
    past Russian and Chinese vetoes. Despite speeches by U.S.
    officials condemning the launch, the United States is aware
    that the U.N. response was mild, and probably believes U.S.
    envoys will ask to meet with it again soon.
        North Korea angrily responded to the Security Council's
    action and U.S. statements, but we don't yet know whether this
    was face-saving bravado or a real effort to ratchet up
    tensions. It does seem clear, however, from its recent
    statements, that North Korea plans more rocket launches.
        Some experts are complaining that past practice in
    intelligence suggests North Korea could follow up last week's
    rocket launch with a nuclear test. I am reluctant to make such
    a prediction for a number of reasons I outline in my prepared
    testimony. Despite reports of activity and digging at North
    Korea's nuclear site, I should note that such activity is very
    common. Given the country's extreme secrecy and good
    counterintelligence practices, I doubt very much there would be
    any good satellite imagery of a North Korean test preparation
    before Pyongyang announced that a test would take place.
        Whether or not there is a North Korean nuclear test in the
    short term, its WMD programs are extremely dangerous. As I
    state in my prepared testimony, LIGNET believes Kim Jong-Un's
    hold on power is probably secure. He and his family assumed
    power of a state with robust WMD programs, including biological
    weapons, chemical weapons, ballistic missiles and nuclear
    weapons.
        While the U.S. Intelligence Community has publicly stated
    that it does not know whether North Korea has nuclear weapons,
    it said in February 2009 that the country is capable of
    producing them and has enough plutonium for about six nuclear
    bombs. I want to point out that, 2 months after the U.S.
    Intelligence Community publicly released this figure, North
    Korea told the IAEA that it had decided to reactivate all
    Yongbyon nuclear facilities and to go ahead with the
    reprocessing of spent fuel. As a result, North Korea may have
    amassed several more weapons worth of plutonium since April
    2009, and it may have yet even more nuclear weapons fuel.
        We now know, after years of arguments within the U.S.
    Government, North Korea has a uranium enrichment program. This
    program was worked on over an extended period, according to the
    Director of National Intelligence. This program could be a
    source of weapons-grade fuel. The North Korean WMD program is,
    of course, also a special concern, as is its reactor that it
    helped build in Syria, which we have to think about very
    closely right now with the possible breakdown of the Syrian
    state.
        I finally want to note that I believe North Korea and Iran
    closely watch each other's diplomacy with the United States. If
    Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's claim is accurate, that
    recent talks on Iran's nuclear program gave Iran a freebie and
    a 5-week gift from the world to continue enriching uranium, it
    will have a significant effect on North Korea's negotiating
    posture when U.S. officials try to resume diplomatic talks. The
    reverse is probably true. Too generous or too quick a deal with
    Pyongyang after the rocket launch will probably embolden Iran
    to drive a hard bargain in multilateral talks.
        Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I look forward to your
    questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Fleitz follows:]

                                  ----------

        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much.
        Dr. Green?

      STATEMENT OF MICHAEL GREEN, PH.D., SENIOR ADVISOR AND JAPAN
         CHAIR, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

        Mr. Green. Madam Chairman, members of the committee, thank
    you for inviting us to testify today on this important subject.
    I have a concern about the human rights situation and
    humanitarian food aid issues, but would like to focus on three
    issues for now.
        First, why did North Korea do this so soon after the Leap
    Day agreement? Second, does this mean we now have a breather,
    because the ICBM test failed? And third, what should we do?
        On the why, I don't think we should be surprised. Late last
    year, I wrote a number of public things predicting that the
    North Koreans would do a missile or nuclear test in the first
    half of this year, because they have been telegraphing this for
    some time in their propaganda. This is 2012, the year North
    Korea said it would be a full nuclear weapons state.
        The pattern is also quite clear. In 2006, in July, they
    tested a ballistic missile of a similar type. They were
    condemned by the U.N. And then, in October, they tested a
    nuclear device. In April 2009, they tested a similar ballistic
    missile. They were condemned by the U.N. And then in May they
    tested a nuclear device. I think it is not unreasonable to
    expect that in the next few months we will see, based on the
    historical pattern, a nuclear test.
        So the pattern fits. Is this a period now where we can take
    a breather, where there is a lull, having expressed our
    condemnation through the PRST, or President's Statement in the
    Security Council? I don't think so. I think, as the chairwoman
    suggested, we are probably looking at increased escalation from
    North Korea in the coming months.
        If they do a nuclear test, and if it is plutonium-based, we
    will learn a lot. The first two tests yielded about one
    kiloton, and then about four kilotons. The Nagasaki bomb, by
    comparison, was 20. If this is a 10 or 15 kiloton plutonium
    test, that is very dangerous. If they have learned to
    miniaturize or weaponize, that is dangerous. It could be a test
    based on their uranium enrichment program, which we have known
    about for years, including when I was in the administration,
    but which many commentators said couldn't be real until the
    North actually showed experts their centrifuges.
        A uranium test would be very, very dangerous, because they
    could hide the capability and it would be difficult to detect.
    The ballistic missile threat is real: Nodongs, hundreds of
    them, aimed at Japan, that have been tested and have a large
    payload, and the new Musudan that they have unveiled.
        And I would also particularly encourage a focus on the
    danger of transfer. In 2003, the North Korean delegation told
    the American delegation, of which I was a member, that if we
    did not end our hostile policy they would transfer their
    nuclear weapons capability to third countries. We took that
    threat seriously at the time. We later, the next year, found
    uranium hexafluoride traces in the cache turned over by the
    Libyans from North Korea. In 2007, the Israeli Air Force bombed
    a nuclear reactor complex in Syria built by the North Koreans.
    In 2008, we had revelations about discussions between Burma and
    North Korea on nuclear issues. And, though there is no smoking
    gun, the Iran connection bears careful watching.
        So the North is clearly heading toward a nuclear weapons
    capability, deliverable through ballistic missiles or through
    country transfer, and our efforts to date have slowed, but
    hardly deterred them from that path.
        What do we do? The President's Statement from the Security
    Council had the right tone, had some of the right content. It
    was necessary, but far from sufficient. It is said North Korea
    will not negotiate under pressure, but the historical pattern
    is North Korea will not negotiate unless there is pressure, and
    the pressure has been far from sufficient to have an effect on
    their behavior.
        The Security Council Resolutions and sanctions passed in
    the wake of the last two nuclear tests are not being
    implemented. Ranking Member Berman pointed out the TEL, the
    mobile chassis for their mobile launcher, and that is probably
    a Chinese-made system. I have seen Japanese photojournalists'
    collections of North Korean trading companies openly operating
    in China, that are on the sanctions list. The Sanctions
    Committee of the Security Council has not done anything since
    it was originally charged to look at this in 2009.
