The sixthlater, already talks at all the collapse. This was the last major Diplomatic Initiative to address the socalled north korea problem. Today, we are fortunate to hear from two former diplomat who were involved in this past dialogue with north korea, and remain active scholars in the region. Have an panelists, we opportunity to reflect on even a decade ago, and more importantly, but them into present context. It involves new leaders, technology, and ounces of power in the region balances of power in the region. If we try to launch a diplomatic surge with north korea, how might we go about it . What should we keep in mind . Before i introduce our speakers, i want to highlight our collaboration today with the u. S. Japan research institute. Usg i essentially brought brought this opportunity to us so we can be the coorganizer. It was established in washington, the Nonprofit Organization in 2009 by japanese universities. Currently nine preeminent japanese universities support it. It includes research partnering, networking, and dissemination. We want to thank usjis president , thank you dr. Tanaka. Dr. Gnosticism g who is with us today. Today, oureakers chris hill, we told you yawanak a. I will introduce him for now. Ambassador hill has been the dean of use of Korbel School of International Studies at the university of denver. Where he h where he leveraged his career, including rli republican camille korea. As assistant secretary precede affairs, and americas chief envoy to the six party talks. Ambassador hill, i give you the podium. [applause] much. Nk you very let me just say what a pleasure it is to be her with these distinguished scholars and friends from japan. This is truly an impressive carnegie,be here at which is always in the search for international peace, even when the subject includes north korea. What i thought i would do is talk about where we have been, talk about where we are, and where we might go. Theres no question that the outcome isa peaceful increasingly elusive. Its very kind of you to mention, jim, what we did 10 years ago, but it seems like 100 years ago considering where we have come since then. I think there have been several efforts at diplomacy with north korea. Like the proverbial sixth marriage, they are a triumph of hope over experience. Been there has also been a certain amount of cynicism that has crept into this process, a sense that nothing can work and nothing will work. In thest yet, you see sort of tribal wars in washington, increasingly there are those who are loyal to a certain process that went on for a certain time. Theyre very much opposed to the next process. People kind of line up behind the processes that they were involved in. I think increasingly, in this sort of tribal climate that we have in this country today, we have an increasingly difficult notwithstanding the efforts of carnegie and other distinguished institutions, to try to bring us all together and figure out what were going to do about this problem. This problem is not going away, and as i will lay out in a minute, i think the problem is far worse than many people think it is. It requires a solution which will involve all of us to support. I would argue, strangely enough, when i was doing this 10 years fromfirst i had the people the penultimate process. I always made clear that i never said anything bad about the agreed framework. It had its problems, we had our problems, everyone has their problems. I found it useful to try to be positive about what they went through. Certainly didnt want to support what we were doing, because they had the same kinds of solutions in the agreed framework, if only their framework had been allowed to go forward. I had those skeptics, who had been involved in us before, and so that we had ignored the lessons and progress made from that point. Detractors, who felt that any kind of negotiation with north korea was a, it would never work. Was toory of the case make sure it never worked. Otherwise, they would be proven wrong. I think for now, they were supremely they were certainly proven right. When you are negotiating, and have people back at the home they will never convince north korea to do away with this Nuclear Weapons, think about the message that is giving to the north korean hardliners. Convince some people in the states already that we are not going to give up our Nuclear Weapons, we just need to wait for the other americans to come to the understanding that we are not going to give up our Nuclear Weapons. Ironically, the sort of tough from the i received home front was what you are doing is not point to work, because they are not going to give up their Nuclear Weapons. Listen to your people, listen to them. I think we need to try to come together around some assumptions , i think we need to come around to the view that we really ought to try and pull together and see disabusest fuse north korea of its weapons. Far morehis issue is difficult and dangerous than many people think it is today. That is certainly the view after all, this is a small beset by problems, one of the weakest state in the world, it has a terrible economy. They just want a few Nuclear Weapons to make them feel safe. Why cant we come up with some kind of system of containment . Why cant we simply contained this problem . If they just want a few Nuclear Weapons, why cant we find a way to make this problem so that it doesnt get worse, but ultimately why cant we just live with this problem . There are those who say poor little north korea, they have no natural friends, no prestige, if you look at the republican koreans, one of the Top Countries in the world, north korea has nothing. This is a never buy north korea to get some