find myself thinking how come this guy die and i was allowed to live and i had that coming back to society -- it was really hard trying to assimilate in. i met the right woman and have a job. seals of to have a job they love and you got to be making a difference and that's a whole thing is being able to make a difference, being someone special. >> and at one point can you talk about the missions that you were on. >> that's a great point. my book couldn't be written until now. we had to wait for everything

that happened with the cia in somalia to be out in the open and declassified and the chief of station did an interview and laid everything out and objects can now we can talk about it. mark bowdin talked about it and there was desert stuff but once something is declassified you can talk about it but you still don't taub about tactics and techniques. the seals who read my book oh, no we wouldn't do it like that, exactly and that's the way it is. bass

>> okay. i want to welcome everybody and before we start the filming i want to tell you a sea story because dr. bruce bechtol, he spoke this year and we asked him to come back and speak tonight because he's just arraign new book about north korea which is titled "defiant failed state: the north korean threat to international story" and the sea story i want to tell you when i was assigned as the c5j5 that's strategy and plans in the combined forces company in korea. and it was in 1994. and if you go back and look at that time and google it it was a nuclear crisis for the united states. we almost went to war. in fact, i flew back with the commander in chief of the combined forces command debrief then president bill clinton and vice president al gore and we were -- we were about to go to war. we were actually loading ships

and going through the fly people to korea because the north koreans had mobilized. when you watch where they start manning their artillery pieces we knew we were going to war. well, on the fourth of june i was notified that former president jimmy carter was flying to south korea. he had been invited by then-president kim l-sun to visit and he had been visited several times and he decided because of the crisis he decided he had to accept the invitation. he was going to see if he could calm the situation. so he called the white house and vice president gore responded and said i can't give you permission to go to korea to see the north korean president, the longest reigning in the world.

you have in get in touch with the big today and the big was in france. and he called president clinton in france and president clinton said i'll let you go on one condition, that you deliver a letter to kim l sun so jimmy carter says that's important enough that i go. i'll deliver the letter so he flew to washington on the way to korea and he picked up a letter and before he went, he came to seoul and they asked me to brief here. i'm in this room with jimmy carter and roslyn carter and myself and i was sort of the expert on what was going on with north korea. so i had my spiel and after it was over he said oh, it sounds very interesting. by the way, i was really impressed with roslyn because she was like the moderator who would ask me the questions that jimmy carter wanted to know the answers to. at the end jimmy carter said to

me, he said, do you see this letter, he said i haven't read it but it's a letter that president clinton insisted that i give to kim l sun and i'll give this to him and i expect to be in seoul in seven days and we broke up and they got in their aircraft and they flew to north korea. only time an aircraft has flown between south korea and north korea. usually they go by service transportation or go into china and come in and instead of staying there seven days, he stayed there seven days and when he came back out he got the whole country team to brief and at the end of it -- i mean, at the beginning he said, you know, i was only going to stay for seven days but i had to stay 10 days and you know the reason why. he looked at me i showed you the letter i was supposed to give to president l sun to president clinton. he said that letter irritated kim l sun that he walked out of

our first meeting. he wouldn't come back to see me for four days. and everybody said, why, what did the letter said. the equivalent of the letter was that if you, mr. kim l sun, develop a professional relationship with us we could then have a personal relationship. so was counter to the culture and the asian culture is you first have to have a personal relationship before you can have a professional relationship. remember that lesson and i've never forgotten that lesson i'll ask bruce to expound on that why we're having such difficult times with this rogue street but i would like to read you his bio because actually he was working at the marine corps university and now he's working at san angelo state university. he's a doctor and he's the associate professor of political

science. he was formerly on the faculty as i said at the marine corps university and at the air command and staff college. he serve as an adjunct visiting prosper at the graduating school. he was an intelligence officer in the dia until 2003 serving as a senior analyst for northeast asia. he's formerly the editor of the defense intelligence journal. he's currently on the editorial advisory board of the korean advisor. he formerly set on the editorial board on the east asian review. he serves on the board of director on the international council of korean students and the council of u.s. korean studies. and he's the author of the book we're talking about "di-5ance state." also another book he was here with "red robe" he's the arrested for quest of a unified

korea cultural and interagency process. it's with a great deal pressure that i introduce -- help me welcome dr. bruce bechtol. [applause] >> can everybody hear me. apparently they can. that was kind of loud. well, i'd like to thank some people before i actually get into the meat of the discussion, first of all, i would like to thank a good friend of mine in general for cosponsoring my visit here. the university foundation, they sponsor a great deal of scholarship at the marine corps university for marines in general and for former marines like myself and i'm certainly most grateful for them for that. i would like to thank the marine memorial club and general miat

for helping us set up this event and for once again helping me get my research out there for folks to see. i'm certainly most grateful for that. i have family and friends in the audience, including bruce bechtol, sr., sitting in the audience. some of his friends, some of my old friends and relatives are here and i want to thank you for coming. i would also like to thank angelo state university which for the second year in a row made the princeton review's list of best colleges and universities in the country, only one of three public universities in the state of texas to do so and i'd like to thank all my colleagues and fellow professors for help to enable and help with my research in scholarship. i'd also like to thank c-span for being here. i know that it's quite a hump to get up here and film this event but we're most grateful that you did so and i would like to thank you for coming and i love

