, 10 10 marks party day in north korea. Expectations for that date and drpk relations. And mystery solved. Dprkisappearance of the ambassador to rome who is in south korea and continuing developments in the wake of the reported shooting death of the minister of fishery. The upcoming economic dialogue started by yours truly and a new vice Ministerial Alliance is possible. Frequent, our most guest and our only repeat guest, is perfectly positioned to give us critical insight into these topics and more. Hes the Deputy Assistant secretary mark mefford. A graduate of princeton. We know his bio. Office of japanese affairs. Multiple assignments throughout asia with korean language skills, korean, japanese, and vietnamese. And my favorite title, representative to the spent fool spent fuel team at the nuclear facility. The dynamos are running away with the regular season in kbo. Mark, welcome to the show. It is great to be here, thank you for having me back. Regulars, to our victor dean, the former director at the nsc. New coffee mug . But not least, dr. Sue m i terry. I see the book, i see the coffee mug. Welcome back. Get to it. Lets secretary pompeo traveled to japan. He was originally slated to go to south korea and mongolia. Two big highlights. With the new japanese Prime Minister and a meeting was a quad in tokyo which at the foreign minister level with the indians, japanese and the United States. Lets take these in turn. Your impressions from the suca meeting. What are the big takeaways for the u. S. Japan alliance . Really a pity was that the secretary could not continue with his whole program to both seoul and elsewhere. Given everything that was going on with the president s health, regrettable but understandable. He did make it to tokyo. He was able to meet with the new japanese Prime Minister, suba. We had a great relationship with him when he was the chief cabinet secretary. He met with Vice President pence and secretary pompeo. He continues to build on a relationship that was already solid. Committed tos very ensuring that the u. S. Japan relationship remains the cornerstone of our national security. We are looking forward to deepening further this relationship. It was the second time we had met at the foreign level. The australian and indian minister flying in. Schedule. Rueling the secretary spent 20 hours on the ground before coming back here. Before us the quad an understanding in our four countries, about the need of democracies such as ourselves to get together to discuss our shared interests to discuss ways we can cooperate. Mark thank you for the excellent overview. I appreciate the outstanding readout. Is primarily focused on korea. Koreans takehe away from this . Take away fromul this . The new japanese Prime Minister, something that comes to mind is tokyooletokyo seoul relations. Marc i think the Prime Minister understands the importance of constructive relationships among our countries, and among the top issues that we do share is meeting the north korea challenge. I would expect that Going Forward, Prime Minister soukup will work without Prime Minister suga will Work Together with us. It is important for us to recognize that we share values and we share goals. Hopefully seoul will find ways to resolve their issues. Mark do you sense any possibility for improving ties or trilateral relations between the new Prime Minister and secretary pompeos trip to the region . Marc the trilateral relationship was among the topics that the secretary raised. Slate, new new leader, that does always present opportunities. We have to be skillful and how we do it. Certainly a lot of our efforts to work with our partners come and the region. We try to be discreet when we deal with these matters. We see opportunities to try to improve things. A warm exchange of greetings between president moon and the new Prime Minister. We will start here and see how things go. Mark thank you for that interesting take. Victor, i want to come to you on the trilateral and the seoul tokyo piece. This basket of issues. Tokyo, trilateral relationship. Sure. mark is being diplomatic because he is a diplomat. This relationship i wrote a book on this. It is about as bad as it has ever been, unfortunately. I think that there is an opportunity with a new Prime Minister. He ever intended for the relationship to be bad. He spoke about korea and his first speech in the United States. It was at csis. He did his best on the deal. He wanted to build relations with korea, but so much happened and as the Prime Minister, he became an obstacle to any possible improvement in relations. Sue is there, even though suga there are still opportunities because the personalities have changed. Raisedwas in tokyo and it with both suga and trilateral. It is important that that happened. On the korean side, the president it was good that they made positive statements with suga, positive, forwardlooking. The main thing is that they have important, even if to any sortducive of improvement in korean relations. Theyre focus like a laser on interkorean relations in the year and a half they have left. President moon spoke at another event last night where the primary thing that he talked about, after he thanked everybody for inviting him, the only thing he talked about was a piece declaration. O, blue house needs to think see trilateral tokyo relations as being irrelevant to that goal. They need to understand that this is important. You have to get a consensus from everybody. I think that is the primary dilemma. They see no need for it because they do not see it as a gold they are trying to achieve. Up ourou have also teed interkorean topic that we will be coming to shortly. Gave an overview of the importance of values that these other Prime Ministers came to tokyo to engage in an important dialogue. In the background briefing, on the return trip by the