        Although the administration effectively mobilized Japanese
    and Korean defense cooperation after North Korean attacks on
    South Korea in 2010, we have backed off. I also think we have
    to consider the signal it sends as we cut defense spending in
    the United States, and move away from a capability to manage
    two regional conflicts. The Korean People's Army in North Korea
    has for years said that our ability to do two-front wars will
    be one of their important considerations as they seek to
    ``liberate'' the South. And as Congressman Royce pointed out,
    we have backed off on interdicting illicit transfers from North
    Korea.
        So I think there is no deep harm in talking to North Korea.
    We can learn a lot. It is an important aspect of our diplomacy.
    But I think the National Security Council meetings on North
    Korea should begin with pressure, coercion, interdiction,
    implementation of sanctions, and then, at the end, consider
    where the diplomatic and engagement piece fits in. And I think
    we have had it backwards for some time. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Green follows:]

                                  ----------

        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Snyder?

    STATEMENT OF MR. SCOTT SNYDER, SENIOR FELLOW FOR KOREA STUDIES,
       DIRECTOR OF THE PROGRAM ON U.S.-KOREA POLICY, COUNCIL ON
                           FOREIGN RELATIONS

        Mr. Snyder. It is a pleasure and an honor to appear before
    the committee----
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. If you could punch that little
    button and hold it close?
        Mr. Snyder. Sorry about that. It is an honor to appear
    before the committee. My colleagues have already covered a
    number of main points, especially related to the Security
    Council statement and North Korean response. I think it is
    clear that we are in the middle of a dynamic very similar to
    the one that we saw in 2009, where the likelihood of additional
    escalation exists. We are facing a defiant, sovereignty-focused
    new regime.
        I want to address two topics. One is the failings of the
    Leap Day agreement, which have already been, I think, pointed
    out in the initial statements, namely the concern about the
    linkage of food to the negotiations with North Korea, which I
    agree was a mistake and should have been dealt with separately.
    And I go into that in some detail in my testimony.
        And then I think, also, the failure to state in the U.S.
    statement very clearly that a satellite test would be
    considered as part of a long-range missile, and not acceptable
    for North Korea. Clearly, the effort so far that we have seen
    has not changed North Korea's behavior. How do we change North
    Korea's behavior?
        I think that the way to do this is really to focus on
    changing the environment for North Korea in a way that
    influences its strategic options, rather than trying to
    negotiate carrots and sticks directly with North Korea as a
    vehicle by which to do that. Change the environment, and then
    talk to them to determine whether we are seeing the type of
    change that we need to see.
        And of course, we have seen in the case of Burma recently a
    good example of a situation where the leadership has made a
    strategic choice to change, and then the U.S. has found some
    traction in terms of responding.
        How do we change the environment? One, I think fundamental,
    challenge that we have faced in the face of North Korean
    provocations has been the failure to hold North Korea
    accountable for its actions, and this, I think, is particularly
    important in the context of alliance coordination.
        Different provocations by North Korea provoke different
    levels of response from us and our allies. We saw the case
    where a conventional provocation against South Korea evoked a
    strong response from South Korea, and the U.S. was focused on
    trying to make sure that South Korea didn't respond in a way
    that escalated. Likewise, it seems to me that the South Korean
    response to the rocket launch, at least in terms of public
    response, was not that strong. And so the question of how we,
    essentially, show that there is a price for provocation.
        Second, I think we need to minimize reliance on China,
    while continuing to cooperate with them in a limited way. I
    think it is very clear that the Chinese have their own
    interests in promotion of North Korean stability and in
    gradualism, and that this is creating a gap in terms of
    expectations. We shouldn't be relying on China as a way of
    trying to pursue our approach to North Korea.
        And then the third area I would like to point out is that,
    increasingly, this is a regime that is not isolated. It is
    partially integrated with the outside world. And so I think
    that we need to look carefully at whether or not that need for
    external funds that has already been addressed in various ways,
    for instance illicit activities, might also provide an
    opportunity for us.
        The sanctions approach, the sanctions-only approach, means
    that the front door has been closed. But as long as China
    leaves the back door open, it is not going to work. And so I
    think we need to find a way to exploit North Korea's partial
    integration with its neighbors as a way of drawing the North
    Koreans out.
        If the North Korean regime decided to move in the direction
    of reform--and it is true that we don't have much evidence that
    they have decided to--but the fact of the matter is that they
    don't have the technical specialists to be able to do it, even
    if they wanted to do it. And so we really need to find ways to
    expose North Koreans to long-range educational opportunities
    that will socialize them to western ways of thinking, as a way
    of inducing internal change in North Korea.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Snyder follows:]

                                  ----------

        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. Thank you very much.
    Thank you to all of our panelists for excellent testimony.
        Oh, Dr. Cronin, I am so sorry. I am so used to going that
    way, we had you all mixed up, and I apologize. I think we would
    like to hear from you, Dr. Cronin.

    STATEMENT OF PATRICK M. CRONIN, PH.D., SENIOR ADVISOR & SENIOR
        DIRECTOR OF THE ASIA PROGRAM, CENTER FOR A NEW AMERICAN
                                SECURITY

        Mr. Cronin. Madam Chairman, I appreciate that. And Ranking
    Member Berman and other members of the committee, thank you for
    this invitation on these timely proceedings. It is my judgment
    that the regime in Pyongyang indeed remains armed, dangerous,
    and prone to miscalculation. Indeed, the moment we think we
    know the next move of Kim Jong-Un is the moment we are going to
    be surprised yet again.
        We have heard about some of the tactical mistakes of our
    recent policy. I want to focus on strategy, in the interests of
    time. My main argument is that the United States lacks an
    effective long-term strategy for achieving peace on the Korean
    Peninsula. Despite a strong alliance with South Korea, we are
    gradually losing leverage over an opaque regime in North Korea,
    determined to acquire nuclear weapons that are designed to hit
    American soil. We lack direct contact with North Korea's
    collective leadership. We rely far too much on secondhand
    information.
        A new strategy is very difficult to put together. I don't
    suggest this is easy, and it is the nuance that will matter.
    Nonetheless, the new strategy I have proposed looks at five
    building blocks that we need to mix together. Those areas are
    strengthening defenses; strengthening alliances; creating
    crippling new targeted financial measures; but also
    establishing direct high-level contact with North Korea's
    leaders, if only to facilitate political fissures and better
    understand pressure points; and using engagement and
    information to dramatically expand the flow of information into
    and out of North Korea.
        So first, Kim Jong-Un's satellite diplomacy should catalyze
    us to bolster our missile defenses. We have no ascent-phase,
    boost-phase intercept capacity. This, combined with our mid-
    phase and terminal-phase defenses, would help us and our allies
    make sure that we could knock this missile down the next time
    this happens.
        Second, we need to further reinforce the military
    capabilities and the interoperability between U.S., South Korea
    and Japan, in all three countries. Comprehensive missile
    defenses need to be matched with greater integration of command
    and control and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance
    capabilities. Additional steps should be taken to give higher
    priority to U.S. forces in Korea, a command that has inevitably
    suffered from the decade-long priorities placed on the
    conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
        Third, we need to move beyond ineffective sanctions to find
    new means of applying real pain on recalcitrant leaders who
    flagrantly put international security at risk. The United
    States can use the combined force of government and the private
    sector to clamp down on the mostly Chinese banks the North's
    leadership relies on to fund critical leaders in the military
    party and ruling circles.