talking about korea and especially north korea. so let me get into the meat of the discussion right now. why would i call this book "defiant failed state"? i think a lot of you understand if you watch news, whatever news you watch, whether it would be msnbc, cnn or fox, often we see pictures, scoop, of north korean people starving. we see a crumbling state infrastructure. and, in fact, just last week i remember watching greta van susteren was visiting north korea and showing the same thing we've been showing for years, since general miat was there. and why isn't this place falling apart and what many people fail to realize is that the reason we have these resource problems,

the reason we have this crumbling infrastructure because that regime has taken all their resources, hard currency, oil, electricity, et cetera, and they have sunk it into their military and in supporting the lifestyle of the elite and so thus we have that conundrum. a tefine failed state. a state that based on any of the pair times one would read, for example, in foreign policy which has the failed states index every year -- every year you look at that, north korea meets all the checkmarks and yet here they are. in fact, not only are they here but they present several key threats to u.s. national interests that i'd like to talk about this evening if i may and they're addressed in my book. so what i would like to address this evening are three key questions that i hope i'm able to answer at the end of the evening. one, is north korea a failing or a failed state? two, is it capable of surviving indefinitely? and three, why and how does it

present such risk to asia, east asia especially in the united states and its allies? and i think it's going to be important tonight to talk about the kinds of things i address in my book. north korea's domestic foreign and military and policy challenges and the implications that this presents to kim jong-il and doing that what i'll be doing is looking at four key threats that north korea offers to our national interests that is the u.s. and its allies. i'll talk about the north korean nonnuclear threat all the threats they present militarily that are nonnuclear. i'll talk about the north korean proliferation threat, the north korean nuclear threat which is probably more written about than anyone else but mostly even from a political science perspective and i'll talk about a threat that people don't often analyze as being a threat and that's the north korean regime succession

instability that that causes process and now that's a threat to the region. the succession process from kim jong-il presumably to his third son. if i may let me get into the first threat the nonnuclear military threat from north korea. one of the biggest challenges that the north korean's army faces. it's fairly obvious that inadequate resources particularly food and fuel limits the training of traditional conventional forces. now, when i say traditional conventional forces, i'm speaking about armor mechanized forces, self-propelled artillery, et cetera. they have the equivalent of four mechanized corps, about 30,000 guys in each corps, 3,000 vehicles, et cetera, et cetera. it takes a lot to run those guys out in field training and they do not have simulators or nato allies or south korea, for

example. this has been an issue. and the dprk must prevent malnutrition and health issues from leading to discipline issues. kim jong-il figured out this problem fairly quickly. his father died soon after the general briefed president carter. in 1995, there was a revolt in the sixth corps which sets a north province near the chinese border an entire corps revolting. kim jong-il found out about this revolt from the commanding general of the area. his response was to send his crack division by train and they killed everybody in sight. killed most of the officer cadre. those that weren't killed escaped to china where they're still existing today i might add and promoted that general who

dissed his staff is in leadership and he he figured how to prevent malnutrition and hurting discipline in the army, just kill everybody who may be revolting against you. inadequate force modernization to replace legacy systems. for example, north korea was heavily subsidized by the soviet union right up until 1990. the last, quote-unquote, fourth generation or modern military equipment that they got was the s u2 5. and they got some mid-29s before that but they have and nothing from 1990 and the south korean military has been building indigenous tankers and self-propelled machinery. north korean has not modernized its military in 20 years. that is an issue. it's regional forces.

we don't need to talk about missiles and other stuff. we'll do that later. and the final thing is, and some of you have been to korea the tprk does not have sufficient gdp to engage it in traditional arms race with iraq. well, why is that? north korea's economy last year was rated by the cia fact book as being almost exactly like afghanistan's economy under the taliban. so think about that. and what to you compare that to? their neighbor to the south has the world's 13th gdp they send their kids to breadth schools and they have air conditioning but, you know, it is a problem. they cannot engage in a traditional arms race with south korea. they just don't have that. and so finally after all these years, north koreans are beginning to learn that's going on in the south and realize,

gee, i'm eating bark and my cousin just sent his kid to ucla. something's wrong here. it's fighting to seep in. it's all challenges of the dprk and the military so how does kim, kim jong-il, how does he continue to maintain a credible military threat to the south? the answer is asymmetric forces. asymmetric forces which has become the highest priority for forces. traditional forces capabilities continue to decline slowly but they continue and adequately maintained though they may be going up with indigenous tank and they don't have a lot of fuel to run them in practice and the result is an evolving threat that keeps the status quo on the korean on the peninsula a mini