secretary, there were quotes from Senior State Department officials on background who talked about how the secretary would move to institutionalize this framework. Two questions, what does that expect tohat can we see Going Forward . Marc victor a brief history of the quad. It started in 2004. Over the years, the dream of the and has waxed and waned that has been the result of this recognition that our countries Share Interests and values. Rising itbout regular regularizing it to come up with something at lower levels but also Something Like a work plan which would include a number of cooperative efforts in different areas, whether it is security, or infrastructure development, or Traditional Development assistance, or the energy sphere. It is still early. It is meant to be envisioning a fabric that would connect all of us throughout the region. Question you have about other participation. It was never meant to be exclusive. It is meant to have other countries aspire to join, but share the values of those currently involved. Well see how it goes from here. Very positive mood coming out of tokyo and all four of our capitals are committed to make this work. Mark outstanding. Like victor, you beat me to the spot. Kia is a sponsor of the nba. You would have beaten me to the spot and established position. Net me ask one followup o t that, many of the issues that you talked about, shared values, there is also a talk about which seems to double toward the policy. Is this something that the state department is encouraging the state department to look at . Tppe is a little between and other institutional frameworks in the region. The koreans were interested. There was a moment where the koreans felt that they might be outside looking in. Is this something that the state Department Might be talking to the koreans about, good to take a look at this. Where are we on that basket of issues . Marc the two countries have spent a lot of time talking about the specific strategy for our part and creating new southern policy. How they interact and overlap and how we can complement each other. This idea about neutrality is key to the four quad members in the region. I think we have to see. We are at the point where we are trying to figure out among the four of us how this should work. Mentioned publicly that the idea of a quad plus not foreclosing anything. Dont want to be exclusive or insular, but do want to get this fabric and make it tighter and clearer before we start to think about building it out. Victor, who going to come to you sue, i will come to you in a second to kick off topic two, but victor any thoughts to close out topic one . Victor this started in 2004. It was my first week at the nsc when the tsunami hit. It started out focused on disaster response. Disaster preparation. Then it became an informal grouping into thousand five and 2006 where there were regular confrontations including what was happening in iraq and afghanistan. When i step back and look at , the primary manifestation of an effort to network. Line segmentsre and turn them into triangles, quadsplus, or as marc said. Clearly, there is no language about china in the quad. It is about inclusion and all of this. The joke that everybody says is when you have a Group Greater than three, it starts to look like something that is directed against china. Either the language on this neither the language on this nor the way that they framed it is good. Trying to multilateral lies more stuff in asia. The fact that they talked about osion perspective, they dont want to see any uctures squeezing out these organizations are useful when they dont say we will just focus on one thing. It is kind of amorphous. It is more functional than it is institutional. You Start Talking about institutionalization and regularization, then we are talking about a secretariat then you start to get concerns about inclusion and exclusion. It here wont get into today but a timehonored theme korea, program about china, u. S. , the squeeze, all of that. That extent in decisionmaking and surveying the quad from the korean peninsula. Let me go to topic two. Partykorea, october 10, Day Celebration. Sue, i will come to you first. 10 10 marks party day. No major provocations posthanoi. Theresve years, usually something significant in terms of demonstration of military capabilities or something along those lines, and chatter,pen source imagery about something coming. What are the takeaways that you think will come out of the 10 10 celebrations . Sue we are seeing it in a few theymeing big. Nk to mportant right now to highlight all of these struggles we have been talking about in the last few months, sanctions, covid, typhoons, triple whammys, that the regime remains strong. The governorat himself promised that sometime this year. , the 2015 parade on the 70th anniversary. Five years prior to that, on the 65th anniversary the introduced a missile, the first missile designed to have a range that could hit guam. Saying thatnalists he we have these domestic difficulties. Precedent on the fiveyear rotation of something new. Slbm or marcus, who came on the show has pointed severalayload with warheads, each capable of being aimed at a different target, which makes it difficult to intercept. Is, they will have to show something. Imagery about the ide showing something new to show they are massproducing strategic weapons. Show somethingto new, they are massproducing this stuff. It is a warning to washington for whoever comes in november, whether trumps second term or Vice President biden, that north korea is producing more fissile material. It is expanding its Nuclear Arsenal and time is not on washingtons side. Mark to tease that last piece out, they are walking a bit of a line in terms of domestic politics, this fiveyear anniversary for lack of a better term, so there is a desire to they areing