        We need precision-guided financial measures that go as far
    as those attempted nearly several years ago with Banco Delta
    Asia, to squeeze key decision makers like Jang Sung-taek. If
    they were targeted and maintained over time, this could bring
    about change.
        Fourth, the United States should seek to use serious
    pressure and defense tactics to open up more direct high-level
    talks with Kim Jong-Un, Jang Sung-taek, and two or three
    generals central to the collective leadership. It is a
    political objective, in other words, to our pressure and our
    force, and this is it. It is opening up those real talks that
    will matter.
        Only by winning access to the true inner circle of North
    Korea can we hope to determine potential fault lines, pressure
    points, and opportunities. Long-term engagement will make us
    smarter about what kind of transition that may be possible for
    North Korea, while preparing us for a hard landing should the
    regime implode.
        And fifth and finally, the United States and South Korea
    should expand their efforts to dramatically expand the flow of
    information into North Korea. North Korea cannot live forever
    in a cocoon. China and South Korea are growing so prosperous,
    the flow of information can get in. But coupled with
    engagement, we can expand that information, and it will start
    to change.
        So defense, allies, financial measures, information, and
    high-level engagement are the building blocks for a potential
    new strategic approach. I believe, put together properly,
    within the next decade we could move North Korea away from its
    regular cycle of provocation and prevarication and human rights
    abuses, to something much better.
        Thank you very much.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Cronin follows:]

                                  ----------

        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. I admire your optimism. Thank you.
    Thank you, Dr. Cronin, I appreciate it. Now I thank all of the
    witnesses, and my apologies to cutting you off.
        I wanted to ask about the third nuclear test, about the
    influence of China, and the cooperation of North Korea with
    Iran. As many of you had said, experts are expecting that North
    Korea will, indeed, conduct a third nuclear test, especially
    since the young general lost face with this fizzled missile
    launch. Do you anticipate that any future weapons tested will
    be plutonium-based, as in the past, or will it be triggered by
    highly-enriched uranium, demonstrating an alternative nuclear
    weapons system for Pyongyang? And what should the U.S. response
    be to such a test?
        And then, following that, China's influence. As we read in
    press reports, China likely provided that mobile long-range
    missile launcher which North Korea put on display. This would
    obviously be in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution
    1874, and China, as a permanent member of the Security Council,
    is obligated to uphold sanctions. How involved is the People's
    Liberation Army in the development, in the supply of weapons to
    the North Korean military? Do we expect Chinese technical
    support for the development of North Korean missile technology?
        And lastly, cooperation with Iran. Japanese media had
    reported that a 12-member Iranian delegation of missile and
    satellite development specialists secretly visited North Korea
    recently. The report says that this is by no means a recent
    occurrence or an isolated occurrence. What other activities,
    such as nuclear weapons design and development, have this
    regime collaborated on that we have not seen in public
    reporting as of yet?
        Mr. Fleitz.
        Mr. Fleitz. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I think the issue of
    a third nuclear test is sort of the parlor game in Washington
    right now, when and if there will be a test. And I have talked
    to a number of experts around town, and many of them think
    there will be a test. I tend to think the chances are less than
    50/50 right now.
        I think there will be a nuclear test eventually, when North
    Korea is technically ready and prepared to endure the enormous
    amount of isolation it will endure, more than it already has.
    But they have to conduct a nuclear test, because we have to
    assume that they are developing the nuclear designs. Their
    uranium enrichment program would produce nuclear fuel which has
    not been tested yet, and I think eventually there will be a
    test of that kind.
        I am sort of hoping that the statements before and after
    the rocket launch suggest that there may be a line they are not
    prepared to cross right now, and they may not currently be
    planning to conduct a nuclear test. But frankly, all bets are
    off with this country. Anything is possible.
        I think missile tests are certain. The missile tests may be
    more threatening, because the missile tests could land on
    Japan, it could land on Hawaii, the West Coast of the United
    States. And it is the delivery system for a nuclear warhead. It
    also is something that they are using to advertise their
    missile technology to other rogue states, including Iran.
        I think it is certain there was an Iranian delegation that
    was closely watching this missile test. I believe there
    probably has been some type of collaboration between the
    Iranians and the North Koreans in the nuclear sphere. I have
    also always believed that the al-Kibar reactor in the Syrian
    Desert probably had some role from Iran, that maybe this was a
    nuclear reactor that was being built so Iran could somehow
    acquire plutonium or the technology to make plutonium in an
    area that the IAEA could not detect.
        So I think this is a very dangerous situation, but
    concerning the issue of a third nuclear test, I just think it
    is hard to judge.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. Do any of the others--
    yes, Dr. Green?
        Mr. Green. While we don't know, the historical pattern
    would suggest they will do a nuclear test. The propaganda of
    recent years, declaring 2012 the year North Korea will be a
    full nuclear weapons state, the hundredth anniversary of the
    birth of Kim Il-Sung, the great leader, would also suggest it.
        When Sig Hecker and other experts were shown the uranium
    enrichment facility, they saw what they thought was 2,000
    centrifuges spinning, and probably the tip of the iceberg. So
    technologically, it is, I would say possible or perhaps
    probable, they are close to ready to do a uranium test. It
    would up the ante on us considerably, and raise the asking
    price for any future negotiations.
        So if I were betting, I would say they would do it, and
    that we may be looking at a uranium test. But we don't know,
    particularly with uranium because it is much easier to hide. It
    doesn't give a signature in the atmosphere the way plutonium
    does.
        The PLA, historically, did have an involvement with the
    nuclear program in North Korea. It has been some time since
    that was the case. Jian Zemin denied that they had anything to
    do with it. I think what we saw with that TEL was more a matter
    of negligence than malicious support for North Korea, but it is
    an area we should be pressing the Chinese quite hard on, in my
    opinion.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much. And sorry, I am
    out of time.
        Mr. Berman is recognized.
        Mr. Berman. Well, thank you very much, Madam Chairman. And
    while each of you emphasized different issues, the panel
    doesn't seem like it has a clash of approaches. I actually want
    to focus on China, but before I do that, Dr. Green, you had
    said something that caught my attention: That there are
    sanctioned entities openly doing business in China. Did I hear
    that right?
        Mr. Green. Yes.
        Mr. Berman. And so, if I did, does that say something about
    a Presidential Statement which talks about expanding the
    sanctions, then, to these, not being worth a lot? Is that the
    implication of what you were saying?
        Mr. Green. To be exact, I have seen the photos that
    Japanese photojournalists have taken of the Tengzhong Trading
    Company, the one company on the sanctions companies list, open.