cold war and it's expensive to maintain. you're talking about one of the key reasons why theories problems for the north korean populace writ large because of the huge expense of the military. north korea has nuclear weapons but little attempts at threats to the region and that's what i want to talk about tonight. somewhat. i'll talk about other stuff as well and that is the subject of an entire chapter in my book and when i talk of north korea's threat, of this allows the nkpa to threaten rok and u.s. forces with affordibility in ways that are highly difficult to defend. so let me talk about the long-range artillery first. north korea has up to 900 long-range systems and those systems we would be 170 millimeter guns which have range of about 40,000 meters and 240

millimeter multiple rocket launchers which has a range of 60,000 meters. yes, these systems can hit seoul from beyond the dpz where they're sitting and to exacerbate that threat, 5 to 20% of these systems are assessed to be quipped with chemical munitions. up to thro-50 of these systems can target seoul. so according to rock mystery of national defense estimates and u.s. d.o.d. estimates, if these systems were fired at the beginning of any conflict, 200,000 casualties are projected just in the first hours of conflict. most of them in seoul and the majority of them civilians. press reports indicate that more systems have been moved closer to the dmz in the past 18 months. in fact, there were six systems moved just last week to within 2 kilometers of the dmz.

so very interesting stuff but wait, there's more. north korea has also used asymmetry in its traditional artillery systems and for those of you who were anywhere -- how many people own a tv? for those of you who have a tv and turned on to the news last november you know what the north koreans can do with artillery which november 23rd which by the way i had my first coming out party for this book, they conducted a barrage by the island. anyway, on november 23rd they conducted this artillery barrage. they killed two south korean marines and they killed two civilians. and they wounded 22 people and i don't know how many of you saw the actual film but they conducted artillery barrage of the town. they shelled the town and this is very interesting to me because the north koreans are

clearly outgunned by south korean artillery, including the artillery that sits on that island is the very best artillery of the world. it's an exact copy of the us115 self-propelled artill and it's made by seoul and hyundai and it's great stuff. north koreans very cleverly used geography and mass to outgunned the south korea and surprise and before the south koreans knew what hit them, just 24 casualties. the north koreans right now today can hit every single inch of every single island that the south koreans are on that sits in the northern limit line so very interesting stuff. will we see something like this again, my answer to that is, probably. it may not be artillery but it may be a special forces that sits off the coast.

something that was well planned and takes months to build and americans and south koreans, many of us sitting back in 2010 were saying, this looks like a buildup. they conducted practice exercises which were in 2 kilometers of those islands. let's talk about the second pillar of the south korean threat. most of us know north korea have missiles and they present a significant missile threat. north korea continues to hone the ballistic missile they are trying to build that can hit the united states, california. not texas, california, alaska, hawaii. l[laughter] >> my parent live here so concern for me as well. the first time they tested it was in 2006.

it's a three-stage missile. it went all the way through its first stage over the sea of japan which the japanese call the east sea when it went from its first stage to second stage and everybody said they blew, those stupid north koreans they can't build a three stage they are dumb. and the next it flew all the through its first stage and second stage and as it got into third stage it goes in the pacific ocean. but what this shows not so much failure but advancement 'cause it shows they're advancing getting this missile ready to go and once this missile is ready to go it will be ready to hit at a minimum alaska and hawaii or worse. and they also have scuds. scud b, c, d. scuds with ranges from 350

kilometers to 850 kilometers. what does it mean in regular terms. it means north korea can hit every single land mass of south korea. this is not a capability they had 15 years ago. it's a capability they do have now. so if one talks about tanks that they can't run as well because they won't have as much fuel, well, now they don't need to use those tanks they can fire a ballistic missile. so something to keep in mind. they also have a range in 250 millimeters it also means they can hit tokyo. and they have what's called the muse don missile which has a range of 4,000 kilometers based on old soviet ssn6 technology.

what they did was in 1992, they got a bunch of russian rogue scientists to defect or sold them some stuff. they got this slbm submarine launch ballistic missile and they converted it to a missile that could be launch disagreed a transporter erector. then they made longer because they're north koreans and that's what they do. and as soon as they had that missile which was 2005 they sold 18 to iran and iran has 18 of missiles which can target brussels and they've already tested it and it works at a range for 4,000 kilometers. what does this mean for americans they can head to north korea to guam, someplace i spent for two years surfing and

drinking beer and i think i did some work too. that means they can hit guam. why is guam so important to north koreans since the general knows since he was the head planner on the korean peninsula, guam is a key staging area in case we have to strike north korea and they have been able to pose this threat to us beginning around 2006. they have 200 missiles to deploy. that's the second missile ballistic threat. let me talk about, if i may, excuse me, the third of symmetric threat. that would be special operations forces. and anytime someone brings up special operations force, of course, my answer is there is only one truly special force it's called the united states marine corps. that's not important right now. [laughter] >> but the north korea special

operations forces are easily the best trained best fit and most indoctrinated of nkap military forces. they can attack from the air through tunnels under the dmz and by illegal entering in iraq. south koreans look north koreans because they are all koreans i should say this they have stun that snuck special operations in to assassinate people such as the botched attempt at assassinate the highest ranger detectiver to come south. they also do it by maritime means. they use submarines and submersibles. sfo numbers in north korea have increased by 50% since 2006. this is a significant threat. they've converted seven diversions, think about this, 7 divisions to light infantry. close to 50,000 men.

