these people on wall street, you know, producing worthless financial the instruments and selling them and leading us to where we are now and talking about the great power of wall street and their business models and so forth yet so on. so i think that if anyone wants to understand what's going on in america today, you ought to understand wall street. you don't just understand the incredible power that they have economically and a politically to read this book does a pretty good job. so this summer of what i have read and i am reading. ..

>> because the north koreans had mobilized. when you watch where they start mandating artillery pieces we knew we read going to war. on the floor of the june 9 was notified that former president jimmy carter was flying to south korea. he had been indicted by then-president to come but he decided this time he had to except the invitation to see if he could calm the situation in.

he called the white house and vice president gore responded to say i cannot give you permission to go to korea to see the number three and president the longest reigning leader in the world. you have to call the big guy who happen to be in france getting ready for the 50th anniversary of the normandy landing. so he called president clinton and he said i will let you go on one condition that you deliver a letter upper goes lowered jimmy carter says it is important enough so he flew to washington on the way to career to pick up the letter and they asked me to brief him i am in the room with jimmy carter and rosalynn carter and i was the expert what was going on in north korea so i have money spiel

and then said it sounds very interesting and was very impressed with rosalynn because she was like the moderator who would ask me the questions jimmy carter wanted to know the answers. in the end he said you see this letter? i have not read it yet but it is a letter that president clinton insists that i give to kim il-sung i expect to move the back in seoul in the seven days. we broke up and they flew two north korea. the lead time aircraft transferred flown from north to south 38 sometimes ago through china and instead of staying there seven days he stayed there 10 days when he came back out he got goals country debriefed and at the

beginning he said was only going to stay for seven days but i had tuesday 10 days. the reason why? i showed you the letter i was supposed to give two kim il-sung the letter irritated him so much she walked out of the first meeting and would not come back to see me for four days. by? the equivalent of the letter was if you, mr. kim il-sung, develop a professional relationship with us then we could have a personal relationship. it was so counter to the culture in the career of the first you have to have a personal relationship before you can have a professional one. remember that lesson and i have never forgot about. [laughter] i will ask purrs to expand on that when we know we have

such difficult times with the rogue state problem like to read his biography because he was working at the rink warhol university and now working at san angelo state and is a doctor and associate professor of political science. formally on the faculty at the rinker university hazy adds a professor at university graduate school in the intelligence officer at the dia until 2003 serving as a senior analyst. formerly the editor of the journal and on the advisory board and formally said on the editorial review board that served on the board of directors for the international three and studies and security studies and the author of the book

we are talking about the north korean threat for call so of his other book and is the editor of qwest to unified career. it is with good great deal of pleasure please help me to wellcome dr. bruce bechtol. [applause] >> can you hear me? i would like to think some people before i get into the meat of the discussion. i'd like to ask a good friend of mine at the folks at the marine corps foundation for sponsoring my visit.

they sponsor a great deal of scholarship that the marine corps university four marines in general and former marines and i am most grateful to them for that. also like to think the club and the general for his outstanding staff for helping to set of the event to help me to get my research out there. i am most grateful for that. i have family and friends including bruce bechtol senior citizen in the audience. some of those relatives are here and thank you for coming. also angelo state university for the second year in a row made the princeton review list of best colleges and universities in the country. only one of three public universities in the state of texas to do so and thank you to my colleagues and fellow professors for helping me to enable with my research and

scholarship. also like to think c-span for being here i noticed tough to get a piro we're grateful you're able to do so and i would like to thank you for coming and i am most grateful and i love talking about correa and especially in north korea. let me get into the meat of the discussion why would i call this book "defiant failed state"'? i think a lot of you understand if you watch news whether msnbc or cnn or fox or whatever, we often see pictures of north korea and people starving. a crumbling state infrastructure and i remember watching greta van susteren visiting north korea to her show the things we have seen for years.