    You know, the sign up. The Chinese are not implementing the
    sanctions. I don't think the administration would say they are.
    And in the Security Council, they are blocking any effort to
    add new entities, or do any sort of further steps as----
        Mr. Berman. I thought the Presidential Statement----
        Mr. Green. The Presidential Statement was interesting,
    because China had to clear on it. And it did reference
    examining new entities, and that was a positive element. Now,
    we have got to follow up on it. And part of the problem Beijing
    has is that the Foreign Ministry, which controls that decision,
    rarely can implement within China. A lot of it is the
    dysfunctionalities in this huge, complex Chinese system. But I
    think we could be doing much more, in U.N. Security Council
    deliberations, in our discussions with the Chinese, to get
    Beijing to do more.
        Mr. Berman. All right. Well, let us go to China, then. Is
    that little glimmer in the Presidential Statement any real sign
    that China is reconsidering its stability-first policy toward
    North Korea? In other words, is it a fool's errand to try to
    secure stronger cooperation from Beijing on trying to change
    Pyongyang's behavior, given that the Chinese security calculus
    just seems to be so different than ours, or some of the other
    countries in the region?
        Any of you?
        Mr. Fleitz. I would note, Mr. Berman, that this was a
    Presidential Statement, and it is not binding. And this is what
    we resort to when we can't get China and Russia to agree to
    binding language. This was a fall-back position.
        Mr. Berman. Right, I get you. And it is not binding. To the
    bigger question, is there any reason to have any hope that
    China is going to change its calculus, that a diplomatic push
    on China, who is so important to doing some of the things you
    suggested need to be done in terms of stopping what North Korea
    gets, in order to fund and implement its program. Is there
    anything out there that would indicate there is anything about
    Chinese behavior that might change, based on this most recent
    activity?
        Mr. Fleitz. The Chinese have already met with Kim Jong-Un,
    and I assume they urged him not to conduct this missile test,
    and he ignored them. I think the Chinese would like to restart
    multilateral talks under their sponsorship, and they are
    probably already working at that. But I don't think China is
    going to allow any sanctions from this missile to go forward. I
    think they are simply going to put it behind them.
        Mr. Berman. Anyone else have any thoughts?
        Mr. Snyder. Let me just add that the panel of experts that
    is implementing the Security Council Resolution has a Chinese
    expert on it, that essentially his job is to keep the committee
    from adopting anything that would be critical toward China. And
    so there are real limits to the instrument that the
    Presidential Statement has identified as the vehicle by which
    it is going to strengthen sanctions.
        With regard to China's broader strategic orientation, I
    think it is very clear that they are focused on stability, and
    the reason why the Presidential Statement went as far as it did
    was simply because President Hu heard such strong blow-back
    when he was in Seoul. But in terms of follow-through, it is
    probably not going to be there.
        Mr. Green. The Chinese are going to keep their stability-
    first policy. You know, the quip for people who work on this is
    that PRC stands for ``Please remain calm.'' They will do what
    they can to lower actions, by us or North Korea, that get in
    the way of a process of talking. I think appealing to China's
    self-interest has limited utility. They know their own self-
    interest. They have made their calculations.
        Part of our strategy has to be, I think, what Scott Snyder
    was referring to: Changing the atmosphere. That is why the
    trilateral U.S.-Japan-Korea piece, missile defense, are so
    important. Beijing needs to see that if they are not willing to
    use leverage more effectively on North Korea--and they have a
    lot--there is another path we have no choice but to take, which
    involves us strengthening our defenses and our relations with
    allies, which China, of course, in the long run would rather
    not see.
        So, if we are not changing their calculations, if we are
    just appealing to their self-interest, we are not going to get
    much of a change.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.
    Berman. Mr. Royce is recognized.
        Mr. Royce. I am going to pass for the moment, Madam Chair.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Okay. Mr. Burton?
        Mr. Burton. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and I am sorry I was
    a little late. We had another committee hearing. But this is
    most important. That failed rocket launch cost $850 million,
    they estimate. And I have before me a report that says that
    would have bought 2.5 million tons of corn, 1.4 million tons of
    rice, or enough for the North Korean Government to feed
    millions of its people.
        Why did they launch that, when they knew that that was a
    direct violation of the Leap Day agreement? It is like they
    said that they were going to have a hiatus on--``They want us
    to halt nuclear tests, missile tests, and allow the
    International Atomic Energy, IAEA inspectors back into the
    country after a 3-year hiatus?'' They did that, and turned
    right around and launched a missile. How do you deal with that?
    I mean, you folks indicate that we ought to continue to try to
    negotiate with them, but every time we negotiate with them,
    they turn around and stick us right in the ear.
        So that is the first question. The second thing I would
    like to ask is, in 2012 we have had both congressional and
    Presidential elections in the U.S. In South Korea it is going
    to be this year. North Korea is developing into a strong and
    prosperous nation. This was supposed to be the year that they
    were going to do that, whatever that means. It would appear
    that these three elements could form a perfect storm. In other
    words, do you expect North Korea to continue to saber-rattle
    and provoke further aggressive behavior this year, so as to try
    and impact the ongoing election cycle in South Korea?
        And then the final question--you can actually answer them
    all at once, if you like--I know I am preaching to the choir
    when I say that South Korea is one of our closest allies and
    friends in the world. We even passed a free trade agreement
    this year, and I am glad that the President signed that.
        Given the ever-present dangers posed by North Korea and the
    regime, what can we do here in Washington, in Congress, to
    create a more stable environment over there? And I am not
    talking about signing another agreement like the State
    Department did, saying that they were going to do certain
    things, and they turn right around and violate it.
        Mr. Fleitz?
        Mr. Fleitz. Thank you, sir. I believe the launch of the
    rocket last year is consistent with an historical pattern of
    North Korea making agreements, then a provocation, then looking
    for concessions, and then they get more agreements. This seems
    to be a strategy that they engage in.
        Mr. Burton. But why do we keep caving in like that? I don't
    understand that. You know, I understand we want to be
    humanitarian and help the people up there, but when the food
    goes there, we don't know that it is going to get out to the
    people who are really starving out there. So we are giving food
    through the government, not through PVAs. And they take that
    money that they would use for food if they were going to do it,
    and they launch another missile. Eight hundred and fifty
    million bucks.
        Mr. Fleitz. I think that is right, sir. I would say that--
    --
        Mr. Burton. I mean, it just seems like our Government, not
    just under Democrats but Republicans as well--we have reached
    out, trying to negotiate with these guys. And I don't see where
    we have gained a thing.
        Mr. Fleitz. I think that that is--it was a mistake to link
    the nuclear issues to the food deal. But I also----
        Mr. Burton. Wait a minute. Why?
        Mr. Fleitz. I don't think the North Korean people should
    suffer from the country's proliferation. However, I----
        Mr. Burton. Well, wait a minute. Does the government
    distribute the food that we give to them?
        Mr. Fleitz. Well, that is the point I was going to make.
