Its about an hour 50 minutes. All right. So woere going to go ahead and get started. Thanks for joining us despite the rain. I know its difficult for many of you. For those of you who are not familiar with usip, were a nonpartisan independent institute that is dedicated to proposition that peace is possible. Were funded by congress and focused on preventing, mitigating, or resolving conflict. One of the global hotspots that has eluded peace for many years is the korean peninsula, and as you know, recently, President Trump and chairman kim met at the border between north and south korea, which has rekindled the prospects for returning back to negotiations and breaking the current diplomatic stalemate. And, in fact, the two leaders agreed to resume workinglevel negotiations in the coming weeks and try to make progress on denuclearization and peace. One of the sticking points has been north korea asking for sanctions relief. In order for the kim regime to survive and thrive, it needs to generate hard currency and develop its economy and sanctions have impeded these goals. On the other hand, the Trump Administration has stated consistently that it will not provide sanctions relief until north korea denuclearizes or at least takes significant steps toward denuclearization. So this is the key question. How do we offer sanctions relief to incentivize diplomacy and denuclearization but at the same time not minimize our leverage too quickly . And so to address these questions and others, weve assembled this fantastic panel of speakers. One of them is running a few minutes late so well just have him join when he arrives. But ive asked them as a group to help explain the scope of the sanctions regime against north korea including both multilateral and u. S. Sanctions, the process for providing partial and complete sanctions relief. Some potential practical paths for providing relief. Taking into account the constraints and opportunities. And then any lessons from sanctions regimes on other countries and that can be applied to the north korea case. So let me introduce the panelists in the order that theyll be speaking. First, again, dan wertz, but hes not here so well have him probably speak second or third. Dan is the Program Manager at the National Committee on north koreapublications. Hes the lead researcher and editor for north korea and the world, an interactive website of north koreas expersonal, economic, and diplomatic relations. To my left, josh stanton, a d. C. Based lawyer who played a very significant role in drafting north koreanrelated sanctions laws including the north korea sanctions and policy enhancement act and korea interdiction. Josh also served at the u. S. Army judge advocates generals corps in south korea and he runs the website, one free korea. Next, we have stephanie kleineahlbra i kleineahlbrandt right there. Finance expert on the u. N. Panel of experts, established purr subt pursuant to resolution 1874. Providing recommendations to the Security Council on implementing sanctions. She also has had a long career as a u. N. Official, as a director of the northeast asia program at the International Crisis group and she was a director of the Asia Pacific Program here at usip, so welcome back to a usip alum. Last but not least, liz rosenberg, senior fellow and director of the program at the center for new american security. She focuses on the National Security and Foreign Policy implications of the usip sanctions and economic sta statecraft as well as shifts in the energy market. Previously, she was a Senior Adviser at the Treasury Department overseeing the development and tightening of global sanctions on iran, libya, and syria, as well as the modification of sanctions on burma in the context of diplomatic normalization. Ive asked each of them to speak for about eight minutes or so and then i will ask a couple questions to get the discussion going and then we can open up the remaining time for q a. So i was going to have dan start, but i think josh can also provide a great overview, so well start with josh first. Thank you. Good morning. The comments that im going to make this morning are my personal views. They dont represent the opinions of any government agency, member of congress, or committee of congress. Unlike the other panelists here, my job has nothing to do with north korea. I am here on my own time. Nonetheless, a few years ago, it was my great honor to be asked to come to the House Foreign Affairs committee and draft what became known as the north korea sanctions and policy enhancement act. It passed the house by a vote of 4183 and the senate by a vote of 960. That may give you some idea of the bipartisan breadth of congress impatience with the way american president s have conducted north korea policy. They looked back on years of bad faith and cheating and mendacity by the north korean government, and they looked back on american president s who had pursued the diplomacy of instant gratification. Often prematurely throwing away the nonviolent peaceful leverage of sanctions which really the only avenue we have left to disarm north korea without war. What we have learned through our experiences since 2005 is that north koreas surprisingly dependent on access to our Financial System. The dollar the worlds reserve currency. Most of the money that sustains kim jonguns regime has to be cleared by banks in new york. That gives the Treasury Department and the Justice Department the jurisdiction to regula regulate, to block, and prosecute people who are behind those transactions. North