and one of the things that they've done is they took a lot of the heavy artillery and some of the tanks and the apc's et cetera out of these divisions pushed them farther south -- close to south korea and then they jump qualified all these guys and trained them. 50,000 guys they've done this since 2006. the minister of national defense which is a white paper which is a big estimate that the south korea ministry of national defense puts out each year estimates they have 200,000 special operations forces. significant threat. they can go in behind enemy lines and do all kinds of things, disrupt our command and control. this is a planning nightmare. something else to think about but wait there's more and there's also peacetime provocations, intelligence collection and terrorist acts. eg, the recent sinking of the

cohnoan was a special operation mini submarine. service an sof marine operated by gentlemen, if you want to call them that from the reconnaissance bureau. which is -- which is in many ways ken jong-il's pet rock and comes under the umbrella of his best friend. the submarine was cut in half. it was yono class submarine. north korea originally developed that submarine for their good friends the iranians because iran's coastline and the korean's coastline has unpredictable tides, muddy

iranians. the iranians wanted something they could operate in those kinds of waters. north korean came up with a marine and, obviously, they discovered they could do other stuff with it besides proliferations to rogue nations like iran. north korea made about $2.5 billion last year from illegal drugs. and most of them were run through networks that were organized by and with north korean government approval and training and special operation forces play a key role in that. so what is my assessment with the asymmetric capabilities. pyongyang is able to focus on its asymmetric capability. while some conventional capabilities continue to decline, slowly, the asymmetric

capabilities have actually improved in the past ten years. gaps created in rok and u.s. forces during the early days and weeks of combat could create openings for less capability but still highly deadly forces to take ground and cause heavy casualties. north korea and this is something that's very important as they have increased the payables of their forces they have deployed key armor and infancy forces near invasion corridors. as the general knows and as many of you know who have seen these invasion corridors including my father in 1993, the korean area is mountainous. there are two corridors that you can go north or south with a lot of army mechanized forces et cetera and that's the corridor that runs from all the way down to seoul. it is these two corridors that the north koreans have moved

their military forces. massively moved them, moved 70% of their forces now are sitting on these 2 invasion corridors so something to think about. this is the tyranny of proximity. and i think what this shows is the tyranny of proximity which augments these -- these disposition and of the august men capability means that the nonnuclear forces, the conventional forces are still a significant threat. so something to think about. i won't read you the numbers because i don't want to bore everybody to death. let's talk about north korean proliferation. north korea, i think, a lot of people took notice when general jones who was the national security versus to president obama last year says his main concern about north korea was proliferation. i would certainly at least partially agree with that. i mean, i think it's one of the key threats among several

threats from north korea. who does north korea proliferate to? let's start off with some of their key players. north korea proliferates to syria, a newspapers program and plutonium nuclear weapons program they actually built for the syrians -- they essentially a west in the syrian desert and they tried to get slick about this. the north koreans actually put a fake roof like you would miss a plutonium plant and they put a fake roof over it and the israelis weren't supposed to figure out what was going, okay. our friends the israelis destroyed that facility in 2007 and, of course, the iranians denied any involvement. what happened? the north koreans have built for syria a chemical weapons

facility which remains open. prior to building that facility, the north koreans actually just supplied them with -- excuse me, with chemical weapons. not only have they built that facility for the syrians but the north koreans and the searan military guys go out practice in full mock gear every year. with live chemical weapons using artillery and we can all just manual what the main target would be so very interesting stuff. they have also sold every single type of scud missile to the searans. scud b, scud d, there was a scud sitting on a pad that was going to do a live fire with a chemical warhead with what i have no idea but it blew up on the pad and killed about 20 syrian and iranian engineers in the process. this was about 2.5 years ago so very interesting stuff. they proliferated a wide variety

of weapons to syria. how about iran? well, all of the above and a highly enriched uranium nuclear program. if north korea it has, you can bet iran it has. why, because iran is willing to pay for it. iran is not supplying north korea. it is north korea supplying iran. they also have every single type of missile that north korea has developed extended range range and the shahab3 and every time the north korean guess do a live missile firing they bring in iranian engineers, technicians, v.i.p.s and they have been receiving for money or oil all the technology the north koreans have been using for their tape laufrnlz so interesting stuff. north korea also proliferates ballistic missiles and

conventional weapons throughout the middle east, south asia and africa. why would north korea be so successful? because there are so many countries who want weapons that traditional western countries like our own will not sell to them. they have to get these weapons from rogue states, eg, central african republic bought some tanks of the north koreans two years ago and they were caught taking shipment by the south african navy. why would they want to buy t53 weapons after three years after the korean war. they wanted to buy their tanks because that's what the russians supplied them with 30 years ago and the north koreans wanted to sell them the tanks and built the tanks because they know people will still buy them so this is kind of a buyer's market, seller's market it's working well for north korea and the nations that want to buy their stuff but wait, there's more. north korea also proliferates to