into the early 90's fancy a country that many look at and think why isn't this place completely falling apart? what people fail to realize the reason we have these resource problems or the crumbling infrastructure is because the regime has taken all of the resources and hard currency and oil and villages city and they have sunk into the military supporting the lifestyle of their each. so there is the conundrum "defiant failed state"' based on the failed policy and every year you look at that it meets all the check marks but here it is. not only are they here but they present several key threats to u.s. natural interest. what i would like to address

this evening are three key questions i hope i can answer the end of the evening. is north korea at a failing or failed state? to. is it capable to survive indefinitely? three. how does it give risk to east asia especially in the united states, its allies? >> it will be important to talk about the things that address in my book. implications it presents to kim jong-il and in doing that i will look at is look at the freaky threats of the u.s. and the allies i will talk around the north korea non-nuclear threat that they present materially.

the nuclear threat that is written about most and the threat to people not often and allies would choose the succession stability and how that is the threat to their region from him jong-il into his son and for some given to the nine nuclear military threat. one of the biggest challenges the army faces this fairly obvious of those too of a cursory knowledge in added resources of food and fuel limits the training of conventional forces. when i say that by a talk about armor forces and self. artillery.

they have the equivalent of four mechanized collor it takes a lot of fuel to do field training and the north koreans do not have simulators such as we do. this is an issue but also with malnutrition and then health issues. kim jong-il figure this out very quickly. his father died in 1994 soon after the general briefed president carter. in 1995 there was a revolt in the sixth chord near the chinese border the entire core revolted and kim jong-il found out about it from the commanding general of the core. and his response was to send one of his best divisions

and killed everybody in sight and most of the officer cadres and those who were not killed escape to china where they still exist and promoted the general who is now the chief of the generals staff and p'yongyang and so he figured out the first year of his leadership how to prevent malnutrition and health issues from hurting so just kill everybody who may be revolting against you. a pretty good plan. also to replace the legacy systems is at major issue for a fed dprk so north korea was heavily subsidized by the soviet union through 1990 the fourth generation the military equipment was summed mig-29s but nothing

since 1990. since that time the south korean military has been building hour -- indigenous tanks of factory -- tanked looking like they came out of the american factory we have not -- they have not modernized their military forces in 25 years. and the final thing is the dprk does not have sufficient gdp to engage in a traditional arms race with iraq. why? the number three economy was rated by the cia as being almost exactly like afghanistan under the taliban. what you compare that to? with the 13th largest gdp send their kids to the best schools, air-conditioned houses at and they will drive a ford with a huge tariff rate but it is a

problem and they cannot engage in a traditional arms race with south korea. they don't have the money. finally, tied into that the misinformation is seeping and from the south so finally north koreans are learning what is going on in the south and realizing i am teeeighteen park and my cousin just sent his kid to ucla. something is wrong. these are a challenges. these are huge challenges. how all negative is the maintain incredible military threat? the asymmetric forces are the highest priority and traditional force is capabilities continued to decline slowly but continue to be large and adequately maintained. yes they may be going up

against indigenous tanks but they are well maintained. they just don't have a lot of fuel. the results, and the evolving threat to literally the cold war and manager it is extremely expensive to maintain. that is one of the key reasons for the north korean populace because of the expense of the military they have nuclear-weapons but little attention is paid to other aspects of the threat i want to talk about that someone and it is the subject of an entire chapter in my book. talk about the asymmetric threat, long-range artillery, ballistic missiles and special operations forces this allows them to threaten other forces with

affordability in ways that are really difficult. let me talk about long-range artillery. north korea has 900 longer-range systems and those are 170 mm guns and 240 mm rocket launchers that have ranges of 60 meters. these systems can hit from behind and to make the threat to or exacerbate that these are also assessed to be equipped with chemical munitions 350 can target seoul. according to national defence estimates and dot estimates of the systems were fired at the beginning of any conflict, 200,000 casualties are projected in the first hours.

