Welcome. Good afternoon. I hope you're all relatively warm. A little story. A dear Russian friend and colleague of mine was just up in my office to see the Russian freezing and talking about how cold it was in Washington. Having come from Moscow gives some sense of how unusual this is. I'm George Perkovich, Vice President for Studies here at the Carnegie Endowment. And it's my pleasure to welcome you here today. This is part of our ongoing Japan Speaker Series, and we want to especially today turn our attention to an absolutely vital foreign policy challenge and security policy challenge for the new U.S. Administration and Japan. Clearly, North Korea's nuclear and missile developments are among the top threats to peace and stability. I would say anywhere in the world, but especially in Northeast Asia. It's also absolutely vital for the alliance relationship and the joint management of the deterrence challenge, as well as military preparation for possible conflict. There's obviously been a lot of discussion in Washington and elsewhere about this issue, and we want to focus first today on North Korea itself, because North Korea is not a constant. It's evolved since the Clinton Administration and the agreed framework, and then the eight years of the Bush Administration and the eight years of the Obama Administration. So in one sense, we've been trying to address the nuclear issue through one approach, and North Korea has evolved a lot over that time, as have U.S. politics and the personnel that are involved in them. So it's useful to try to get up to speed and think more about North Korea itself, and then we'll consider the nuclear and missile programs, as well as developments in the North Korean economy, society, and politics. In the second session, we'll talk about regional dynamics and variables, as well as policy options in the alliance context. Any policy shifts by the U.S., obviously, that tries to add pressure, open dialogue, or strengthen deterrence toward North Korea obviously can only work to the extent that it's coordinated with South Korea especially, but also Japan. China obviously is a variable in all of this as well. Now, after this full afternoon's work, we will be having a reception, and so we'd like you to come down and join us there. I'll be on the first floor where we can continue the discussion informally. We're honored to have many distinguished presenters and panelists here, but I particularly want to thank our colleagues who have traveled from Japan. Mr. Furukawa and Dr. Akutsu, I was just in China last week, I understand jet lag, and so I know that it's a big, big trip, and so we want to thank you for taking the time and suffering the injury of that long flight to be here. Now I'm going to pass it off to Jim Shofu, who leads our Japan work at Carnegie, and a lot of our work on Northeast Asian security, and so he's going to take you through the rest of it. Thank you very much, George. I appreciate that. I am Jim Shofu, I'm a senior fellow here in the Asian program at Carnegie, run our Japan program, and welcome to the continuation of our Japan Speaker Series program. As George mentioned, we're not talking about a particularly new topic, or one that is overlooked here in the policy community in Washington, but if I had to pick one single issue with the potential to most quickly and most dramatically damage the United States and its allies, I would say it is North Korea, particularly because of the combination of nuclear weapons with autocratic leadership in a country that is so divorced from the international system and whose existence relies on antagonism with one of America's closest allies. So the topic requires quite comprehensive analysis and debate, and I think by shining a light on North Korea today, we can add a little bit of value to this discussion. We all have our own conceptions of what's going on in North Korea politically, economically, militarily from the media or from our own past professional experiences, but North Korea is a dynamic place, and we need to keep up with the changes, and I think effective policymaking depends on that. So we have two sessions today, and as George mentioned, without further ado, we'll begin with our first session on North Korea today. We're going to invite our panelists to come up and take their seats. So our first session will be to look at the current state of North Korea's domestic condition. In a comprehensive way, what do we know about North Korea today and what are some of the implications for our policy strategy? And then later on in our second session, we'll broaden the look at North Korea to factor in the regional dimension. How might sanctions affect North Korea going forward? How do we assess China-North Korea relations or the political prospects in South Korea with implications for North-South relations and relations with Japan and the United States, of course? There are many unknowns and variables, obviously, and rather than forecasting, I think, especially in our second session, we'll try to take account of these variables and weigh some of the pros and cons of different strategies therein. But we start with North Korea, and let me quickly introduce you. You have bios of everyone here, but for the sake of our video audience and just to give you a little bit more background, Dr. Isozaki, who is there, is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at K.O. University, currently a visiting scholar here in Washington at the Wilson Center, and focuses almost exclusively on North Korea. I had the pleasure of meeting Isozaki Sensei years ago when he was a Ph.D. student at K.O. and he was helping me with some of my research on North Korea policymaking in Japan, and it's a real pleasure to have him in Washington and with us today. Yeon-ho Kim, all the way on the end, is a senior researcher of U.S. Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins SICE. He's done some very interesting research on cell phone use in North Korea, among other topics. He's a senior reporter for the Voice of America and a broadcaster for Radio Free Asia, Korea Broadcasting Service, and that followed other work in the research and consulting world. We also have, to my right, Josh Pollock, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey here in D.C. It's one of the more confusing titles. It's Middlebury at Monterey, but you're here in Washington. We're very glad you're here in Washington because Josh filled in on very short notice, Mike Elman of IWS was supposed to be with us, but his flight got canceled coming in from the Gulf in the Middle East, and Josh has stepped in. So I'm very appreciative of that. Josh is also the editor of the Nonproliferation Review. He's been a Defense Policy Analyst, DFI International, SAIC, Constellation West, and has consulted for a variety of U.S. government agencies. Last but not least, we have Dr. Akutsu from National Institute for Defense Studies all the way from Tokyo. He's a senior fellow for regional studies focused on North Korea, Korea, and he's been a visiting scholar in Seoul, also in London and here in Washington just a couple of years ago. And he earned his Ph.D. at Australian National University, where it is summertime right now and where some of us probably wish we could all be. But let's begin with Isozaki Sensei to talk a little bit about North Korean politics and an approach to policymaking under Kim Jong-un. Each presenter will have a fairly short presentation. We'll have a bit of a conversation up here based on those presentations, and then we'll open it up to some audience interaction as well. Thank you very much for your kind introduction. Before I start, I'd like to thank Mr. James Schoff for inviting me to speak today. It's a great honor to be here. Actually, this is the first presentation in English for me. Over the course of many years, I've examined books written by North Korean leaders, and the Rodong Shim newspaper published by Waka's Party of Korea, observing change in the frequency and manner of usage of certain terminology. Of course, these methods are not perfect, but these sources are highly regarded within North Korea, and they have provided one way to interpret the intent and ideas of the North Korean leaders. Firstly, I'm going to review the premise of the discussion about North Korean policymaking. It is the fact that politics under Kim Jong-un are even more of a black box than it was under his father. Most observers expected that the seven high officials accompanying the motorhurst of Kim Jong-il in December 2011 would become the core supporters of the young success of Kim Jong-un. Even so, the possibility of the North Korean ruling system being transformed into a collective leadership. However, since then, the most powerful figures and big guardians of new supreme leaders have been removed. For example, Lee Yong-ho, chief of the general staff of the Korean People's Army, was dismissed. And Kim Jong-un's powerful uncle, Jang Son-taek, was reportedly executed. Is political decision-making now being concentrated on the Kim Jong-un? This has been an important issue, but we have limited ways to know for sure. The clearest answer is that politics under Kim Jong-un is even more of a black box than was the case under his father. This is due to the lack of information. Kim Jong-un has been in power for only five years. More importantly, there is less information leaking out than in the past. In regards to Kim Jong-il, his father, we had access to details from his so-called royal family. For example, his eldest son, Kim Jong-un, his sister-in-law, Song Hae-ran, and his nephew, Lee Hanyong, and his class associates like Hwan Jang-yup and Shin Kyung-wan, the South Korean movie director and famous actress who were kidnapped to take part in the production films in Pyongyang, Shin Sang-wook, and Choi Eun-hee. As well as Japanese sous-chef, Kenji Fujimoto, who served Kim Jong-il for 13 years in Pyongyang. Thus, it was possible to cross-check all of this information and get close to the power structure of his regime. However, regarding Kim Jong-un, the material available is limited to the time he spent studying abroad in Switzerland. In other words, there is no information except facts from his youth. In this circumstance, the work, such as speeches, conversations, and essays that have been published under Kim Jong-un's name are useful for the understanding of the internal logic of North Korea, where words and instructions of the supreme leader are seen as absolutes. I deem them to be one small clue that is possible to verify. When I take a look at the approximate 90 works of Kim Jong-un that have been published since 2012, the contrast between his ideology and that of his father is striking. The difference between Kim Jong-un and his father suggests that Kim Jong-un is a pragmatically-oriented leader. For example, I'm very sorry, the