Into the and i demonic young dictate dictator could not be more timely. The book provides insight into who kim jong un is, what makes him tick and what to tell up at night. The book has earned wide praise from among the leading thinkers and former policy practitionersdealing with north korean issues and were fortunate that they will for the next hour with us down what we need to know about how north korea operates , who jung pak who kim jong un is and what is going on in north korea so welcome them to this conversation. They both areformer intelligence analysts who represent the best of their previous professions. They each were tremendous colleagues while in government and they are tremendous friends now. In addition to being deeply informed , kind and deadly smart, they are also a ton of fun so before i turn it over to jung and sue, we are collecting many questions from members of the audience and welcome you to send more. Do so by sending an email to events at brookings. Edu or via twitter at becomingkim. With that it is my delight to turn it over to sue and jung. I do want to spend a few minutes talking about what it was like to cover a country like north korea and a person like kim jong un as an analyst. Your book begins with you talking about analyzing north korea, the fourth year of your job as an analyst at the cia making the hard call and as you know i started at the cia two days before 9 11 and in my years covered kim jong un and yours, your years covered kim jong un and between us, from kim jong il to kim jong un there are two decades of covering north korea but we both agree north korea is the hardest of a hard target country. Can you talk about your job as a north korea analyst in the Intelligence Community andhow you analyzed the best information and misinformation connecting the dots , talk about how you your career analyst job is about putting together pieces of a puzzle at different times, different pieces of the puzzle and so on. Can you start with that . Thank you to ryan for that amazing introduction and to sue, i can never get tired of your telling people about our first date. This is a rated pg conversation so she left outa lot of stuff in that opening. Sue, thank you for doing this. Im so glad were getting to do this with our audience so we cant do this in person. I think whats so interesting about how our past is is that you cover the father and our i covered the sun and our paths crossed at the agency and even on the cia website, the recruitment website you see things like you work at the cia because you help us to learn to connect the dots, that its like a puzzle where you have different puzzles coming in at different times from different period so you have to figure that out but i think in the north korea period, we see this now where all this fragmentary information is coming in about whether kim jong un is alive or ill, is that because of north koreas specific practices, operation security and their Information Security it makes north korea the hardest of the hard targets and as you know this is all things that always rang truethroughout the building. So i think north korea doesnt want, the regime doesnt want information to get out to the outside or within north korea itself. Because of that you have only a small circle of advisers who might know where or what kim is doing at any given moment and i think that is designed to make sure that no one gets any crazy ideas about starting a protest or getting together or colluding against the state but its also to makesure people on the outside , the United States and china also are kept in the dark about where the regime is so given all of that, i think a lot of assumptions have been made over the years but given all that, the northkorean Operations Security , their tight hold on information, makes it difficult to actually hear insiders. In your book about you talk about richard shumans book about how it analysts need to work through the weaknesses and biases in our thinking and how we need to check and review our assumptions and i found that its very true. I think thats one of the most thoughtful things about your book about the need for checking our assumptions. You know this book. Weve probably had five or six different copies given to usat any point so everybody if you walk into any cia Analyst Office , former or in a langley youll see this book on their bookshelf either over to the side but it reminds me of one of the things about being a north korea follower is that, a north korea analyst is that its extremely interesting. You have to live with all of this ambiguity and provide answers so its a lot of mental and also emotional gymnastics that you have to do to get target and we see north korea as a hard target and its the reason we study north korea so much is because they have Nuclear Weapons and its position in the middle of the most economically vibrant part of the world, asia is its sick with south korea, its where troops are present in japan and so given all of those factors and the fact that we dont have very much absolute insight into the leadership intentions, that makes this a very volatile place and it really requires a lot of checking of the assumptions. Otherwise we are just following it at the wrong time one more question and we can move on to north korea, what do you think is the biggestmisperception people have about the agency and what is it like not being in the government anymore . Is it weird not having those resources . Yes when i arrived at brookings , after nine years of the agency i remember being at my deskand looking at my one screen, we had multiple screens. Just looking at my one small screen and feeling i was on the decline. What dopeople do for information . What are they listening to . What are they seeing, talking to them and what is the government saying . So that was a really difficult transition. You had to find others sources of information. I think you found that to, that when you provided, it was such a hard way to acclimate to new information environments. What did you think when you left . Like, what do i not know . You get, you become an information obsessed so now you dont have it. You have to go through this