nonstate actors. that is terrorist groups. dprk provided weapons and training to the demil tigers right after the army drove them into the sea and this by the way to fight an counterinsurgency. they do prove a nation station can win a counterinsurgency by killing the bad guys. the north korean supplied them with 105 artillery, 122 artillery i should say with machine guns and it was just amazing and the thing that even made that more interesting was that one stage in a conflict they were swelling weapons both to the tigers and to the army. businessmen. well, that's done now the north koreans lost a customer. the dprk also built tunnels for hezbollah used during a 2006 war

with israel. and provided small arms including rockets fired into israel. i have seen pictures, photographs of rockets fired in israel with north koreans markings so the north koreans don't make soviet style rockets so we have to assume this is north koreans and this is a big problem with israel. the dprk also collaborates and proliferates to the iranian republican guard car, a state department designated terrorist organization. this relationship is long going. the irgc conducts liaison with hezbollah, with hamas, with other governments that iran supplies and they have a very close relationship with the north koreans. huge notifies both of north

korea and pyongyang. u.n. sanctions must be enforced not only by u.s. and key allies but by other u.n. members. since 2009, this has improved. renewed emphasis on what we call the proliferation security initiative is important. there are now more than 96 member states in the proliferation security initiative. now, that there are members they need to improve their training, their exercises as member states, improve coordination and focus on following the money. 'cause that's where we can really hit north korea. the u.s. rocked japan and other key allies need to work with international law enforcement to get this done. we must go over not company by company but in mass. north korean front companies, networks in friendly nations and individual north koreans known to support proliferation and illicit activities.

let me give you one example. some of you probably saw in the news that there was a russian-built georgian craft with 35 tons of military equipment bound for iran that was caught in thailand on its way to north korea. it went through five front companies, one of those front companies was registered to new zealand. now, i'm not saying they want to do business with north korea but it shows north koreans are willing to go through all these steps, these elaborate steps the tactics and techniques to throw us off. and the final thing that i would say is hugely important when it comes to north korean proliferation is north korea needs to be relisted on the state department list of nation supporting terrorism, why? because north korea is a state

that supports terrorism. so there we go. that's -- that's the proliferation threat. please allow me to talk about the north korean nuclear programs and the threat that they present. what do the north koreans want to do. let me please offer this assessment to you. their goal is to manipulate negotiations including six-party talks to obtain aid while agreeing in principal to dismantlement. how do i know that this is their modus operandi well, because we saw them run circles around the bush administration doing this between 2005 and 2009. and where did we get? nowhere. they also want to prevent inspection regimes from assessing, accessing hidden components of the programs but north korea will always in corporation at the point where vital program elements are threatened but significant aid has been acquired. in -- between 2008 and 2009,

north korea took a great amount of aid from other five parties in the six-party talks including the united states with the exception of japan, i might add. we took them off the list of nations that support terrorism and what did they do? right when we got that key point where they had to show us, let us see they had dismantled this program they found a way to walk away with the talks. what does this all mean? currently north korea has at least 6 to 8 plutonium weapon. what is a threat realistic something they can dump out of the back of one of their bomber aircraft. it would be difficult for them. more realistic scenario would be them putting those rather larnl primitive devices on a cargo ship where they could sail it into tokyo bay or norfolk. that they could probably get away with pretty easily. there's another nuclear threat that they have besides the plutonium program there's the highly enriched uranium program. we now know that they likely

have or will have soon weaponized highly enriched uranium. why is it such more of a threat than plutone column one key reason, it's find easier to miniaturize. they have the designs for a 500 kilogram warhead for a missile that could carry a warhead and they have the missile that's stable enough to carry it. which means as we're speaking today north korea probably has the capability to fire a nuclear tipped missile at tokyo so something to keep in mind. the fourth threat from north korea and this may end up being the most important threat is the regime's succession process in north korea. can kim jong-il control the regime's succession process? maybe. kim has three sons.

his oldest son is a very chubby little guy. kim has a flat in macau and he has an apartment in paris and one reportedly in geneva. he's kind of a playboy and a goof ball tried to sneak his family into tokyo disney. i wish i could be a fly on the wall, excuse me, you don't look are you -- and he's almost out of north korea and gal vating -- and he's married and has girlfriends in every one of these places. let's get to the second son.

the second son is kim jong kho who is a big eric clapton fan and he followed eric clapton as a groupie around europe and at least he has a great group. cream was a great group. my father was in the audience zpoed listen to eric clapton growing up but big eric clapton so a couple of years you hear eric clapton was coming to north korea. he has a different mother. educated in switzerland. kim jong kho is too much of a girlie man to take over as the leader of the dprk. he reportedly has to actually

take medicine, male hormones and for that reason his father does not think he would be a legitimate leadership of north korea. so now we're on to the third son. he's two years younger. he's about 28 now also educated in switzerland, same private school and for those of you saw the pictures last fall of his coming out party he looks a lot like his grandpa. he looks a lot like kim ill sun and he's got them chubby cheeks. he's the guy. now, why is this a concern? and i'd like to address this for you. in north korea, there is no such thing as a hierarchal organization of government. it's more like a guy in the middle of a circle and all the institutions feed into him. it's been that way since 1948, since kim took over.

