Media, supports cspan as a Public Service along with these other Television Providers getting your front row seat to democracy. Former National SecurityCouncil AsianAffairs Director and others testified on security challenges on the green mesilla. Vladimir putin and north Korean Leader kim duncan, denuclearization effort and in the region. This is about an hour and 15 minutes. T welcome, this meeting is the subcommittee on east Asia International cybersecurity policy will come to order. I would like to begin by thanking sandy and ronnie, Ranking Member ronnie and members of the committee for being here. We discussed the security and icother challenges facing the Korean Peninsula and interest in the role in the region. We are grateful to be joined by three experts in this area. Doctor victor, mr. Schneider and then went to introduce each of them more fully in a minute. Despite the passage of 70 years since the end of the korean war, the canadian peninsula and security concerns from this continues to echo far beyond the region. The alliance between the republic of korea and United States forged in mutual sacrifice seven decades agopi remains peace and prosperity. As we have reaffirmed recent months, this is ironclad. In april, President Biden welcomed in for a state visit in which the two leaders unveiled the washington declaration to reinforce extended deterrence and response in northin koreas growing nuclear threats. The same month senator ronnie and i and our colleagues past i Bipartisan Senate resolution to honor the 70 the anniversary of Historic Alliance and president you already addressed joint congress. In august President Biden posted to decent our cooperation to bring greater peace, prosperity and security to the indo pacific region. I salute the efforts of these leaders to heal old wounds, look to the future and address shared challenges. This partnership will help counter the military threat inth north korea of our nations committed to share Realtime Data on north Korean Missile launchers the end of this year. I commend Strong Language to the response of the aggression on the South China Sea. This is a historic moment in the u. S. Alliance. Confront a range of Global Security and economic challenges. One of those challenges of course is putin for which has shaken the International Order not just but around the world. Across the globe including xi jinping and china and kim and north korea are playing close attention to the response ofhe e nazis and our allies and draw is based on the response. Kim duncan has been seeking to leverage a supply ammunition to gain access to the technology. At the un two weeks ago president un about allies will not stand idly by and we must not. I look forward to recommendations from our witnesses to what we can do together but among the steps we should take his better enforce distinct International Sanctions against the dt prk included provisions of bipartisan act which i offered a couple of years ago. That put the sanctions regime. The sanctions regime has been an its identified in a variety schemes used to invade and some of the firms aiding and abetting in the effort. A north koreas crypto currency to Fund Weapons Programs is another area we must do more and crackdown on. We must also do more to shine a light on the horrendous human abuses taking place. Prk increasing alignment with russia and china raises other concerns we will discuss as we go forward. There many areas we have to coordinate efforts with south koreateou including countering c economic coercion and the export of cuttingedge technology to enhance chinas military technologies and the need for the United States and south korea to Work Together with other countries to support our goal of the indo pacific. We have a lot of ground to cover today but before i introduce our witnesses, let me turn it over to senator ronnie. Thank you, mr. Chairman and thank you to the members of this panel for being here. I have met at least one of you before but others of you by virtue of your expertise and appreciate your willingness to testify and provide your perspective and experience. I apologize for having to leave at 3 20 p. M. , i have another engagement i will have to run to attend but ie am deeply into te topic. What underscore significance the years as an anniversary of the korean war. Dear friends of mine served in that war in that conflict and my heart is moved by the sacrifice made by the people of your the south korean nation as well as our nation. Ssiles, but also with various flights and so forth that are threatening, and of cours and of course with north korea indicating a potential to provide weapons to russia in their invasion of ukraine. South korea has a south korea neighbor to the north with a massive investment as well as nuclear arms. At the same time does not have a Nuclear Capacity of its own. Ii would presume if i lived the i would be disturbed by that lack of balance and would be wondering how that could be remediated. So i look forward to hearing your perspectives. I share the chairmans deep conviction that it is critical that our nations remained closely aligned that we combine our support with the support of other nations in the region. Japan, obviously in particular and that association i would like to get that as well. With that, mr. Chairman, we will hear questions o and from our panelists. Thank you. Thank you, senator romney for those remarks. I will introduce more fully our three witnesses. We have victor shaw who was a Senior Vice President for asia and korean chair at the center for strategic and international studies. Also the distinguished professor of government at georgetown university. He was appointed in 2021 by the Biden Administration to serve on the defense policy board as an advisory roleto to the secretary of defense. 20042007 he served on the National Security council and was responsible for japan, korea , australia, new zealand and Pacific Island nations. Earlier he was deputy head of delegation atas the sixth party talks and received two Outstanding Service commendations during his tenure at the nsc. He authored seven books to time fulbright scholar and currently serves on 10 editorial boards of academic journals among many other accomplishments and expertise. Thank you, doctor shaw, for being here. Scott snyder is a senior fellow for korea studies and director of the program of u. S. Career policy at the council on Foreign Relations. Prior to joining the council, mr. Snyder was a senior associate in the International Program of the Asia Foundation. He foundede and directed and served as the Asia Foundation representative in korea from 20002004. He was also a senior associate at thehe pacific Foreign Center for strategic and international studies. He has worked as an asia specialist in the research and studies program at the u. S. Institute of peace and is acting director of the Asia Societys contemporary affairs program. He was a pan tech visiting Stanford UniversitysAsia Pacific Research center from 20052006 and received an eight fellowship in 1998 through 1999 by the social securitys research council. Again, thank you, mr. Snyder, for being here to share your expertise. Jenny town is a senior fellow at the Stetson Center and the ctdirector of stensons 38 north program. Her expertise in north korea, u. S. Dpr k locations in the northeast Regional Security is well known and established. She was named one of magazines Ground Breakers 2020. Fifty women changing the world. One of fastcompanys most creative people in business in 2019 for her role in cofounding and managing the 38 