        Mr. Burton. Okay, but the point is, you say we shouldn't
    tie the two together. Why even give the food to them, if they
    use it for their purposes and then launch a missile?
        Mr. Fleitz. They shouldn't get food unless there are
    verification provisions to make sure it gets to the North
    Korean----
        Mr. Burton. Well, they are not going to agree to that. Are
    they?
        Mr. Fleitz. Well, then, there shouldn't be a deal.
        Mr. Burton. That is the point. That is great.
        Mr. Fleitz. And I would say, sir, there are two things I
    think Congress could do. First of all, that is one provision.
    And second of all, we have to honor our friends, the Japanese.
    A provision of the six-party talks is the Japanese abductees,
    people kidnapped by the North Korean Government, maybe hundreds
    of them. This was supposed to be part of the six-party talks.
    It has been put off by two successive administrations. It is a
    matter of principle for the United States----
        Mr. Burton. It is terrible that those people are held.
        Mr. Fleitz. And----
        Mr. Burton. But to negotiate based on fear, and that they
    might do this or that, is a sign of weakness. It is a sign of
    weakness. And I can't understand why our Government, whether
    Republican or Democrat, why we continue to negotiate with
    terrorists, terrorist organizations, and countries that
    continue to say they are going to do one thing and then violate
    the other while we are giving them billions of dollars of food
    aid and other things.
        I mean, all the way back to the Clinton administration and
    before, I remember when we negotiated for that reactor over
    there, the--what was it? The light water reactor. And they
    violated that.
        Mr. Fleitz. We offered them two light water reactors.
        Mr. Burton. I know. And I just don't understand the
    mentality. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Very good points. Thank you very
    much, Mr. Burton. Mr. Connolly is recognized.
        Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Madam Chairman. And Mr. Snyder,
    picking up from the last point my colleague, Mr. Burton, just
    made, perhaps making a Devil's advocate argument about it,
    though, the idea of ``Why would we negotiate with or be engaged
    with a criminal regime?''
        Some might observe that, in the very early weeks of the new
    then-George W. Bush administration, President Bush actually
    publicly overruled his own incoming Secretary of State, Powell,
    who had said, ``We are going to continue the policy of
    engagement and negotiations of the Clinton administration.''
    And President Bush said ``No, we are not.'' And what followed
    from that was a much more aggressive North Korean pursuit of
    its nuclear program. Would that be a fair statement?
        Mr. Snyder. Yes, I think that that is an accurate
    characterization of what happened.
        Mr. Connolly. So while one can understand the concerns
    raised by my colleague, and I share them, on the other hand the
    idea of ``let us not engage, let us in fact have a policy of
    implacable hostility,'' has consequences, given, frankly, the
    ability of North Korea to pursue inimical aims, including its
    nuclear program. Would that be a fair statement?
        Mr. Snyder. I think that there needs to be some kind of
    communication with North Korea in order to be able to manage
    and handle miscalculation.
        Mr. Connolly. Okay. Let me ask--Mr. Green, you wanted to
    comment?
        Mr. Green. If you will indulge me, I was in the White House
    at that time. And I think a more accurate description would be
    that Kim Dae-jung came in March to President Bush, before most
    of his officials were in place, and said, ``You should continue
    what President Clinton was thinking of doing, which is to go to
    North Korea.''
        And the White House position was ``we need to review our
    policy,'' which we did, and in June 2001 put out a statement
    from the White House saying, ``We will continue the agreed
    framework if North Korea honors it, and we will engage with
    North Korea.'' So it was, I don't think, a rejection of
    engagement. It was a request for a time to get the
    administration's strategy in place, because there had been so
    many problems in the past, over several administrations, with
    North Korea.
        Mr. Connolly. Fair point. I do, however, remember with some
    surprise, Secretary Powell at the time having his wings clipped
    a little bit, because he had gone out front, maybe before that
    assessment, which maybe also inadvertently sent a signal that
    had some consequences. I don't know.
        I kind of think we are between a rock and a hard place,
    because I am not convinced about the efficacy, sometimes, of
    that engagement. And I share Mr. Burton's concern--and heck,
    let me ask you, Dr. Green or Mr. Fleitz, the issue for me,
    here, and I think for Mr. Burton and others, is efficacy. Right
    after we provided some food aid to North Korea recently, they
    announced their intention to test a new rocket, or the existing
    rocket.
        How do we handle this issue of efficacy? We don't want
    millions of people to starve, but on the other hand, that kind
    of engagement, in terms of the provision of assistance, seems
    to have very limited payoff if your hope is to moderate
    behavior.
        Your comment?
        Mr. Fleitz. Sir, I don't think we should tie the regime's
    WMD programs to food, but as I said earlier, if food aid is
    provided to North Korea, there has to be strings attached.
    There has to be verification that the food will reach the
    people, and not be sold or given to their military. If they
    won't agree to those things, we shouldn't make an agreement.
        Mr. Connolly. And Dr. Green?
        Mr. Green. Congressman Burton asked, ``Why do we go into
    this cycle?'' And we do, over several administrations. And the
    difference between us and North Korea is they are consistent
    and we are not. And every administration gets in a mode, after
    a particular provocation, of sanctions and pressure, and it is
    very hard for us, or Japan or South Korea, to continue that. It
    stresses us. We have Iran, we have domestic politics in these
    countries.
        We, in 2010, were in that mode, putting pressure on the
    North. The Chinese felt the pressure. The North Koreans felt
    the pressure. We stood with South Korea, who had been attacked.
    By July of last year, we were shifting, in the United States,
    toward trying to engage, and putting pressure on South Korea to
    back off on their demands of the North. The North Koreans knew
    that.
        So even though they lost the food aid, which was small, and
    Kim Jong-Un was not invested in it, they got points on the
    scoreboard by marginalizing Lee Myung-bak, our ally. And I
    don't think that was the administration's intention, but that
    is what happened.
        Mr. Connolly. If I had more time--I only have 13 seconds--I
    would ask you, this panel, to comment a little bit on the
    consolidation by the new leader in North Korea, and how real he
    is as a leader, versus maybe sort of a tool of the military.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. And that question hangs. Thank you,
    Mr. Connolly. And Mr. Royce is ready now.
        Mr. Royce. Thank you, Madam Chair. Since food aid is being
    discussed, I will just mention the Tom Lantos Human Rights
    Commission hearing that was held on this subject, where we
    heard testimony of sacks being delivered, actually, in a
    village, villagers being told, ``Don't touch those,'' and the
    trucks coming back and picking up the sacks.
        And so one of the questions here is, ``What do they do with
    that?'' Well, a French NGO, at another hearing, explained how
    it had tracked this and the food was being sold on the food
    exchange, in the capital of the country, in order to get hard
    currency for the regime. This is, perhaps, the greatest
    problem. Because, as we look at these interviews, debriefings
    done with defectors, they say, ``Food does not go in the no-go
    areas anyway,'' right? The no-go areas are no-go areas, and
    food does not get out there.