attention, to get some notoriety, and to be taken seriously because they have Nuclear Weapons. Thats another argument, which is to say lets contain it, lets figure out what we can do about it. To you that this is a much more serious problem, what were seeing in the last you weeks is clearly missiles that are no longer just test versions of missiles. They are not just trying to see whether these things will work and reaching for them and try another in a month. Its clear they have a production process with these missiles. Its pretty clear that they havent mastered some things that many people, many experts, felt that they would not achieve this time. Solid fuel rocketry, multistage rockets. Its pretty clear that they are making a lot of progress here. We have to ask, is this part of a Little Country that wants to be taken seriously, or is there a much more purposeful issue involved . I would argue that what they are doing, what theyre trying to achieve is to somehow decouple the United States from the Korean Peninsula. Perhaps more broadly, from northeast asia. That sounds pretty sensible, how can north korea fanciful, how hownorth korea do that . Could this ever be accomplished . If you think about what they are looking to do, which is put their troops are not on a territorial defense. They have a lot of asymmetrical , chemical weapons, biological weapons, they have a lot of special forces. Scenario he following north korea invades south korea, its happened before. In, we. Says ok, we are are going to come to the aid of our alliance partner, south korea. Then the North Koreans say not so fast, americans if you join this fight, we are going to hold one of your cities at risk. We are going to attack one of your civilian centers. To which the u. S. Says you do that, we will, right after you, we will annihilate your country if you do that. Then the North Koreans say game on. At that point, the american president has to decide the South Koreans can probably handle this themselves, they probably dont need our help in terms of with standing on north korean invasion. North korea has one Million People in its army, but the south korean army is extremely robust. Maybe they dont need our help, maybe they can handle this. Why would a u. S. President blink, why would a u. S. President hesitate . Because to join in the fight against north korea is to create the possibility, certainly the northan zero, koreans would attack the u. S. Given pretty fanciful, the disparity and what we know to be the north korean capabilities, why would they ever attack north korea attack south korea . ,he North Koreans also believe just ask one of them, that somehow south korea is a creature, and a creation of the United States. If you can just get the u. S. Off of the peninsula, Many South Koreans would somehow welcome some kind of unification. When, pretty hard to take you look at the objective circumstances. Looking at objective circumstances is not very north korean of you. North koreans often look at the circumstance they believe with a unified effort. By the way, history is full of less powerful armies defeating more powerful armies because of this unity of the spirit and effort. It is not to be ruled out. Thannk it is more likely some of the other explanations that north korea believes they can, by pointing a Nuclear Weapon at the United States, they can put themselves in a position of making the u. S. Blink. If the u. S. Blinks, with respect to its Alliance Commitments in wholerean peninsula, the question of u. S. Alliance commitments around the world would be up for grabs. Whether want anyone agrees with it or not, you have two but the probability rater than zero. What are we going to do about it . I think there are several things we need to do about it. One of them is to reassure our allies, which is south korea and japan, that we are not going to blink. We understand the importance of this. By reassuring our allies. , we need to make available some of our best equipment and military technology for dealing with the issues. I think that is very important as a system to be clear that we are prepared to deploy this with our allies in northeast asia. I think assurance to them is very important. The second issue, especially for the public, is the willingness to keep the door open to negotiations. Beforell, we negotiated with north korea. We did not achieve what we wanted, the process that jim referred to in 2007, was interrupted in 2008 by the fact that the North Koreans did not give us adequate verification and we could not go forward with a process that did not have verification. People often say was it that you didnt trust north korea . Trust had nothing to do with it, the problem was we couldnt verify anything we needed to verify. I think its pretty clear that the south korean public and the japanese public have been concerned by the fact that the u. S. Was not negotiating with the North Koreans. If you look at these opinion surveys, especially in south korea back in 2004, some 45 of South Koreans were blaming the United States for north koreas unwilling Nuclear Program. Why, because they saw the u. S. Unwillingness to negotiate in the first bush term as being the reason north korea felt it had to have Nuclear Weapons. Heaving backdoor door open to negotiations is absolutely critical. Things. Ay a few theres a third element that i think is very critical, working with china. We cannot work with china as some kind of contractor in this. Work with china as something that we somehow outsourced the problem to the chinese. We need to have a serious sitdown, a serious discussion about what oure aspirations are and what their aspirations are. The shanghai accords, when president nixon