Patrick Cronin: Thank you for joining Hudson Institute’s discussion today on Kim Jong-un and Arms Racing in Northeast Asia. I’m Patrick Cronin, Asia-Pacific Security Chair at Hudson, and I am delighted today to be joined by my distinguished colleague, Alex Wong, who among many other achievements recently served as the Deputy Special Representative for North Korea at the State Department. Jean Lee of the Wilson Center, a pioneer in the on-the-ground reporting inside North Korea, and Ankit Panda, the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of the outstanding book, Kim Jong-un and the Bomb: Survival and Deterrence in North Korea. For Alex and me, you can find further details about our background, including links to my recent reports on Hudson’s website as well as a more fulsome description of the impressive experience of Jean Lee and Ankit Panda on the Wilson Institute and Carnegie websites, respectively.

But let’s turn straightaway to the recent events that have brought us together today. Until recently, North Korea had become a relatively quiet topic. Diplomacy had been largely stalled since 2019. It remains stalled really since, largely, 2019, with North Korea seemingly signaling scant interest in concessions or in talking with the United States or South Korea. Despite a contracting economy and the closing of the border with China and Kim’s warning of another arduous march ending at the famine of the 1990s, North Korea seems to be making it through the global pandemic without visible signs of distress, although the most recent midnight parade featured paramilitary troops in hazmat suits flanked by fire trucks, horses and dogs rather than missiles.