small words. So, yellow line, please look at yellow line. The term Song-gun idea, military first idea, Song-gun sa-san in Korean, was not used even once in the many speeches, essays, and conversations that Kim Jong-un made available to the public in 2012. From the content of the North Korean media, I have found that the Korean Workers' Party has become more centralized in state affairs than it was under Kim Jong-un, and more attention is being paid to the appearance of due process in policymaking. And there have been relatively more attempts at publicly disclosing information, but at the same time, changes in leadership personnel and policies happen quickly, and foreign policies have fluctuated widely between pro-working neighbors and seeking dialogues. I'm currently focusing on an analysis of Kunroja, a monthly journal published by the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, Kunroja. Since 1992, this publication was not available outside of North Korea. But fortunately, I have been able to obtain all of the copies of Kunroja published from 1992 through 2016. There are few articles on diplomacy in this magazine. North Korea prioritizes domestic policies above foreign diplomacy, and the most interesting article on diplomacy was published in January 2014. The author of this article is a well-known diplomat, Kang Sok-choo, who served Kim Jong-il, and he died this year. He acknowledges that Kim Jong-un has not had many opportunities to engage in international activities. In fact, Kim Jong-un has never gone overseas as a supreme leader so far. And the only example that can be found of his engaging in diplomacy was with Dennis Rottmann's visit to North Korea. That Kang Sok-choo said about that on this article. Next, I would like to introduce you to another article published in the December 2013 edition of Kunroja that portrays Kim Jong-un's worldview. The paper was entitled, The Middle Eastern Storm Pushed Upon Us by Imperialists is primarily targeting youth. Just as the title implies, the paper finds the roots of the Middle East revolutions as a betrayal of the regime by youth. Kim Jong-un appeared to take a cue from Libya's Gaddafi with that country being driven to collapse by NATO armies. At the Central Committee's General Meeting of the Workout Party of Korea in 2013, Kim Jong-un established the Byeonjin line as a new strategic path. Moreover, his explanation of why his country should proceed with nuclear development is critical. Kim Jong-un himself stated, are less than from the Middle Eastern countries in the background of nuclear development. I think that is very important. At the time, Laurent Simu newspaper published explanatory articles about the situation in Libya, asserting that the Libyan government was toppled due to abandonment of nuclear development. It seems that Kim Jong-un's dependence on nuclear weapons as a deterrent was reinforced by witnessing the Libyan situation. North Korea's process-making foreign policy is often a black box. But by gathering clues over time, we can make some jealous assessments. Kim Jong-un's grandfather, Kim Il-sung's decision to keep power within the family was influenced by his observation of the failure of Stalin and Mao to sustain their governing approach after death and transition. And Kim Jong-un's father, Kim Jong-il, however, learned from China's Tiananmen incident the value of military loyalty. And from low money, the danger of weak loyalty, which informed his Song-gun military first policy. The Arab Spring and the Libyan situation has had a strong impact on Kim Jong-un's regime thinking. Actually, in North Korean documents like Kim Il-sung's speech or Kim Jong-un's speech and North Korean newspaper, Ronald Shin-bum speaks about that very directly. In the area of foreign policy, why the past five years of the Kim Jong-un era have seen excessive re-engaging statements. There have also been calls for dialogues. And there has been consistency in the wild swings of the pendulum. This means we might see opportunities for dialogue with North Korea, even if the regime remains committed to guarding against domestic unrest and protecting its nuclear deterrent. Of course, we should never underestimate the changes in season awareness and society change. However, we should also focus on the fact that North Korean regime continues to guard against unrest with complete effort. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. That's terrific. He's actually doing this in his fourth language after Korean and Chinese, so I think it's fantastic. We're going to go all the way through the presentation, so we're going to go politics, economy, society, and then into the military dimension, and then we'll have our conversation after that. Jung-ho? Thank you. When I talk to Jim about the Korea issues, we usually start with what's going on on the McLean Little League baseball field because we both have very dedicated baseball player kids. I just didn't have the chance to see my kid making the homerun because Jim has a very serious question about Korea. But this time I think we have to skip that part today. We outsiders are used to describe North Korea as a hermit kingdom, a self-isolated, underdeveloped country, and the country got even worse reputation of a failed state during the 1990s mass starvation, which took the lives of at least hundreds of thousands of people. Well, fast forward today, foreigners in Pyongyang are posting pictures