north website which provides policy and a Technical Analysis on norh korea. This town is also an expert renew or for Freedom House freedom in the world index where she previously worked on the human rights in north korea projects. From 2008 until 2018 she served as the assistant director of the u. S. Korea institute at Johns Hopkins school of advanced international studies. Welcome and thank you very much for being here with us. Let me now turn it over to you victor chu for your statement. Well, thank you, chairman ben holland, Ranking Member romney and distinguished members of the subcommittee. I will use my time to reflect on two recent and important developments in regards to security on the Korean Peninsula one of these is positive in one of these is negative. The positive developments relate to the vast improvements that senator romney suggested in his comments. Tribal relationships between the United States, japan and south korea. Typical agreements reached at camp david really are impressive and unprecedented. We need to ask why did this happen. Why did these come together. I think that there is five reasons. The first is the security environment has compiled a much higher cooperation between the allies. The war in europe really has changed everything. Not just in europe, but also in asia. The unthinkable such as war and the Taiwan Strait has now become possible and leaders are looking for ways to try to create more certainty and more stability. Themp second factor is chinas increasingly assertive behavior in the East China Sea and the South China Sea and in the Taiwan Straits. It has createded much foreign certainty in the minds of leaders in asia when you couple that withth the war in europe. A third factor bringing the three allies together of course is north koreas unceasing icbm and weapons of mass destruction campaign. In the past month north korea has tested its First Successful solid propellant nuclear icbm in this campaign shows no signs of abating anytime soon. In the fourth factor contributing to the success of trilateral is him is the president s efforts at improving relations with japan. The president basically took what was a harness Foreign Policy issue domestically and push forward even when initially it was not being reciprocated by tokyo. So, the significance of this trilateral cooperation cannot be underestimated when the United States, japan and south korea are together, each is safer in each has a stronger ground on which to deal with china. While camp david has been a positive development for security on the Korean Peninsula it develops to the budding relationship to north korea and russia. It is not new in the sense that there is always been cooperation but there are a few elements that are new. First, the north Korean Leader arguably has leverage in the relationship for the first time in recent memory. Putin needs fresh supplies and ammunition and shells from north korea to crop prosecute this unjust war in ukraine. That gives him a lot of leverage second the summit reduces hymns need to talk to the United States. It is noteworthy that the Biden Administration has stated its interest in re engaging in dialogue with north korea with no preconditions as to the results of those talks. This, to me, is a subtle but significant change that has greater flexibility in the u. S. Position. However, the prospect of such talks are even less likely because of the putin kim summit. I believe that part of the reason for kims engagement with putin is because of the spectacular failure and the inability to recover from the era of diplomacy with the Previous Administration in the United States. The only way the north Korean Leader could save face in regards to that was to come out of the covid lockdown and seek the major summit. He got his summit with putin. I am concerned that they could result in substantial insignificant russian supportive north koreas weapons programs. The north Korean Leader would not have traveled all the way to russia simply for food for ammunitions deal. Kim is looking for russian assistance with his Nuclear Weapon program with this multi Satellite Program and nuclear satellite submarine program. The summit will likely lead to more force labor being sent to russia. We just did a report looking at russia and china. There are several options for how the United States should respond to i this and ill just highlight if you will that are in my written testimony. It is a c coordinated response informal sanctions for the g7 plus and the nato ap for venues. It is no longer possible to seek action on north korea through the un Security Council given russia chinas opposition. Second, consider a new declaratory policy to include the possibility of preemptive action. This is a risky policy but it would be aimed at deterring further testing by dpr case. Udthird, consider south korean assistance to ukraine. South korean president has stated that the provision of Legal Assistance to russia as a direct threat to south koreas security. South korea thus far has provided humanitarian assistance anda indirectly had support for third parties like poland and the uniteda states. Consider enhanced south korea cooperation with august. Should russia provide nuclear Summary Technology to north korea, thisgy may be considereda response. South korea has worldclass port authorities could be certified. Choices for china. Beijing remains ambivalentuc abt this new cooperation. The United States should make clear that they cannot use north korea as a vehicle for indirectly supporting russias war. In conclusion, there are some that may argue that the new development is a response to the summit. The need for ammunition alone would have made this cooperation inevitable. This development in the region is precipitating an arms race in asia. This is not at the initiative of the United States or its allies. Chinas Massive Nuclear buildup, north koreas drive to become a Nuclear Weapon state the size of france and most of all russias war in europe has fundamentally changed the security environment in the region and on the peninsula in ways that have compelled countries that t suppt the peaceful status quo to respond. Thank you very much. Thank you, doctor shaw. Mr. Snyder. Thank you, mr. Chairman for the privilege for dissipating in this hearing on security for the peninsula and for spotlighting the impact of a new era of major power rivalry on the peninsula and indoec pacific security situation. Thank you also for your strong voice of support for the u. S. South Korea Alliance reflecting your opening comments. Which is valuable instrument for responding to interNational Security challenges not only on the peninsula, but increasingly globallyy. The u. S. South Korea Alliance has become even more important in the context of a possible contagion of revisionist actions modeled on russians invasion of ukraine that china and north korea has for challengers to internationally accepted borderlines may be tempted to repeat in asia. Bipartisan congressional support for the alliance is also important against the backdrop of domestic Political Polarization and emerging forms of narrow nationalism in the u. S. And south korea that could hamper Alliance Cooperation that has served us so well. For 70 years. I see three main impacts of the evolving Global Security situations on the Korean Peninsula. The first one you touched on in your opening statements. That is the paralysis of the un Security Council as a result of major power rivalry. As a main instrument by which we impose penalties on north korea for its illegal Ballistic Missile