he set up the government that way for his son. he had 20 years to do it from 1974 to '94. that's when the whole process started. you cannot run that country unless you control the party, the military, the security services and that byzantine entity known as the kim family inner circle. kim jong-il controlled all of them. it all started in 1974. by 1992, actually, he was a five star in the army even though he never served. he was the head of the organization and guidance department for the party. and it controls not only what happened what happens to the party. he was the head of the state security department in the ministry of people security, the two biggest security services in north korea out before 8

security services and his father had purged all of his relatives that he was out of favor with. they were in places like poland. so he was set up for that when his father died in 1994. none of this has happened effectively for the son. his father is trying to set him up as you probably have know in the news reports as a general in the army. he's not there yet. he's in the party. he's acting place in the ogd, the sxorgs guidance department but he's not running it yet. and there have been problems with him as some of you have seen in the press getting along with people in the security services. and there's been problems reportedly he's even tried to have his older brother assassinated, believe it or not. so there's still some issues there. nobody outside of kim sun, nobody outside of kim controls any more than a few staff members. in the army, if you are a general commanding a corps, a general commanding a division, a

colonel commanding a regiment a controlling a battalion, on your left shoulder you have a guy from the security services, the state security department overlooking are you going to do things politically correct according to the your party. on your right shoulder you have a guy from the general political bureau that's making sure that you are actually not going to try and overthrow the government. so unlike china where they have a political officer in every unit and unlike the soviet union -- everybody saw the hunt for red october where he had to take over the political officer to take over a the scene but in north korea you have to kill two guys. so kim has built this country very effectively so that nobody really controls enough of the power that somebody could just take over, a coup d'etat. everybody is watched by

everybody. it's important to know -- [inaudible conversations] >> in order for his son to take over his dad has to build a power base the party, the army the security services and in the kim family regime. has he been able to do that? not yet. it took 20 years to do it for kim jong-il. can kim jong-il do that in a matter of far fewer years for his son. kim jong-il has diabetes. he has heart trouble. he has kidney dialysis. he's probably not going to last more than five years. what does that mean? it means should kim die over the next five years, there's no better than a 50/50 percent chance that regime can survive. there's a huge chance that regime could fall into implosion, explosion or civil

war, anarchy type activity. this is absolutely something that the people that follow general miat are planning for right now. this means a lot of military involvement from both south korea and the united states. probably led by the south korean military with a lot of support from the united states and this is a very real possibility. and that is why the north korean regime process is the fourth threat that i rate. and i'll go ahead and wrap it up. that's the last chapter in my book and i'm happy to answer your questions. [applause] >> well, dr. bechtol, it's fascinating. fascinating and depressing a little bit, i have to tell you. and to segue on your last comment in terms of the north korean succession, are the south koreans preparing for the eventual flood of north koreans

coming into south korea to flee catastrophe? >> well, i believe there are, sir and you know we spent a lot more time in korea than most concerns know so you know this better than most, you know, the south koreans and north koreans do not think of themselves as separate peoples. they consider themselves and i think that's probably pretty accurate a family that's been torn apart. i think south korea has plans in effect, i know they do and we're helping them with some of those plans to reunify families when north korea implodes or falls apart. i think a lot of those plans will have some issues as families start -- as that huge influx of family starts coming. it's not going to be thousands of people. i think it will be millions of people and i think that could be a real issue. it will be interesting to see what happens. i think everybody is expecting that and everybody is doing everything they can to try and make that as well organized of a

process as they can. >> the temporary suspension of hostilities that took place in south korea and north korea in 1954 and were signed by china, north korea, united states and south korea. what's china's role now in this whole effort with north korea, number 1. and number 2, what's the relevance of that document that was signed in 1954? >> great question. first of all, there was a nation that the general mentioned and that was the republic of korea. which refused to sign that document which has always been a key thing the north koreans keep bringing up and what was the rest of the question. >> well, the first part dealt with china's role because they were a signature. >> people have asked me about

this a lot. especially the past year or so. what -- how effective -- how strong of a role does china play with north korea? and i would tell you it's fairly simple. china has more influence on north korea than anybody else. that is to say, not a lot. the north koreans really do -- [inaudible conversations] >> the north koreans really do have a very close relationship with the chinese, and it's -- >> i don't know what is. interference. >> interesting. >> it's not even in this hotel so we're getting some kind of interference. >> anyway, the north koreans have a close relationship with chinese, lips and teeth. they got 90% of their fuel of the chinese. the rest largely from places

like iran. but yet the chinese often are surprised by the things the north koreans do. for example, when they detonated their nuclear weapon in 2006 they notified the chinese two hours before they were going to do it. hey we're going to detonate this bomb, bye. that was it. the chinese exert as much influence as they can largely through economic means. something else that i think is very important that i think south koreans need to consider is, let's say that north korea -- and i apologize if i'm getting off on a tangent sir. south korea -- let's say north korea implodes. and south korea sees let's say the president and the country is falling apart they are falling in anarchy. the south korea president calls in the chinese ambassador and says it's time. the window is open. it's time for us to unite with