arrived in shanghai. Dont live in hats, somebody spent time putting that rabbit down the hat. Henry kissinger spent weeks on and working with to lay the groundwork to essentially stuff that rabbit down the hat. I think we need that kind of discussion, we dont need to eat in tweets in the dead of night, public telephone calls that i dont think really reach the level im talking about. We need what is called a deep dive, we need a real effort to understand each other. Ifchinese might say to Us North Korea goes down, we end up with a situation where its your ally, and they are right up on our border, you will put troops on our border, listening posts, and we cant accept that. Maybe we can have a conversation about that. The conversation consistent with our Alliance Requirements with south korea. We should not be talking about south korea without south korea. We need to keep our south korean allies in that process. We the chinese might say hear your assurances about troops, listening posts, what about just the perception that our public would have that you win and we lose . After all this affects the internal politics of china. These things are serious issues. China is a big country, there is not a consensus on anything in china. People have a different point of view. We need to be able to work with the chinese and understand them better. This means clearing the decks, this means all hands on deck. The 100t address different items that we have on the agenda with china, we have to pick some priorities. I would submit that north korea is one of them. I dont think any country can live with a nuclear a country aiming Nuclear Weapons at it. For the United States, this would be the first such country to do so in many decades. Finally, this is a kind of gray area, there isnt space between peace and war. The idea that somehow we should strikeme preemptive against north korea, we would not get all of their nuclear materials, and most importantly we would have to make sure the South Koreans are comfortable with that. If they are comfortable with that, they have to make sure that they feel they are willing what 20he risk of million South Koreans within artillery range of north korea would need. Option, it an easy would put a preemptive strike way out there as one of the most difficult options. Are there issues we can do between war and peace . Are there things we can do with cyber attacks, some type of sabotage . Are there some things we can do, if not to end the program, but at least slow it up and see whether in slowing it up we can allow the sanctions to have mark bite just to have more bite . Just to have we just need to look at that issue. We are going to have to get deadly serious about it, and serious now. Ultimately, this problem will lead a negotiation, we are going to have to sit down. I think we should be prepared to sit down with the North Koreans. The south korean public and the japanese public, also i think we need to be able to lay out to the North Koreans directly the consequences of their continuing pursuit of these programs. Before,e been told this but as any advertiser knows, you have to Say Something 50 times before the person listening understands what you are talking about. I dont think we should fear to negotiate i dont think we should be afraid to engage our diplomacy. American diplomacy is not a contradiction in terms, we are pretty good at it. If we are going to pursue more diplomacy, we need to get more diplomats into the game. I think the Trump Administration, which to a great this is thederstood most serious problem out there, i dont think they have cleared the decks and are prepared to deal with this. If the Trump Administration comes up against the election in thatwith the prospect north korea has Nuclear Weapons and they are aiming them at the United States, i think its right to be a hard one to lay at their predecessor. They will certainly blame barack obama for a lot of things, they will try to blame him for this thing, but i think its time that we got serious in terms of a strategy with several parts to it, and each part moving together. Thank you, i will stand by for questions. [applause] thank you very much. Its a sobering assessment, but a useful start to our discussion. And glad you widened the aperture to include china into this. We will get to some of that dynamic in our Group Discussion immediately afterwards. First, we have a chance emphasizing the role of , a longtime and while accomplished diplomat. 40 year career in japan that he culminated in 2010. Time, he served as in they general and was six party talks, later rising to be Foreign Affairs and by smiths for japan. He is now a professor at to make on university in kyoto, its my pleasure to invite him up your. Good afternoon. Im here to talk about north korea. Japan, and living dangerously is not how were doing it. All tv stations at six the morning turning to an aside announcement. North korea Just Launched missiles. Find some places to live. This is what is happening in japan. You understand how serious it is. Today, looking back and forward. I was the chief negotiator for heard from i that all engagements, talks, negotiations from 20 years are all fading. I feel a bit uncomfortable to hear that. Was one of those people worked very hard. There was something about this north korean affair that we find a threat. Reeserby what is called audience and approach, we all fade. We can prevent north korea from dropping its Nuclear Program. Sense, that statement was right,. Past, wasck to the there any chance for denuclearization . Faded . Really a case that was there any chance to achieve that . Chance, that was a was 2005, september 19. ,here was a joint statement thanks to