korea has no sovereign right to access to our Financial System and as long as it threatens our core National Security interests, we should deny it that right. That is, the philosophy behind the sanctions legislation which is nothing more than the denial of north koreas access to the Financial System until such time as it lives in peace with us. Congress has power to control the president s authority to lift sanctions as constitutional, its an enumerated power in article 1, section 8, of the constitution, win s which says congress has the authority to regulate commerce with foreign nations. What congress expects from a north korea that has repeatedly reneged on its past agreements, it must regain our trust by accepting basic and fundamental transparency. So while i believe it is never too early to begin thinking about the conditions for the relaxation, the suspension, and the lifting of sanctions, i suspect were having this conversation about two years too early because its going to take so much political pressure on the cohesion of the north korean regime that kim jongun is presented with the choice between reforming and disarming or, perhaps, seeing the cohesion of his regime undermined at which point he will have a diplomatic incentive to reach an agreement that meets our fundamental security interests in his complete verifiable and irreversible disarmament. Why do we insist on this . Because were dealing with a government that has exported Missile Technology to iran, syria, egypt, yemen, and burma, among others, that built a Nuclear Reactor in syria, that has helped assad use chemical weapons against innocent civilians in syria, that sold man portable surfacetoair missiles to terrorists, that has sent assassins to kill dissidents in exile and to murder kim jonguns halfbrother in a crowded airport terminal with vx nerve agent, that Cyber Attacks the United States and threatens the bedrock of our political system, our freedom of expression, that stole 81 million out of the Bangladesh Bank so clearly north korea must make significant changes and accept the transparency necessary to verify its disarmament or coexistence will not be possible. North korea is a regime that lives on a small amount of cash overhead and even a small relaxation of financial pressure will give it the option to continue its status quo. That is not an option that will be acceptable to congress which has imposed strict conditions on the lifting of sanctions. Section 104a of the north korea sanctions and policy enhancement act sets out 15 categories of conduct including arms trafficking proliferation, the perpetuation or fillation of hum human rights abuses that require mandatory sanctions. Section 208 is a bypass around the sanctions for humanitarian assistance or for those cases where imposing mandatory sanctions would harm our own National Security. In other words, we should not require the president to collapse the chinese Financial System when there are other enforcement options. Sections 401 and 402 allow for the temporary suspension and the ultimate lifting of sanctions once north korea accepts transparency and allows for us to verify its disarmament. To those who say that north korea cannot possibly accept nuclear disarmament, i would answer that this argument is ahistorical. North korea survived for decades without Nuclear Weapons and it can survive without them again. The threat to north korea is internal. It is the misappropriation of its wealth. It is fundamentally a kleptocracy problem. If donald trump were to attempt to unilaterally lift sanctions now, i suspect the response would be Something Like it was in 1986 when Congress Passed the comprehensive antiapartheid act over president reagans veto. We already see several bills in congress including the asia reassurance act which is law, the brink act which has passed the senate, the north korea policy oversight act which is cosponsored by senator menendez and eliot engel, Foreign Policy heavyweights in the Democratic Party in congress. And we have the lead act by Senators Gardner and markkey. The direction in congress is toward more strict conditions on the lifting of sanctions, not less and all of this legislation affirms our goal is complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of north korea. We have always missed, think, the root of all evil in north korea which is money. The goal of sanctions must not to simply put excuse me to put temporary pressure on kim jongun until he comes back for another photo op. It has to be to disarm the country but also to force kim jongun to make better choices for his people. At this time the only form of sanctions relief that is appropriate is sanctions relief in the form of humanitarian aid that is carefully monitored to ensure that it feeds the hungry and by the way, regardless of what kim jongun does, whether he behaves well or badly, because the north Korean People are in no way responsible for his decisions. Until then, we need a long game for sanctions and the long game means coalition financial diplomacy in concert with u. S. Allies who issue convertible currencies to ensure only those Financial Transactions involving north korea that directly benefit the north Korean People can clear the Financial System. Thank you. Thank you, josh, and we have dan arriving right now. Ill give him some time to settle in first. So maybe we can go to stephanie. So my comments today do not in any way bind or represent the United Nations, United NationsSecurity Council, the 1718 committee under the Security Council, or the panel of