our brother and sisters, what will it take to keep you guys out of the war? and the chinese ambassador i can almost for sure tell you this will pull out a preprepared list of things and read it to the president of south korea. key of which we have the following investments in north korea. you will honor those investments when you move into north korea and we will leave you alone. because china has -- they have quadrupled their investments in north korea over the past three years. so do they have some influence? yes, sir, they do. they play a role. unfortunately, for the chinese, the north koreans, like koreans have for the past 4,000 years, continue to do pretty much exactly what they want. >> since the signing of the agreement in 1954, there has been an effort by the north

koreans to separate the dialog that we would have with the signatures, they wanted bilateral discussions with the united states. and when i was there it was -- one of the efforts that we insisted upon that we were never going to let the north koreans separate the united states and south korea from any discussions with north korea. are there efforts now that the united states is part of to have bilateral discussions with north korea? >> i don't think that's very likely. what i hear being talked about is discussions again but at least at the high levels, the united states wants to go back to some level of talks once north korea has proven that they're serious about dismantling their nuclear program. the united states wants south korea at those talks. and for those of you who haven't been following the news on korea, south korea has no intention of going back with any talks and we're not going to

back in without them. that's obama's talk and they have no intention to go back to the talks and unless north korea apologizes the sinking of the chonan and we're pretty much at a mexican standoff franchise old clint eastwood movie. this is an issue. you know, there are many things about many policies that i disagree with, obviously, but i definitely agree with a united policy where we are joined at the hip with our south korean allies and i don't think we can bring any stability without that policy. >> during the clinton administration there was an agreement to help the north koreans have a peaceful nuclear program and the south koreans were part of that. what happened to that initiative? >> it went the way of the edsel and the passenger pigeon, sir.

[laughter] >> it's not there as you probably know because you know a lot about the nuclear issues and lots of other issues as well. the north koreans very proudly showed off to my friend jack prichard that they will built a light water reactor and that it's for peaceful purposes. and the facility where they have where they developed that fissile material has never had any wires running out of it to anywhere. in other words, since its very beginning, it's not powering anything. they are just developing fissile material there. so very interesting stuff. >> a couple of questions about your four different threats you talked about the ballistic missile threat. have the japanese indicated any defensiive initiative to defend

against the ballistic missiles. the japanese have done that before the 2009 launch one of my former students who is an officer in the army and now lieutenant colonel and he deployed with pac3s. pakistan 3 is an advance over that pac which has that gulf thing which is killing a bullet with a bullet. we sent over a bunch of pac3 to the japanese and those that had the sm3 missile system as you know in the east sea of japan if you're not me. and so we were ready and the japanese were ready. since that time japan has purchased its pac missile

systems and they have sm3 antimissile missiles if you will on their own ships and they have joined us although it's an ongoing process and become part of the u.s. system. i might add and that's a great question, i might add this is something the south koreans need to do right now because north korea presents a much larger ballistic missile threat to south korea than they do to japan and south korea right now there are -- today in south korea 64pac this protect u.s. bases and u.s. troops and if you're a south korean on a u.s. base you're protected. if you're a south korean in seoul you're not or other military base south korea needs pac3's and sm3s to protect their own population centers and bases. and they need to get in with an

rbmd system and they need to do it right now. >> several questions on the succession process and the issue you raised with the three sons. the questions relate to the north korean army's acceptance of a son as their leader. is there any indication that the north korean army will accept whoever kim jong-il appoints. >> that's a very good question, sir. if you are a general in the north korean army you drive a mercedes. in the late 1990s kim jong-il issued a directive that all of his generals, division commander and above would be issued mercedes. why do i bring it up because general myatt articulation is very important. these are guys who understand because of the way the system works, because of the way it has worked since 1948, unless they have a family succession those

guys are likely to lose power and what they don't want is to be hanging from a meat hook mussolini style when that country implodes. so they would like to see a family succession work largely for selfish reasons. now, that said, they understand that the son is weak, he's young. it's going to be very interesting to see how all of that plays but because the way the military is set up there's just no way -- it would be almost impossible for a military general to throw a coup d'etat and the party watches the military too carefully. does that make sense to you? >> thank you. and really the final question deals with much what i opened the talk with in telling the story about the developing of a personal relationship rather than a professional relationship in the asian society. former ambassador donald greg who is somewhat of an expert on

the korean situation has recently written a paper that's been published in both the united states and korea that talks about the food shortage in north korea. and that the past -- in the past that our government has been one that supports the supplying food to the north koreans to help them with the starvation issues they have. and he's arguing in his paper that the united states should reinstitute this program but the current administration has not decided to provide food to north korea. should we be providing food to north korea? >> well, i'm not sure that there's anything that ambassador greg has ever written that i ever agreed with. we've had some interesting conversations if you don't want to call them arguments, but that's a very good question. i would say fool me once, you know, shame on you. fool me twice shame on me. the biggest issue, the reason