withdrawal. So moving on to kim, i know the status of intelligence and will get to that later but in the book you mentioned theres a tendency by analysts and scholars and media to portray him as a cartoon figure. A 10 foot tall baby. And theres a tendency to simultaneously underestimate or overestimate his capability and you say with his capabilities, with his intentions, questioning his rationality and of course he is not the only one who is caricatured. I remember when i was covering kim jong il, hillary caricatured him. He was making fun of his bouffant hair and platform shoes and has a session with films and womanizing and so on. So could you talk to us a little bit about that, being portrayed as this cartoon figure and theconsequences of the implications of doing that. Its easy to caricature the kim regime area that youve seen this all your life in your career. And i think its because of that absence of deep knowledge about north korea and i think that to kims are very easy to caricature and thats one of the things that i wanted to do with this book is to provide a whole picture. It depends on where yourgaze is. I think this is where richard porters comments about mirror imaging. That you cant be projecting your own assumptions or your ownbeliefs and what i would do in that situation. So i think the whole crazy moniker, that goes to how can they do this . Why would they do this . Dont they know we would hit them . This doesnt make any sense. Only when you lookfrom the north korea or the kim perspective, thats something that i tried to explain. What are the drivers of all of these actions . What is his historical baggage . What is he mindful of, what does he adds aspire to and how does that evidence or manifest in his actions so what might be crazy and unpredictable and unprofessional to us is rooted in rationality on the part of kim. In writing your book what most surprised you about kim jong un . As your view of him changed over the years since he took over . Has he exceeded your expectations . The 2018 was really jarring. Remember that . When kim did this abrupt switch and everyone seemed to be talking about he is different. Yes, hes different from his father and grandfather. He did this pivot at the olympics and hes engaging with south korea and the United States after years of holding his neighbor hostage, that he was different. He was studied in the west and hes got a wife and he wants to be more modern so we have to grab this opportunity and that was get disconcerting and this goes back to how deeply uncomfortable it is to be an analyst of north korea, it made me challenge my assumptions about kim. What are we seeing and what does that mean and what is drivingthis outreach . And i remember we were at a conference and there was a really blustery frightening statement after the pivot and all of us were like oh yes, thats the north korea that we know. The issuing of threats and telling us that theyre going to use their weapons , all of that but i think as i tried to get in the issue and show that he is still learning from us. Hes still growing. Hes still adapting and that we have to be ready and responsible to adjust our analysis based on the situation. Do you have a fun fact that people dont know about him . Like, i know that his favorite food of all time was sushi and not only sushi, fatty tuna. I think as i was writing, you know sometimes when you write the more you feel like youre learning from the writing process. What i felt was interesting is the role of women. And his use of this so i thought that was what was. But kim jong il did not have his consort out in public, they tried to keep women in the background as much as possible but there are many reasons why people bring their wife to the four and one is that he was young and his father had told him to get married just before in 2009. Told him to get married and although this isnt explicit, because it would make him into a man and in korean culture, youre not a man until you get married and have your own family so that gave him that gravitas of being this married, stable man and i know were going to be talking about whats happening now but i also think that the reason he included his wife in his rule for that he introduced his wife at all is that you wanted to ensure that this is a stability of mine. Kim jong il had a ton of women but kim jong un wants to have this image of a family man so i think i suspect that hes thinking that there should be no jockeying in the back over which line of the family is going to be the next in line so i think that it makes me i think as a parent to think that he thinks ahead and hes not thistwentysomething year old kid anymore but hes a 36yearold. That was one of my favorite parts of your book is your observations in that chapter on kim jong uns wife. And you link her role with north korea and him teasing the world with the promise of a different more peaceful charming and modern north korea. And he normalizes kings status, not as a leader of north korea as a Nuclear Power but you mentioned as a husband, as afather , as a ruler on par with people like president moon, president xi. You have a quote, the carefully curated appearance with a false or side of things, a thin veneer of good humor to mask the brutality and deprivation indoor by the people while reports about the existence of a possibly multiple children, thank you for that one. But yes, i think that was definitely illuminating. Lets talk about his sister a little bit. Because that, now everybody is talking about these officials succeeding if something was to happen your thoughts on his sister . I think he, its clear he doesnt trust anybody else. They share a mother and a father so kim went through the pruning the family tree, getting rid of the five brands or marginalizing. Its anyones guess the older sister is in a position to potentially jockey for the children as they grow up but this is anyones guess. So theres a lot of speculation about where kim is and who might take over if he is incapacitated but these are real questions and north korea regardless of where he is, whether hes somewhere else, the North Koreans still have Nuclear Weapons. They have a cash ofbiological