experts. So the goal of the sanctions regime, according to the United Nations, so were speaking about u. N. And not any of the bilateral Order National regimes like that under ofac, treasury and other u. S. Agencies which might be the subject here today. The goals are to persuade the dpr to dismantle its nuclear and Missile Programs and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The goal is to reach diplomatic solution through negotiation and dialogue and thats something that was articulated very specifically following resolution 2270 when the sanctions were described as not the final objective. The goal of sanctions is to catalyze, quote, effective dialogue and originally that was seen as a sixparties talk process and now obviously the sixparty talks are long gone so were looking at different forms of dialogue. Finally, the goal of the sanctions regime is to limit the negative impact of sanctions on the economy and civilian population of the country. The sanctions regime is governed by a committee that falls under the Security Council. Its call eed the 1718 committe established by rose loose esolu. That was set up deliberately for the execution of the sanctions regime on north korea, and there are over a dozen other sanctions regimes which have their own committees. This committee has the same composition of the Security Council. So 15 members of which 5 are permanent members. And the committee is set up to implement the resolutions on the dprk, which since 2006 are over 10 . Ten. 11. Ten. Ten only. And the last three of which were in 2017 and well talk a little bit about that. Underneath the 1718 Committee Sits the panel of experts which im a member in my personal capacity. They are eight members and represent the five permanent members they are not representing because were independent experts but we come from the five permanent members. And in addition to that, we have members from the republic of korea, singapore, and japan. And the experts have they bring expertise in different areas. My expertise is in finance and economics. And we also have experts on ballistic Missile Technology, nonproliferation, customs and x export control, maritime air transport, and the like. And the panels mandate is to assist the committee in carrying out its mandated function and mostly to investigate cases of alleged violation of sanctions as articulated in the resolutions of the Security Council. So that means gathering, examining, and analyzing information thats provided to us by very different various different sources, whether its Member States or experts or organizations, u. N. Bodies, and other interested parties. We make recommendations on actions to the council, to the 1718 committee, and to Member States in order to improve implementation and then we report. So our, you know, largest function in our reports which are public, our last report was dated 6th march. You can find it online. They are very extensive. With lots and lots of annexes. And that is a summary of the panels investigations for the period. We report twice a year. So for the six months prior. And we investigate through onsite inspections. We are we visit Member States at their invitation. We interview, we ask questions, we write letters to companies in Member States and we do our own research. So in 2017, there were the last there was the last spate of resolutions and well just focus on the last two. What youve seen in the dprk sanctions regime is a move away from a narrow, targeted focus only on, for example, nuclear and wmd, to a broader, lets say, broader regime encapsulating a huge amount of the former sort of north korean economy looking at sectoral sanctions, a regime that prohibits a whole swath of activities in the maritime space, vessels and otherwise. So its become a rather comprehensive regime. What the panel has found in its reports is the expansion of the regime has not been matched by the requisite political will of Member States to actually implement the regime. It has not been matched by the requisite coordination, prioritization and resource allocation to actually drive effective implementation. So the resolutions, resolution 2375 adopted in response to the dprks largest ever nuclear test of august 2017 in resolution 2397 adopted in response to the icbm launch of november 2017 really introduced very, very sweeping sanctions, including a ban on Work Authorizations on all dprk nationals, and that actually comes into full force on 22nd, december, 2019. Its a requirement of Member States to repatriate all north korean individuals working in other countries. So you can get a sense of how broad the regime has become. Prohibits all joint ventures or cooperative entities with dprk entities or individuals. Strengthens measures regarding supply and sale of all petroleum product. It introduced a crude oil cap. A ban on all dprk exports of textiles, foods and agricultural products, and a ban on the transfer to dprk of all industrial machinery, transport vehicles, iron, steel, and other materials with the exception of spare parts to maintain commercial civilian operations. So the panel has found that the not only have Member States insufficiently impleme implemented this regime, but invasion tactics by north korean entities and individuals have effectively undermined implementation as well, and the networks behind the elicit activity consist of a core of very skilled agent who are very experienced and can cross borders, mobilize money, they can mobilize people and goods, they can engage in sales and trafficking of arms and represent