the majority civilians and press reports indicate more systems have been moved closer to the dmz in the past 18 months there were six systems moved just last week within 2 kilometers of the dmz so that is an interesting stuff. north korea has used asymmetry in the traditional artillery systems. for those of you who were anywhere near that of a television. if you have a television and tiered -- turned it on a november you know, what they can do because on november 23rd which by the way when i had my first coming out party, they conducted the artillery barrage. they conducted this and

killed two south korean marines and killed two civilians and wounded 22 people. i don't know if you saw the film but they conducted of a rise of the town and show but down. it is very interesting to me because the north koreans are clearly outdone by south korean artillery. what sits on the island is the best in the world to the exact copy of the self. artillery made in seoul and a great stuff. the north koreans use geography and mass to outgun the south korean forces. and surprise before the south koreans knew what happened they had 24 casualties. signed today right now have every single lynch of every single i lend the south

koreans are on. will we see something like this again? probably. maybe not artillery but a special operations attacking and could be a lot of things we could expect to see that again and something that was well planned and took months to build up americans and south koreans setting back said it looks like a buildup but still, nobody thought north korea would show an island but certainly they did it. something to keep in mind talk about the second pillar of the asymmetric threat. most of us know north korea has missiles to present a significant threat and they continue to have the

ballistic missile trying to build not texas but california and alaska hawaii. [laughter] my parents live here. concern for me as well. but the first time they tested was 2006. three stage missile going to the first page over the sea of japan and then as it went from first through second stage it blew up. everybody said they cannot build the three stage missile but three years later they tested it again. this time it went all the way through the first and second stage and as it went into the third stage it tumbled into the pacific ocean. but this shows not so much failure but advancement

showing day advance get done this so ready to go. so we could hit alaska or hawaii o or worse. they also have said and extended range, as goods with ranges 35300 kilometers. what does that mean? north korea can hit every single inched of south korean land mass with the scud missile. it is something they have now and so of one talks about the tanks cannot run as well but now they don't need to use those they could inspire the ballistic missile at the key target. something to keep in mind. at least 200 missiles that has a range. what does that mean in geographical terms? they could hit tokyo and also for the former

marines, and they have of this so that it has arranged a 4,000 kilometers based on old soviet technology. what they did, in 1992 they have a bunch of russian rogue scientist and they got the submarine launched ballistic missile and converted it to one that could be launched from a transborder director that is a long tractor trailer and then they made it longer because they made it longer. as soon as it was ready to go, they sold 18 to our ran. now iran has 18 of the missiles to target made no

headquarters and they already tested one and it works. what does this mean for americans? they could hit guam i spent two years there as the sergeant doing a lot of drinking of beer. i may have done some work. [laughter] but they could meet guam. -- hit call my is as all-important? says the head planner, it is the key staging area for the u.s. air power in case we have to strike north korea it is a significant threat and they could pose that threat to around 2006 i have 200 missiles deployed. that is the second pillar but let me talk about the third pillar of the threat.

that is special operations forces normally my answer is the truly special forces united states marine corps. [laughter] that is not important but it is easily the best trained and best indoctrinated. they can attack from the air through tunnels and by a illegals entering iraq because they look like south koreans and they have done this and snuffed special operations forces into assassinating people such data saw botched attempt of the highest ranking and we use submarines and semi

submersibles and the numbers and north korea have been increased by 50% since 2006 that is a significant threat and converted seven divisions to light infantry close 70,000 men broke one of the things they have done is take aim the heavy artillery and tanks out of these division and push them farther south band-aid qualify them. the ministry of national defence which did say big estimate estimates they have to under those cents special ops forces they can go behind enemy lines to disrupt command and control is a planning nightmare.

something else to think about. also using for peace time provocation the recent syncing was day special ops forces. bid to was not a number three and submarine it was operated by the gentlemen from the reconnaissance bureau rich is kim jong-il pet rock and comes under the umbrella of his childhood best friend. the submarine that sank for those who are interested comeuppance us ship was split in half the crew of 102 was killed. that submarine bush's a

class that north korea originally developed about submarine for the iranians because i rands coastline and the korean peninsula have something in common. very unpredictable tides. shallow water and the iranians wanted something they could operate easily. obviously they discovered they could do other stuff besides proliferating the two rogue nations. maritime was used to infiltrate troops and make drug drops to places like japan and south korea and the philippines north korea made two and a half million dollars last year from illegal drugs in run through networks that were organized by and with north korea government approval and training and they played a key role.