        So for the record, I had an amendment, the Royce amendment,
    here last year, that would have prohibited food aid from going
    to North Korea under these circumstances. That was watered down
    in the Senate, by the way. But I share the gentleman from
    Indiana's concerns about control of that food, and it
    indirectly propping up the regime, either by going to the
    military or being sold for hard currency.
        A couple of points I wanted to just make here, and ask you
    questions about, was to go back to Mr. Berman's point about
    elevating the discussion of human rights in this whole
    dialogue. Do you think it would be helpful if that became sort
    of a strategic imperative? Because nowhere on the planet are
    people as ground down, from what I saw. And if you read the
    reports out of the--let us call them work camps, or
    concentration camps, in terms of the people being worked to
    death there, really I think it would be beneficial if there was
    greater understanding on that front.
        And second, we now have broadcasting into North Korea. How
    about a little bit more robust Radio Free Asia broadcasting on
    what is actually going on in the country. For example, and the
    last question I will ask you here to comment on, is this
    admission on the part of the North Korean regime that the
    launch was a bust. And that is the first time, to my knowledge,
    that you had an official mention of that.
        How about broadcasting out the cost of the launch, you
    know? Three quarters of a billion or more. The cost of that
    launch, and then the privations that people face, the
    conditions in North Korea, and make the connections for people.
        Because increasingly, as people are leaving the country,
    they are saying--close to 40 percent are now saying they are
    listening to the broadcasts, they are getting access to these
    cheap radios that come over the border from China and they are
    listening to the broadcasts. How about--let me ask you your
    thoughts on those subjects.
        Mr. Cronin. Mr. Royce, thank you very much. When I was a
    third-ranking official at USAID in the George W. Bush
    administration, I worked every day on the North Korean food aid
    problem. We were trying to negotiate strict criteria for
    delivery. That is the key test. It should be based on the
    humanitarian criterion of making sure that our assistance gets
    to the people in need, not as a lever over a nuclear weapons
    program that North Korea doesn't want to negotiate away.
        It is not really leverage. That is why, I think, Mr. Fleitz
    was saying this is not really the lever for negotiations over
    nuclear weapons. It should be based on humanitarian criteria.
    If we can't get it to the people in need, then you are right,
    we shouldn't deliver it. The North----
        Mr. Royce. Then let us go back to better deploying RFA and
    VOA, because I think we have got a consensus on that.
        Mr. Cronin. Information is very important, sir, and that is
    why I am suggesting an information campaign like we have not
    seen before. But that has to be partly based on engagement.
    Because if you consider the 50,000 North Korean workers who are
    working in South Korea's one economic zone at Kaesing, that has
    been an intelligence mine for us. We can't go into this in open
    session, but I can tell you in general that those people have
    had an eye-opening effect, by seeing South Korean prosperity.
        They also get it across the Chinese border. We can both
    document human rights abuses in North Korea, and highlight
    the----
        Mr. Royce. I understand all of this. But to the extent that
    we have got hard currency going into the regime, this is a
    regime that built a reactor for Syria.
        Mr. Cronin. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Royce. That built a nuclear weapons program for Syria,
    and did it while we were under, supposedly, an agreement where
    they weren't going to proliferate. They were proliferating
    beyond anything we could have imagined, while doing a two-track
    nuclear program, and they are selling it who knows where. So at
    some point, we have got to figure out how to cut off the hard
    currency and accelerate the change inside. And giving them more
    access to it, I am not sure is the answer.
        Mr. Cronin. Targeting Chinese banks is the way to go after
    the people who are in charge.
        Mr. Royce. Thank you. Good point.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr.
    Rohrabacher is recognized.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. First
    of all, let me just note that, years ago, I can remember major
    debates in the House of Representatives over whether or not we
    should have a missile defense system. Thank God those of us who
    supported missile defense won that debate. And every loony
    regime that tries to get its hands on nuclear weapons and tries
    to launch a rocket reinforces the importance of having a
    missile defense system, because that is, perhaps, one of the
    only things that gives us leverage here, is that we can defend
    ourselves.
        Also, I have been privy, as a member of this committee, to
    the debates over the years on food aid to North Korea. When did
    the United States assume the responsibility for the nutrition
    of the North Korean people? I mean, this is a loony policy on
    our side. Shall we just say that any dictatorship around the
    world that decides that they want to spend their money on
    weapons production, that they are going to automatically
    qualify for nutritional aid for their people from the United
    States, and that we are going to have expressions of sole
    concern that the food aid that we are giving them goes directly
    to their people?
        What dictatorships are we leaving out of that equation?
    Does every dictator in the world that wants to spend more money
    on weapons just do it, and then we will give them food aid? Or
    is it just North Korea? I mean, this is an insane policy that I
    remember debating this 20 years ago. And it has happened now,
    and it hasn't done any good. Giving them all this money has
    provided them the resources they need to spend $850 million on
    a rocket launch. This is something that we need, again, to have
    reality checks when we go into debates on such policies as
    these.
        I would like to ask about the Chinese, here. Do any of you
    have evidence that that rocket that was going up had important
    Chinese components on that rocket? And in their nuclear system
    that they have been building, their weapons system, are there
    not Chinese components to that that are vital to the success of
    those projects?
        Whoever knows anything about it.
        Mr. Green. Several of us have had clearances over the
    years, and there is only so much we know and only so much we
    can say. But we do know, and I think it is a matter of public
    record, that the North Koreans have put together their missile
    program, their uranium enrichment program, their reprocessing,
    by purchasing chemical precursors, highly refined uranium,
    dual-use materials, all over the world, in particular using the
    A.Q. Khan network. A lot of it----
        Mr. Rohrabacher. How about their hardware?
        Mr. Green. A lot of it comes through China. Yes, a lot of
    it comes through China. So that is why Beijing following the
    letter of the sanctions resolution is hardly enough.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. So is it not possible, when we see this
    impoverished regime in North Korea that can't even feed its own
    people, a regime that counts its power on the number of people
    marching down the streets doing the goose-step, that this is
    the regime that actually is responsible for building these
    nuclear reactors and this technology?
        Are we not dealing with Beijing? Is Beijing not using North
    Korea as a proxy? ``Please stay calm. You know, forget what I
    am doing, stay calm, go and blame the other guy over there.''
        Mr. Fleitz. I tend to think that China is not behind North
    Korea's nuclear program. I think China likes having North Korea
    as a buffer between it and South Korea. But from what I have
    seen in my career, China has never been terribly happy about
    North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
        Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. I have got 15 seconds left on my
    time, and I am just going to suggest that China is the big
    player here. And just like we don't want to face reality that
    we shouldn't be giving food aid to a dictatorship like this or
    that we need a missile defense system, we just don't want to
    face reality of the downside of China. And for whatever reason,
    this has been going on for 20 years to America's detriment, and
    nowhere is that more clear than our policies with Korea.
        Thank you.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, Mr.