big, but also dealing with this in the middle of the u. S. Election. It is a little bit different. What kind of line do they have to walk . Sue this is not a normal election year. This is the window. We want to see a provocation. First he want to deal with President Trump rather than biden. He doesnt want to create a problem with President Trump by conducting a major provocation. Comes, i thinkn it will be after the election, and particularly against President Biden. In the transition time in january, that is the time to watch out for. If it is President Trump reelected, it will change again to think about what he needs to do. President trump said having another summit with kim is a priority for him. He does not want to jeopardize that opportunity. The factors he will have to think about. Mark victor, your take. Victor the thing i will look for on the parade is whether people will be wearing masks. That has the potential to be a big super spreader event. I dont disagree with sues analysis. I think that is what is likely to happen. I think we will see provocations after if biden wins. For two reasons, one is tactical. They went to approach a new administration from a position of strength. Whether it is right or wrong they always feel that doing Something Like this gives them strength. They will immediately associate President Biden with obamas policy of strategic patients. They would want to send a clear signal that thats not going to work. Is, if they do that, it becomes a selffulfilling prophecy. That will naturally influence or shape the policy review that will take place in north korea as soon as the new administration comes in. A trump wins, i was doing conference with someone else who is very close, who once worked in the administration, was close to trump, deeply involved in the campaign. Wins, heo me, if trump will do a summit with kim jongun right away. He said, hell probably make a deal that experts will hate but he will play it up as the greatest deal ever. The reason he will do that is, one, trump as an individual does not like loose ends. Two, as this person said, trump went all in on north korea. There is no other issue where he personally went all in on in his first term. Met the leader and all of that. With china, they put ambassador ligh ambassador lighthizer out there. He cannot have that not succeed for him. He thinks its likely that there would be a meeting right away. Mark i have asked sue and vic tor to talk about the shortterm, mediumterm future. Take us back to the present. Where are we . It seems like the lines of communication are still open . There was a letter a week or so ago. Where we are in terms of u. S. Dprk relations and the posture we find ourselves in at this time. We have continued to maintain and to state publicly that we remain open to dialogue, to a diplomatic solution, that we continue to hope to actualize the spirit of singapores statement and the goals contained therein, transforming the u. S. North korea relationship, bringing peace to the peninsula, which would improve north and south relations. That remains. Unless northime, korea response to the will of the international community, the Pressure Campaign will continue. I would point out that chairman kim recently announced or released publicly a sympathy vote or some expression of get well soon to President Trump. The last time that the north koreans publicly expressed sympathy toward the United States was 9 11. Its been 19 years since weve had that kind of public expression of sympathy. Take it as you will, but it is a good sign that chairman kym is isnching chairman kim launching and expressing concern about our leader. Mark i am tempted to ask what you make of the fact that it has been 19 years and we have not had an expression like that. Or are yous there just noting it for the record . Marc i suppose it is a reflection that over 19 years we have been fortunate enough not to have a repeat of Something Like 9 11. I wont venture a guess or put any thought into similar notice over the years. Mark lets move on to interkorean discussions. We are on the subject of north korea in terms of the u. S. Lets shift to the peninsula. Lets look at these two pieces. Take this one first. Wheree continuing fallout the continuing fallout from this incident at dprk burnede drp the body of a south korean government official. Military tensions are still pretty high. Interestingly, the blue statement that expressedecurity first of all, condolences for the terrible tragedy, but also on a policy issues support for the south korean government proposal i am quoting here to find truth through the interkorean dialogue. . Omments on those two issues virtually the same day when the south korean government came out with his expression of we are as eager as they are to get to the bottom of what happened. But if there is a way through some kind of joint efforts to improve relations then lets see. Have stressedhey their desire that this be an opportunity. We will have to see how that goes. Im not sure if the north has responded to visit in treaty but, yes, we are watching it closely. Marc, one quick followup. President moon give a speech where he mentioned korean policy initiatives, for lack of a better word. It seems that there has been a lot of chatter and push out of oul to improve korean relations. This is causing frictions with the sanctions regime . How are you negotiating in terms relationship . Al this as have looked at being handinhand with our shared goals. Northsouth and denuclearization are inextricably linked. Conversations do take place and this is the point of the working countrieseen our two organization moves forward in lockstep and make sure that the north and south to move Forward Together and are able to complement each other. Sue, your take on any of this . Theres a number of different takecould take as this. T