what is my a assessment? i would say kanye is adjusting resources to focus on asymmetric capability and have done a good job during that. awesome capabilities continued to decline slowly the asymmetric capabilities have been proved in the past 10 years. the gaps created with the early days and weeks could create openings for highly deadly force this to cause heavy casualties. as they have increase the capability they have deployed the key armor mechanized artillery forces and as many of you know, , including my father the

area is very mountainous it is like us buying going down the peninsula there are two quarters north or south with armor and mechanized forces and the other corridor and it is these do they have moved the military forces massively 70% of the forces and as my a good friend would call this it shows tierney and proximity augments the asymmetric capability means the non-nuclear forces and conventional forces are still a significant threat. something to think about. let's talk about north korea and proliferation.

i think people took notice when general jones who was national security advisor last year to obama's said his main concern was proliferation of. i would partly agree with that and one of the key threats. who does north korea proliferate? they proliferate to syria at a nuclear weapons program. a plutonium program. they've built for the syrians said they built was from the syrian desert. the north koreans puts it a fake roof over it. smokestacks and steam and pipes running into the iran

r&d israelis were supposed to forget what was going on. our friends think it was destroyed and of course, the iranians but also a chemical weapons facility was built and remains open am prior to that come with the north to remans supplied them with chemical weapons. now not only have they build that facility but they go out and practice with the nbc gear every year with allied chemical weapons using artillery. very interesting stuff and have sold every single type of scud missile the extended range scud and one sitting on a pad with a chemical

warhead. but they've book on the pad with syrian and iranian engineers. very interesting. they also have a wide variety of conventional weapons. what about iran? what about all of the above. if north korea has said they have it then but they also have every type of missile that north korea has developed for go extended range and others and they also have won the mentioned earlier. that is five. every time the north koreans to live missile firing they

bring in iranian engineers and vips and have been receiving for money or oil all of the technology the north koreans have been using. interesting stuff. north korea proliferates ballistic missiles to south asia and africa. why would north korea be so successful? because there are so many countries to want to weapons of traditional western countries will not sell to them the have to give them from robe states central african republic lot of blanche of tea 54 tanks two years ago and they were caught taking shipment by the south african navy. why would they want to do that? three years after the war? all-white are they still manufacturing the tanks? because that is what the

russians did and they want us to hold the tanks because they know people will still buy them. it is a buyer's market in seller's market and is working out well for them but there's more. north korea also proliferates to the non state actors. terrorist groups. dprk provided weapons and training to the tigers write-up until of the issue i get army drove them into the sea. i thought this was an interesting way to fight the counter insurgency knowing that it could kill the bad guys. my hat's off to them. the number three and supplied the tigers with artillery multiple rocket launchers and machine guns

it was amazing. at one stage they were selling weapons to the tigers into the army. they also builds tunnels with the war with israel and provided small arms including rockets fired into israel. i have seen photographs of rockets fired into israel we have to assume their north koreans because it'll make rockets. this is a problem for israel. it also, libraries with a and but this relationship is

longstanding and ongoing and perhaps the most important. because it liaison's are conducted with hezbollah, hamas and other governments that iran supplies with the very close relationship. my assessment on the proliferation is the u.n. sanctions must be enforced not only by u.s. and key allies but whether u.s. members. since 2009 this has improved for renewed emphasis on proliferation security initiative is important now more than 96 member states and now they're members i have to improve training during exercises and improve coordination and focus on following the money. that is where we can hit north korea purpose u.s. rock japan and other allies

need to work international law enforcement to get this done. we must go after not company by company but networks and friendly nations and individual north koreans known to support proliferation analysts said activity is. some of you probably saw in the news that there was a russian built georgian registered car craft -- craft with the equipment bound for iran that was caught in thailand. it went through five front companies. one of those was registered in new zealand. i am not saying they want to do business with north korea but that shows north koreans are willing to go through all of these elaborate steps tactics techniques and procedures to throw us off.