and video clips of the people of the hermit kingdom on social media like Instagram. And you can easily see people including young students talking on their cell phones in the streets of major cities in North Korea. So obviously the hermit kingdom is demonstrating at least some signs of a North Korean style digital transformation, I would say. Of course the public distribution system has collapsed and the government is no longer a reliable source of daily necessities, paving the way for the burgeoning black market. And indeed some experts estimate between half and three-quarters of North Korea's household income comes from black markets. But interestingly enough, North Korea made considerable investment in fiber optic network to connect all cities and countries, counties throughout the nation in the 1990s, even during the arduous March period. And by 2002 North Korea has established a backbone fiber optic network nationwide. And North Korea also successfully attracted a considerable amount of investment from the Egyptian telecom company, Oraskom, and the North Korean mobile telecommunications market has seen dramatic subscriber growth since late 2008. The number of subscribers has already reached 3 million, meaning at least one out of 10 North Koreans are using their cell phone. So in North Korea to put it in a simple way, it's impossible to find a girlfriend without cell phone, the defector said. And the mobile phone has already also changed the way traders in the informal markets do business. They are now able to collect and exchange the real-time market information, including prices and exchange rates, and promptly respond to changing market conditions. And one can no longer imagine doing business without cell phone in North Korea now. And there are even trucks or bus drivers who provide a courier service. All they need is the sender and the receiver's cell phone numbers. This courier service allows the traders, as the defectors I interviewed put it, to do business while sitting at home. And they no longer need to visit their business counterparts, sellers or buyers, and carry their goods to the market themselves. And consumers benefit from this new trend of informal economic activity as well. The new mobile network has enabled traders to respond promptly to the price differences around the country. And this contributed to price stabilization and has played a role in suppressing sharp price increases. So nowadays, defectors told me that their business strategy is not going around the country seeking price differences, but dealing with as much as many goods as possible they can. So it's kind of a mass-scale transaction they're looking for now. Because the profit margin is getting narrower. And cell phones have already become a crucial part of domestic private money transfer system for North Koreans. And this is mainly operated by a chain of local money remittance houses run by the new rich middle class, Donju, in Korean. And the remitter and receiver have only to deal with their local remittance houses, and the remittance houses have their own clearing system nationwide. So through phone calls, the brokers exchange the information of remitter and receiver and the amount of money to be transferred. And the remitter and receiver also confirm the money transferred over the phone. And what about outside information? As you know well, the forms of access to outside media in North Korea have advanced beyond radios and TVs. Thanks to the development of media technology, inflow of low-cost Chinese-made media devices, and flourishing of illegal trade on the border area, and domestic black market activities, which I briefly explained. And even without internet access, DVD players, MP3 players, PC, tablets, and no-tels, a small portable video player made in China, have been increasingly popular among North Koreans who want to watch foreign, mostly South Korean dramas and TV shows. Official North Korean cell phones have great potential as a new media device for the outside information also. And with this device, North Koreans can access photos, videos, e-books, music, wherever they are. And South Korean books and foreign reports on North Korea, which entered North Korea through China, are also shared among students and intellectuals via cell phones. Of course, the authorities are conducting random inspections and censorship to counter such activities. And also the technological barrier remains high. For example, ordinary subscribers are not allowed to make international calls, let alone access the internet or foreign-only network. And data transfer, the North Korean authorities blocked it since 2012. And most of the application programs on cell phones are built in or manually installed at government-licensed shops rather than downloadable, as we do in the U.S. or South Korea and Japan. The authorities forced even re-registration or even confiscate cell phones and return them to the owners after disabling the Bluetooth function and blocking the SD card slot. And that's why a lot of unregistered cell phones with outside information and SD card readability are recently being smuggled in the country. North Korean society has been going through dramatic changes if not quick enough to the eyes of outsiders like us. And the information technology is a good example. We should stop perceived North Korea as an unchanging hermit kingdom and start seeking a way to take advantage of their socio-economic