    Rohrabacher. Mr. Smith is recognized--no, sorry, Doctor Poe,
    Judge Poe, the vice chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and
    Investigations. Just the way it is.
        Mr. Poe. It seems to me that Kim Jong-Un is just like his
    daddy. He follows in the footsteps of his daddy. He is trying
    to make a name for himself, makes a bunch of promises to the
    west. And like daddy and granddaddy, he lies. He breaks his
    word. Shock.
        You know, where I come from, if a man breaks his word, you
    probably shouldn't trust him the next time he gives his word,
    not to do something or to do something. But it seems to me,
    here we are over here, the United States: ``Okay, we will try
    it again in a few years, a few months. We will promise you the
    same thing if you just hold off on,'' in this case, ``your
    nuclear capability.''
        It seems to me that just doesn't work for North Korea. It
    doesn't work for Iran. And we are pushing a decision to really
    do something, we just push it off to the next administration.
    And I know we have heard from the other side about ``well, this
    is Bush's fault, it is Clinton's fault.'' It doesn't make any
    difference.
        Right now, we are in a situation where North Korea is going
    to be a threat, and my first question is, what is the policy of
    the United States, overall, in dealing with the nuclear
    capability of North Korea? Are we just going to keep making
    promises, keep trying to give them food, help the people? What
    is our policy toward North Korea? Dr. Fleitz?
        Mr. Fleitz. Well, part of the problem in dealing with both
    North Korea and Iran is that we are recognizing their right to
    nuclear technology. I was at the State Department, I remember
    when President Bush reaffirmed Iran's right to nuclear
    technology. And many of us had argued that if you pursue
    nuclear weapons secretly, or nuclear technology in violation of
    the IAEA, you aren't entitled to nuclear technology. And
    unfortunately, both administrations endorsed that. That may be
    something Congress could look into. States----
        Mr. Poe. What do you recommend?
        Mr. Fleitz. I think that states that cheat on their IAEA
    obligations----
        Mr. Poe. No kidding.
        Mr. Fleitz [continuing]. Have no right to peaceful nuclear
    technology, period. All right, the treaty says differently? We
    change the period. And I think that was one of the biggest
    mistakes of the Bush administration. We are seeing that in the
    negotiation with Iran. We have to make it clear that North
    Korea is not entitled to nuclear technology, because it will
    use it to make nuclear weapons.
        The agreed framework was going to give North Korea two
    additional nuclear reactors. Now, they were proliferation-
    resistant, but they could still be used, under the right
    conditions, to make nuclear weapons fuel. That was a foolish
    agreement, and I think that--I guess if I were to find the
    biggest problem with our policy, that is it, and that is
    something we should work on.
        Mr. Poe. Dr. Green, briefly?
        Mr. Green. I do not think any administration is going to
    offer North Korea light water reactors. I think that is now off
    the table. So de facto, I think Mr. Fleitz's policy is our
    policy toward North Korea. Iran is another story, and I agree
    completely on that front. And I think there is an assumption
    that, if we can contain the North Korean nuclear problem, if we
    can cut a deal and basically rent the program, and pay them
    off, we can manage it until the regime collapses.
        Mr. Poe. Extortion.
        Mr. Green. The problem with that theory is, as I mentioned
    earlier, the North Koreans are not going to sit still. They are
    going to use these time-outs to increase their nuclear weapons
    capability, to threaten transfer, and to continue raising the
    asking price. So we need a strategy that focuses increasingly
    on rollback. Missile defense, alliance cooperation,
    interdiction, enforcement of sanctions. If we can't do it with
    China, then we do it without China.
        I would still maintain a diplomatic element. I think you do
    need some channel for communication for a variety of reasons,
    but I think we have had it backwards for many years, which is
    that we have made the negotiations the center stage, and all
    the other pieces the sort of secondary considerations.
        Mr. Poe. It seems to me that the North Koreans don't take
    us seriously. Would you agree with that or not, Dr. Green?
        Mr. Green. Well, they take us very seriously in one sense.
    I mean, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kim Il-Sung's
    strategy was to develop a relationship with the U.S., to
    marginalize the South.
        Mr. Poe. I am talking about with sanctions or consequences.
        Mr. Green. I suspect the North Koreans have gotten used to
    a pattern where we have a very hard time, in democratic
    societies, maintaining pressure on them.
        Mr. Poe. Credibility?
        Mr. Green. That we will back off, and we will move on to
    other things. Even our approach in the Security Council is
    designed to save our ammo, our diplomatic ammo, to get China
    and Russia on board for Iran and Syria. And they know that.
        Mr. Poe. One last question, because I am out of time. Long-
    term, what are North Korea's intentions? What do you speculate?
        Somebody needs to answer before my time is up.
        Mr. Fleitz. I think long-term is that this corrupt regime
    wants to stay in power. That is the purpose of this corrupt
    group of people behind Kim Jong-Un and his family. That is all
    they are interested in.
        Mr. Poe. You think we should have removed them from the
    foreign terrorist list?
        Mr. Fleitz. No.
        Mr. Green. Absolutely not.
        Mr. Poe. All right. I yield back.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. Thank you very much. You
    got a lot in in those 11 seconds, Judge Poe. And Chris Smith is
    recognized. He is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa,
    Global Health, and Human Rights.
        Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you for
    calling this very important and timely hearing. Madam Chair, at
    a hearing that I chaired in my subcommittee last September on
    human rights in North Korea, the witnesses made the following
    two important points. Many, but these are the two that I would
    like to bring up today: That any attempts to address the
    nuclear weapons issue while sidelining, or ignoring, or
    deprioritizing the human rights issue was doomed to fail. And
    second, it is imperative to provide the North Korean people
    with current, accurate information, so that they understand
    that there are alternatives to the repression under which they
    are suffering.
        I also chaired a hearing on China's forced repatriation of
    North Korean refugees with the Congressional-Executive
    Commission on China on March 5th, which pointed out China's
    violation of its solemn obligations under the Refugee
    Convention. And some of our witnesses there also made those
    points that were made in September.
        Some of our witnesses today, Madam Chair, have agreed, at
    least in their written testimony--I am sorry I missed your oral
    presentations--with many of the points raised at those
    hearings. Dr. Green, you indicate that ``we need a human rights
    policy that is unflinching in our condemnation of abuses in
    North Korea, and our efforts to muster international support to
    prevent actions, such as those by China, to return refugees to
    North Korea against their will.
        ``Humanitarian and human rights policies toward North
    Korea,'' you went on to say, ``deserve prioritization in their
    own merits, and should not be linked to the up and down tactics
    of negotiations.''
        Mr. Snyder, you indicate that providing information to
    North Koreans may be one of the most ``effective options for
    influencing North Korea's internal choices.'' And Dr. Cronin,
    you recommended that the U.S. and South Korea expand our
    efforts to ``dramatically expand the flow of information into
    North Korea.''