chemical weapons. They have a sophisticated Cyber Capabilities so north korea is a danger and a threat and i think that this is a reminder, kims absence is a reminder about how we should be preparing for all of these various scenarios. What is your best estimate of what is going on right now . I know that we have so many conflicting reports and nobody knows but what is your best estimate . Whats your take . Maybe while we made for him to get back on because were having technical difficulties, maybe i should talk a little bitabout what i think is going on. Just to talk a little bit about my sense of whats going on, obviously theresno confirmed reporting from ,so no one knows. No one knows whats happening with kim. But there are a couple of data points that i do find interesting. Since april 11 he has not been seen. We know that. And why while he has been out of public view in the past it is highly unusual that he is done this in at two very important events including april 15 celebration of his grandfathers birthday. And the Army Day Celebration just on saturday. And now missing this april 15 celebration is significant. Because he has i dont think ever missed that event since hes coming to power so that is noteworthy. And another interesting fact i do think is that its curious that North Koreans are very quiet about all of this. You would think that they do monitor the news coming from the world and they could come out and saythis is all fake news but theyre not doing that. I think i was asking you what your best estimate on the state of kims health was and while you were gone i was trying to talk about basically saying we dont know whats happening but it is curious. Some things are unusual. Something is off but were not going to know what it is. But the questions about, the questions remain about what the implications are of his actions and i think it would be in his interest toshow up sooner rather than later. Both for his supporters and the information penetration is not what it was like in 2014, not what it was like in 2008 rumors are going to get around and i think its interesting that all of this chatting is going on in the chinese chat rooms and that, so all of this information, all of those rumors are going to get out and i think it would probably be to his benefit andadvantage to show up sooner rather than later. But you do think that in, that he is most likely to succeed if something was to happen to him . I think given all of the resources that the government , that the regime has put forward to elevating that family line, the bloodlines and in their propaganda and in all of their history and all of their education, and all of their landscapes, it would be hard to not have a kim Family Member at the head and even if that person was a bigger head, i think there would have tobe a full Family Member at the helm. What kind of ruler would which he be . We look at history what kim jong un did. He got rid of five of the seven people helping him at his funeral procession and he marginalized the other two by the time the first two or three years and i think that kims family are not strangers to brutality and repression and they have to use it to make sure that they maintain their survival and when we talk about regime survival were talking about the kim family and not the entirety of thegovernment. But if she were to take over, with the regime be stable . I think in the year to nearterm, the elite would be very selfconscious about sticking their head up or raising their hands were trying to collaborate to their body on the west coast and i understand kims purchase over the last few years hundreds of officials as a way to keep the elites offkilter and to make sure that no one support or no ones networks get very ossified or hardened into something. Given that i would expect to see purges. I think in the near term i dont think the elites are going to start rising up to that extent. I think we have to be careful about thinking of the regime as fragile. It is fragile but also theres a lot of resistance because theres a lot of entrenched interests, money or otherwise that keeps the elites pretty much along the lines of what the regime wants. I also think that given all the things that have been happening so far in terms of the North Koreans, kim has been clear that north korea cannot trust anybody except for kim to protect them and if anything i think that what the past few years have shown is that the us is not a reliable partner. South korea is not a reliable partner. China is not a reliable partner and thats something i keys in the book about how the regime has said over the decades that the other countries, allied or not will turn their back on you if push comes toshove. Lets talk a little bit about north koreas policies towards the United States and us policy towards north korea before getting to audience questions. First, if kim is not incapacitated or dead and indeed is alive and well what can we expectfrom him in the future . Will he conclude a deal with trump . You think he prefers to deal with trump instead of President Biden . What is kims next step . Next steps this year for the coming year. So i think whats interesting is that he came into the scene in 2011, 2012 with a lot of swagger. He said North Koreans didnt have to tighten their belts anymore. That that was his fathers line during the famine. And that when he introduced this policy in 2013 of a dual track policy kim said we can have Nuclear Weapons and Economic Prosperity but whats interesting in the past year is he told his people there might have to be some belttightening, that there is going to be a prolonged struggle with the United States and things are going to be hard and people are going to have to work harder, longer faster so it seems as though kim has closed the door or at least kept it open on engaging with the us. But i dont know if he would make any big movesnow. Given the us elections and the uncertainty there. It was not in his interests to push a deal at this point given who knows what, so soon after the election and these deals whatever itis would not be implemented. So i think what were going to see is i think were going to see more tests as the n