changes in our favor, I think. Private transportation system known as Servi-cha, Korean sabi-cha, the name comes from service, sabi-part, and cha meaning car in Korean. This offers a good example of the most advanced mode of the North Korean capitalist transaction, if you will. And buses and trucks mostly imported from China have emerged as the most efficient transportation means for moving people and goods throughout the country. And the Servi-cha industry used to be fragmented in small scale and run by individuals, but now transportation companies, believe it or not, run by Donju, the middle class people, purchase several buses and hire drivers, guys, even mechanics. An increasing number of transportation companies are springing up in North Korea's main transit hubs. And we are even hearing oversupply problem. Entrepreneurs can partner with state organizations to register their vehicles on their behalf and share the profit. And Servi-cha owners deliver regular bribes to senior security service officials running the checkpoints at major passages connecting provinces. This industry, Servi-cha industry is a unique combination of burgeoning informal market activities, corruption, and the rapid spread of mobile telecommunication, which led to the emergence of the concept of trust in business among North Korean traders specifically. And the rise in the mobility of people and goods coupled with enhanced information circulation supported by cell phones should have a very significant long-term impact on North Korean society, I think. We don't know yet, but I think we should watch very closely on this specific issue, especially one should pay close attention to how trust in business impact the way economic activities are organized in the communist country and the way North Koreans interact with each other and perceive the authority and the role of the government. Let me stop here and thank you for listening. Thank you very much, Yeon-ho. That's very interesting. You can see how the benefits of living in the Washington, D.C. area because going to a little league game can be incredibly intellectually stimulating. I'd now like to shift. I have a lot of questions I want to come back to on the economic piece because I think that's particularly important and to connect to the political side as well. But so much is riding on North Korea's nuclear and missile capability improvements and military investments, and I want to invest some time looking at that and the reality of where that stands today. And no better to talk to us about that than Josh Pollock. Thank you, Jim. When we think of the North Korean military threat, one of the first things that used to come to mind is this million-man army. But the million-man army, while it still exists, is largely stagnant. Public assessments that have come out of the U.S. government on this subject defense white papers from governments in the region portray a picture of a conscript army that is under-fed, under-supplied, and to a large extent has outmoded equipment. So the ground forces of the Korean People's Army are not necessarily that effective, especially for reasons of logistics. And the threat of an invasion of the South driving all the way to Busan I think is stop being realistic a long time ago. At the same time, there are exceptions to this overall picture. There are certain areas of the military, the conventional military that have undergone modernization. And then there are the missiles and the nuclear weapons. The missile and nuclear programs, especially since 2006 when North Korea abandoned a missile testing moratorium that had lasted about eight years and tested its first nuclear device, have made leaps and bounds. There is an unfortunate tendency in this country, certainly, to underestimate the sophistication of the North Korean missile program. That is a mistake. It is a substantial program. There are a variety of theater missiles, short-range and medium-range. There is now, of course, a submarine-launched missile program and we have seen them test two different missiles from their first missile submarine in the past two years, a liquid-fueled and a solid-fueled. The solid-fueled work better. We have seen them flight-test an intermediate-range ballistic missile until they got it right, until they got it to fly. And in the past year, we have seen them demonstrate a heat shield suitable for an ICBM, an intercontinental ballistic missile, and a ground test of its first-stage engine. And they have shown off a nuclear warhead design that can fit into any of these missiles. And it is small enough, I believe. And that is why they showed it to us, to make that point to us. Since in public, we often talk down their capabilities. And I think they made a point of showing us, credibly, exactly the capabilities that tend to be denigrated in the Western press. I'll give you an example of how we systematically underestimate them. You will see in many news reports claims that North Korea's space launcher, if used as an ICBM, or its mobile ICBM, which they have not flight-tested, that these things maybe could reach Alaska or maybe the West Coast. But if you read the South Korean press and if you read the North Korean press to see what they say about it and if you comb through the congressional testimony of senior U.S. military officials, it emerges, a different picture emerges. These systems are designed to reach the East Coast. Now, that doesn't