why the united nations -- why ngo's and igo's, intergovernmental organizations have what is called donor fatigue. a slang term that was invented because of north korea. the reason they have donor fatigue is because of the fact that as this aid goes in, the north korean government does not allow these organizations -- many of them don't work for governments. they don't allow them to see where the food goes and where does that mean the food goes? that means the majority of it goes to the north korean people's army and what they don't use the leftovers are given to the civilians population. and so that's an issue. and i -- i think the obama administration, like the bush administration, would like to give food aid to the north koreans but they're very concerned that it's not going to go to the people who need it the most. >> well, i'm going to think you dr. bechtol.

very interesting program and you've concerned -- heightened got my pulse rated up for north korea. thank you so much. thank you all very much. [applause] >> and his book is for sale if you don't have one already, go ahead and get one and he'll sit here and sign it for you. so thank you all for joining us for the program tonight. thank you very much. >> thank you, sir. i appreciate it. >> take a tour of urban slavery sites of savannah. >> we're standing in savannah's market and this is where they would have come to sell their wares.

on the weekend they were able to pick from their gardens and come out on sundays and sell their wares. one thing i want to talk about is the fact that urban slaves in savannah were a work force. the institution of slavery was a little bit different in savannah because there was literally one-degree of separation the enslaved lived where their owners would have lived but a lot of them lived away from their owners. in 1801 it became law that it took an act of the legislature to free a slave instead of the last will and testament. so with the act of a legislature, it rarely happened. so what happened is essentially in savannah is that these urban slaves became nominal slaves. they were slaves in names only. they would hire out themselves for work or their master's would hire them out and they would be paid. one example would have been in the 1850s. here in this building on ellis

square where the pastor of the third african baptist church had a butcher shop. he was an enslaved man. he paid his own $50 a month so that he could work at his butcher shop. this building appearance very powerful history. on the top floor you had a slave mart. this building was build by a man named john mcmollian in 1854 to 1857. the land was valued in 1854 at $4500 and by 1857, it was 11,500 in value. it's three floors high. it has a below-grade holding -- a below ground holding area apparently that was where the enslaved people would have been kept. they were brought newspaper chains and taken to the third floor of the building. the middle window is would have

been where the auction window was and the anteroom is where the slave women would have changed their clothes and he talks about hearing the screams and cries of thousands of africans who were taken up to be sold in slavery here at this slave mart. john mcmollian did not live as long as the slave mart survived. it was eight years that this was a slave mart. john met a very unfortunate death. he was blown up in a steamer and his body brought back here to the city to be buried. the next owner was alexander bryant who was actually selling slaves asgeneral sherman came up the west side to get the city of savannah that eventually would surrender in the event of the war. and what else happened here? alexander brian he had a sign out front and it said brian's

slave mart. the next year, this building became the school for freed blacks. james lynch came down. he was a missionary. they found the bill of sales they were selling the slaves on and turned them over and used them for paper for these students to write on. they marched, 400 young black people to this building for it to become the first friedman's school here in the city of savannah in 1865. >> now, women in hezbollah, that is one of the most interesting aspects of this society that hezbollah has managed to create. i like to say that the women of hezbollah are really the

cornerstone of the movement and are what has turned it into something that has such an enduring and resilient bedrock. so each time there's a war -- and -- i mean, 1993, 1996, 2006, there's a massive amounts of destructions. people's homes are destroyed every time. people's kids get killed. and for it to happen once, you know, anything could happen once. for people to be willing with good cheer and high energy to volunteer again and again for this requires something that hezbollah managed to do which is buy-in at the level of households and homes and it's the women in these households who hezbollah has worked really hard to reach and teach and inculcate into their view and these women become the bedrock of the ideas and of the willingness to fight for them.

so i write about this a fair amount in the book. these mothers of martyrs, for example, have a very different flavor, say, or psychological profile than mothers of martyrs i met in gaza or the west bank. these people i met in lebanon, they were grieving their dead children. not a single one of them said i'm happy my child died in the service of this war but they did say i'm proud. i'm proud and i would sign another kid to do it. and they work quite assiduously to instill a sense of pride at the martyrs in their family. it's the thing that makes -- that makes hezbollah's sort of phalanx of people willing to die such a stable part of the movement that they can count on.

and, you know, it's really -- in some ways breathtaking the sophistication of the social network that hezbollah has built up around this idea. so when a young fighter, let's say, dies, and becomes a martyr, the party sends psychologists and social workers around to the family to work with them and make sure they deal with their depression, make sure the kids are doing okay and adjusting and succeeding in school and this is for two reasons, one is because they care about their members and they want them to be okay. second reason is because they want people in the society of islamic resistance to see that the family of the martyrs are the ones who thrive the most. so if you have a martyr in your family, the martyr's foundation is going to make sure surviving kids go to the best schools. they're going to encourage the widow to remarry. and usually to someone of high status within the