        VOA Korea and Radio Free Asia services broadcast 5 hours a
    day, 7 days a week, and seem to be having a positive impact in
    the country. One doctor who does humanitarian work in North
    Korea wrote to VOA Korean service that according to my friend,
    who was still in Pyongyang, you are not only the voice of
    America, but also the voice of victims of the North Korean
    dictatorship. RFA programming includes commentaries, as we all
    know, by North Korean defectors, to help North Koreans
    understand the broader world and how North Korea appears from
    the outside.
        Could any or all of you comment on the role that you think
    human rights has played in this administration's policies
    toward North Korea, and what it should play, and further
    elaborate on the means of communication and the kind of
    information to all sectors of North Korean society that you
    think we should be promoting?
        Mr. Green. Well, the administration's appointment of Robert
    King as the Ambassador for Human Rights was a good move. He
    comes from this committee, as I understand it, and is a good
    man doing a good job. I think we should be moving up to a
    higher level, though. In particular, I think we need a more
    robust multilateral strategy on human rights.
        For us in the Bush administration, it was hard. We had a
    progressive left government in Seoul that didn't want to play
    on this, and then we had in Europe, in France and Germany,
    countries that preferred to point the human rights finger at
    the U.S.
        We now have a very different lineup in Seoul and in Europe,
    and in Japan. And I think we could, with more effort, create
    more of a multilateral fund, pressing China on refoulement, the
    forced repatriation of refugees. And we know that North Korea
    is not going to fundamentally change its policy in the short
    term, but I think there is evidence that they are sensitive,
    particularly when there is a broad, multilateral indictment of
    their regime. So that is where I would encourage Ambassador
    King and his colleagues to bring it up to the next level.
        Mr. Smith. Thank you.
        Mr. Fleitz. I think human rights have basically been
    lacking from our talks with North Korea, and that is a big
    problem. We have focused on a handful of issues, trying to
    strike agreements on nuclear issues that were fairly weak, and
    we have put other issues, such as human rights and the
    abduction of Japanese citizens, to the side, because they were
    a distraction.
        I think that has been a mistake, and we have to hold to our
    principles and fight for everything we believe in when we
    engage the North Koreans, not just the issues that they are
    interested in talking about. We have to talk about what we need
    to talk about.
        Mr. Smith. Thank you.
        Mr. Cronin. And the million cell phones in North Korea
    today, even though North Koreans can only call other North
    Koreans, it means that information can now flow from one part
    of North Korea, where you cannot move around easily, to another
    part. So the more information we can pour into North Korea, it
    can seep in, and it is starting to.
        And China is richer than it used to be, so it is no longer
    a bad example. It is the example that North Korea really is
    falling behind, because it is trying to prop up a military that
    is gobbling up more than a quarter of its weak GDP. A $27-
    billion gross domestic product, more than $5 billion is now
    coming in from China. China is the number one patron. We have
    got to expose this, and get information flowing in. We do need
    our South Korean ally, and there is an election coming up this
    December in South Korea.
        Mr. Snyder. Well, I just want to flag the fact that the
    North Korean Human Rights Act has been a major contribution
    from the U.S. Congress, the strong support for funding for
    information flows targeted at North Korea. We still need to
    work very hard on highlighting China's really terrible policy
    of repatriation of North Korean refugees, and I know you have
    been doing a lot of work to try to highlight that.
        Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. And thank you, Madam Chair.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much. And although we
    would normally conclude at this time, Mr. Connolly has an issue
    so pressing, so urgent, that I told him he could have a few
    minutes to ask it and bring it up, so as not to cause extreme
    stress, acid reflux, coronary disease, and any other medical
    complications that could ensue.
        So Mr. Connolly is recognized.
        Mr. Connolly. Why do I have the feeling, Madam Chairman,
    that this is going to cost me a lot of chocolate? [Laughter.]
        I wanted to give the panel the opportunity to answer that
    question that I put out there earlier. It seems to me an odd
    thing that we would have a hearing on North Korea and not talk
    about the change in leadership, and I think we would benefit
    from each of your observations, remembering we have to be
    succinct.
        Who is this new leader, and what is our understanding of
    consolidation of power, and who really holds the power in the
    North, and what it might mean moving forward for the
    discussions we have had this morning?
        Mr. Snyder?
        Mr. Snyder. Well, so far, I think that what we have seen on
    the surface is continuity. But as could be seen from the video,
    there is something odd, hard to accept in the west, about a 30-
    year-old kid running a country surrounded by 60-year-old
    generals. So we don't know what is happening under the surface.
    And we are watching it through a TV screen. The Chinese
    actually have better direct access. What we really need is to
    see how the leader is interacting with those around him
    directly, in order to make a clear determination.
        Mr. Green. So far, he is following a clear game plan. They
    are making him up to look like his grandfather, the Great
    Leader. He is appearing more in public for on-the-spot guidance
    than people expected. Normally, there is a hundred day mourning
    period after the death of the father. But basically, he is
    following a game plan. I think that the missile and nuclear
    program is largely in place in terms of that plan, and that Kim
    Jong-Il, he called audibles. He made judgment calls about how
    to respond to western pressure and so forth.
        The interesting and troubling thing about this young
    successor is, how will he handle the audibles? How will he
    handle when things start getting rough, after a future nuclear
    test, after future provocations? How will he handle that in the
    margins? And that is where the unpredictable factor comes in,
    and where we may see tensions emerging between him and the
    military or other leadership figures.
        Mr. Fleitz. I think Kim Jong-Un is probably secure, because
    Kim Jong-Il's ill health was known for some time. I think they
    did have a transition in place before he died. Whether Kim
    Jong-Un is really running the country, or whether Kim Jong-Il's
    powerful brother-in-law and his wife are part of a triumvirate,
    we don't know yet. But we will be watching this, just like we
    used to watch the Soviet generals on May Day, to see who is
    behind whom and what is really going on in the country.
        But I just tend to think that the military is not going to
    challenge him, that the generals who might have long ago were
    purged, and they are all part of a regime that wants to stay in
    power.
        Mr. Cronin. The fact that Kim Jong-Un went ahead with the
    Leap Day deal, which had been negotiated last October in
    outline in Geneva, suggests that he did indeed want continuity,
    or that he could not overcome the military-first structure that
    he was inheriting. We don't know, is the key point, though. And
    I have done many television interviews about Kim Jong-Un, and
    this thing that they don't put on the television is the point
    that the U.S. Government, the South Korean Government, do not
    really know, because we don't have direct access to the
    dynamics of the leadership and how they make decisions.
        We need to get much closer to this problem to have a better
    understanding, no matter which policy we go with, and then we
    need a long-term hard strategy, and we need to stick to it over
    time, because this is a long game.
        Mr. Connolly. Thank you. And Madam Chairman, thank you so
    much.
        Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Connolly. Mr. Berman
    and I thank the witnesses. Thank you for your excellent
    testimony. Sorry about messing up the order and totally dissing
    Dr. Cronin there at the end. My apologies. Thank you very much,
    ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us. And the
    committee is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 11:34 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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