mean that their mobile ICBM would work. They've never flight-tested it. But when they say that they're targeting Washington with it, and they do say that, I think we should take them seriously. They are not a joke, unfortunately. And this realization, since Kim Jong-un became leader in late 2011, has slowly dawned on a lot of people in Washington. I think a crucial moment was in December 2012, when for the first time North Korea succeeded in putting a satellite into low-Earth orbit. I think this was a wake-up call for many people in Washington. It wasn't long after that that adjustments in the missile defense program were made. Pretty briskly. That is not always a program that responds quickly to developments. But within a few months of that event, and within one month of North Korea's third nuclear test, a new expand radar had been proposed for Japan. It's now there. It's the second there. An expansion of the ground-based mid-course defense program in Alaska and California had been programmed. And since then, we've also seen U.S. Forces Korea propose the addition of a second layer to its theater missile defenses in South Korea as well, which doesn't address ICBMs, but reflects how seriously they take the North Korean missile program. So what is the nature of the threat? I would argue there are fundamentally two aspects to it. One are the long-range strategic systems, which are not proven entirely, and these seem to have more of a political or psychological value. Putting the United States at risk can enhance North Korea's, let's say, their standing in a crisis. We have to take them a little more seriously. That doesn't mean they ever intend to use these things. But then there are the theater systems, and that's quite different. We have seen, especially since 2014, but also in this past year in 2016, quite extensive operational exercises, field exercises by their missile forces that have become increasingly realistic and become increasingly explicit in purpose. Twice a year, the U.S. Forces Korea and the South Korean military hold joint exercises, once in the spring and again in the late summer. And in the weeks before those two rounds of exercises this year, North Koreans conducted operationally realistic theater missile field exercises and described them explicitly as simulations of nuclear air bursts over ports and airfields where U.S. Forces were entering South Korea in preparation to attack the North. So what we see there is the more explicit unveiling of a theater nuclear doctrine that involves deterring invasion by this threat and, if necessary, stopping it. Ports and airfields represent a bottleneck in space and time. Forces have to be concentrated there to get them into the country. And the North Koreans have been quite explicit in their dialogues with Americans in the past that if we start building up forces around them, they will reach out and hit them. Now they are showing us that this is a credible threat and that it involves nuclear weapons and presumably the early use of nuclear weapons, not in a retaliatory way, but in a preemptive way and against our conventional military forces. The purpose of all this, of course, is deterrence. North Koreans, I believe, know they cannot conquer South Korea. They can only harm it. They are on the defensive right now. They have been without allies in a meaningful sense since just before the end of the Cold War when the Soviets and Chinese opened relations with the South Koreans. And, of course, the Soviets went away. So they're on their own and they are determined to survive on their own. Ultimately, I think they would like to drive a wedge in the U.S.-South Korean alliance and to Finlandize South Korea, if that's possible, and to find a way to overshadow it and perhaps in some distant future to absorb it, maybe. But right now, I believe they are emerging from a period of bare survival and are looking now to push back against the U.S.-South Korean alliance. This is a complicated problem for the U.S.-South Korean alliance. They are the U.S.-Japanese alliance because, in part, of the China factor, and China is disquiet at the development of U.S. and allied ballistic missile defenses, which are interpreted in China as part of the architecture of containing China. And this is an anxiety in China that the North Koreans are good at playing on. So we seem to have reached a point where the build-up of missile defenses and the imposition of sanctions on North Korea may have reached the point of diminishing returns already. The North Koreans are increasingly very good at domestic production of components and materials for their missile and nuclear programs. They do import some things, but much less than many believe and seem to have no particular difficulty getting them. They are in a position to continue producing missiles. There are certain shortcomings in the program that can be identified, which they are probably working to overcome. But over the long term, these efforts in sanctions and missile defense, these defensive or coercive measures, at most I suspect they just have bought us a little bit of time. But time is not on our side in this dynamic. I think I'm happy at this point to turn it over. Perfect. Well, thank you very much, Josh. That's very interesting. And let's continue the theme on the military security side, but add the Japanese perspective, because it's not always identical to that here in Washington, and yet our interests