finally, what i would say is usually important is north korea needs to be realistic on the state department list of nations supporting terrorism. because north korea is a state that supports terrorism. that's why. there we go. that is the proliferation threat. please allow me to talk about the north korean nuclear programs and the threat they present. what do they want to do? let me offer this assessment. the goal is to manipulate negotiations including six-party talks to obtain aid to agree in principle how to dismantle how do i know? we saw them run circles around the bush of frustration between 2005 and 2009 and where did we get? nowhere also to prevent

inspection recent-- regimes are accessing components of the program but north korea will always end cooperation where vital elements are a threat and and a significant aid has been acquired. it between 2008 and 2009, north korea took a great amount evade from the other five parties including the united states with the exception of japan took them off the list of nations that support terrorism and what do they do? when we got to the key point* they had to show us they had dismantled they found a way to walk away. what does this mean? they have at least six or a plutonium weapons. realistically that is something they could jump out of the back of one of their bomber aircraft, that would be difficult the more realistic scenario is to put

it on a large cargo ship they could sail it into new tokyo bay. they could probably a get away with that the easily. the other threat is the highly enriched uranium program and we know they likely have four will have soon weapon nine is highly enriched uranium. why is that more of a threat than plutonium? it is much easier to manage your eyes. they have the design for the warhead for a missile. they also have a missile that is stable enough to carry it. that means as we're speaking north korea probably has the capability to fire and nuclear-tipped missile at tokyo. keep that in mind. the fourth threat that i think is important is the

regime succession in process. can kim jong-il can quote -- control the process? maybe. by his name and south korea is the fact bear he has a head as big as the podium. he is very chevy. although he has the flat and in beijing and to fund in paris and he tried to sneak his family and of three years ago entrench use the kaman on the passport. >> it was affected have ben of fly on the ball. wait a minute. are you slovenian? yes.

[laughter] he has fallen out of favor with his father as far as being the successor and 00 ways not in every one of these places. reportedly. get to the second son who is a big eric clapton and followed him as a group be a round europe and know that he has good taste. my father is in the audience he had to listen to eric clapton moore then he wanted to when i was growing up. [laughter] so if you heard he may come to north korea, that was why. he was looking out for his son he is from a different mother and educated in

switzerland as was his brother although according to the former japanese chef is too much of the leader of the dprk and actually has to take medicine and male hormones and for that reason they do not think he would be a legitimate leader of north korea. so now we're on to the third sun. he is two years down very and is about 20 a now and the second was also a educated like the third and if you saw the pictures last fall he looks a lot like his grandpa. he has the chevy cheeks but has as a concern.

i would like to address this. id north korea there's no such thing as the hierarchical organization of government but a guy in the middle of a circle all institutions feed into him. it has been that way since 1948 when kim il-sung took over he said the government up that way for his son and had 20 years to do it but you cannot run the country and thus you see the military and the starting in 1974 but by 1982 actually he was a five-star general although he had never served in the form of was to create -- not only

controlling promotions for the military but the part of the mystery of people security. the two biggest services out of about eight and his father had purged all relatives he was out of favor with in places like poland for kroger he was set up for that when his father died in 1994 none of this has happened yet to the father was trying to set him up as you know, from the news reports as a general but is not there yet. he is in the party there have been problems with him in the press he gets along with people with security services and problems reportedly even trying to have his older brother assassinated.

there is still some issues there. nobody outside of kim or his son the controls as the more than a few staff members. in the army if you are a general commanding a core or a regiment or a battalion on your left shoulder you have got a guy from the security department overlooking will you do things politically correct? on your right shoulder making sure you're not going so lourdes sean connery had to kill a political officer in north korea you have to kill two guys in answer to two separate chains of command.

so nobody can trolls enough of the power for somebody to come take over. everybody is being watched so it is very interesting to note -- interesting. in order for his son to take over his dad has to build a power base in the security services and then the regime and has he been able to do that? not yet it took 20 years can can jong-il do that and if you were years for his son? he as it diabetes, kidney dialysis and will not last more than five years.

what does that mean? if kim dies in the next five years no better than a 50/50 chance that regime can survive. there is a huge chance it could fall into implosion her a explosion or complete civil war. anarchy type activity. it is what people are planning for right now. lot of military involvement from the united states probably led by the military with support from the united states and this is a very real possibility. that is why north korean regime process is the fourth threat to -- fourth threat. i will wrap up and i am happy to answer questions. [applause] >> fascinating and

depressing a little bit as a segue are the south koreans preparing for the eventual flood of north karan's coming to the south to flee catastrophe? >> you spend more time there than most americans have and is a you note the best the south and north don't think of themselves as separate. they consider themselves as a family that has been torn apart. south to riyal has plans to reunify families when north korea implodes or falls apart, those will have.

>> it will not be thousands by millions of people and that it could be an issue. it will be interesting to see what happens i think everybody is expecting that and doing what they could to make it as much of a well organized process as they can. >> the temporary suspension of hostilities were signed the united states and south korea. what is china's role with the whole effort with north korea? >> what is the relevance from 1954? >> great question. the resignation that was not mentioned which is the republic of career. refusing to sign the

document that has lowercase been a of a key item, what is the rest of the question? >> the first part dealt with china's role because they were signature. >> people have asked me about this a lot and especially over the last year. how effective for how strong a role does china play? i would tell you it is fairly simple. china has more influence on north korea van anybody else to say not a lot. >> en north koreans . [laughter] they really do a very close relationship with the chinese. i don't know what that

interference is. interesting. it is not even in the hotel. some kind of interference. the north koreans have a closer relationship bank debt 90% of the fuel from the chinese and the rest largely from places like iran. but yet the chinese are often surprised by the things the north koreans do. and they detonated a nuclear weapon pay it notified the chinese two hours before the we will detonate the bomb. and that was it. of the chinese largely through economic means. something else but i think is very important to the south koreans need to consider is south korea if

north korea implodes and and they fall apart going to anarchy they have the chinese ambassador to say it is time. the window is open it is time to unite with brothers and sisters. what does it take to keep you out? the chinese ambassador i can almost for sure will tell you a prepared list and read it to the president he of which is we have the following investments in north korea and you honor those investments when you move into north korea and we will leave you alone because china has invested usually and quadruple their investment over the past three years. that will be a major issue. they do have influence and play a role but unfortunately the the north

koreans just like others have, continue to do pretty much what they want. >> since the signing of the agreement, there has been the effort by than north korea is to separate the dialogue that we would have with the signatures. they wanted by metal discussion and to a i was there we would never let them with south korea are their efforts to have bilateral discussions? filmmaker don't think that's it is a likely they aren't talking about to to some level of talks once they are

in serious about dismantling the nuclear program. for those of you who have not been following the news closely south korea has no intention to go back to any talks and we don't go without them. that is the obama policy they will not go back until any talks until north korea admits and apologizes for the sinking of and the artillery beyond the bill so we're at a mexican standoff. this is an issue. there are many things about many policies that i disagree with but i definitely agree the united states policy where we're joined at the hip with the south korean allies. i don't think there's a realistic way to bring peace to the peninsula. >> there was an agreement to

help the north koreans have a peaceful nuclear program and the south koreans were a part of that. what happened to that initiative? >> it went so way of the passenger pigeon. [laughter] it is not there and as you know, you know, what of the nuclear issues and other issues as well but the north koreans ferry proudly showed off last fall they have built a light water reactor at p'yongyang for peaceful purposes. i would also like to point* out of the facility where they develop that material going into weapon highest plutonium bombs, have never had any wires and since its beginning they are not powering anything.

a couple of questions? >> you talked about showing in a defensive initiatives they could defend against the ballistic missiles? >> the great question they did that before 2009 launch and one of my the officer in the army whom but it is advanced patriot missiles prophetic in his and advance which has said a shot gun blasted and that kills the bullet with the ball in. we sent over a bunch to the japanese and also had ships