are so closely intertwined. Akutsa. Thank you, Jane. First, I'd like to thank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for inviting me here to provide my own perspective. Given my position, I have to clarify at the very beginning that the views of my remarks are solely of my own and do not represent those of my institution, the National Institute for Different Studies of Japan and any other institutions in Japan, including the government of Japan. So, speak about the nuclear development, nuclear and missile development by North Korea from Japanese perspective. I very much share the assessments brought by Mr. Polak previously regarding the degree and depth and the pace of the Kim Jong-un regime's nuclear and missile development. And here I have three points. First, our assessment, my own assessment about North Korea under the Kim Jong-un regime and its particularly the beyond-gene policy. The second point is about our assessment of the current status of the regime's nuclear and missile development. And finally, the impact on and the implications for the Japanese security. The first, as you may already know, Kim Jong-un regime has already consolidated its own power base through a series of purchases. And although Pyeongjin has two phases, the development of the nuclear capabilities and the economy, it may be true that they are doing quite good on the economy side. But obviously, from our perspective, the pace of the development of the nuclear missile is much faster. And they have actually outpaced our initial assessments as Mr. Polak pointed out. On our side, it was, well, frankly speaking, underestimation and also other wishful thinking about their capabilities. But especially this year, I would call it a watershed year because of the series of tests. And before 2016, the three years was a sort of nuclear missile test range, time range. But this year, North Korea conducted two nuclear tests and series of short-range, intermediate-range missiles. Although there are a couple of types of long-range missiles that North Korea has not tested, so we should expect that North Korea is keen on testing those missiles, including the Muslim. They tested several times, but they have been successful only once this year. So they would continue to test those missiles until they are confident they have succeeded. And secondly, especially from our Japan's perspective, out of many types of missiles, the nodal missile has been the largest threat. It has been 23 years, actually, since North Korea had tested the nodal missile for the very first time. And since then, it tested only a couple of times. But this year, finally, in August, one nodal missile fell right within the Japanese exclusive economic zone. Although the missile was not nuclear-tipped, it reached Japanese exclusive economic zone, which really worsened our threat perception towards North Korea. And also in September, North Korea launched three missiles almost simultaneously within Japanese exclusive economic zone again. And they were not nuclear-tipped, but to quote Prime Minister Abe's statement, it was just a matter of luck, fortune, that there were no fishing boats or aircraft flying there. So whether nuclear-tipped or not, the fact that North Korea has the capability to launch a nodal missile and reach Japanese EEC really worsened our threat perception. So that's the very first impact and really worsened our threat perception. And of course, the nuclear development has already been a huge threat to Japan, but out of between nuclear development and missile development from Japan's perspective, the missile threat is larger. And already our preparation and defense capability has been updated over the several years since the North Korea accelerated its development. However, as I said, because they have outpaced our preparation, frankly speaking, we're in a very, very hard situation. Our preparations include the increase of joint exercises with the United States to further enhance extended deterrence. This year, Japan and the United States tried very hard to enhance Japan-U.S. ROK trilateral cooperation in the dimension of missile defense. In June, we had for the very first time a joint trilateral missile defense exercise. The exercise was about tracking, but it is encouraged to focus also on shooting. And in addition to the threat of not only missile, Japan has been very, very concerned about North Korea's SOBM capabilities as well. Their technological level may be still far behind. However, as again, Mr. Fulop pointed out, it's just a matter of time before they reach the more significant capability. And also, the technological level of the North Korean submarines may also be very far behind. However, again, it's just a matter of time before they reach a more critical level. In order for us to prepare for those SOBM or submarine threats, it is encouraged that not just between Japan and the U.S., Japan, the U.S. and South Korea jointly consider the possibility of what anti-submarine warfare resides. Japan is quite good at ASW, so I think it might help South Korea in the future. And for policy implications, in addition to these efforts, Japan decided to invest $1 billion for missile. And already Japan decided to have two more Egypt ships, and from next year, F-35s will be deployed to Misawa. The first four of them will be deployed next year, and over several years, the number will be increased. So we are striving to strengthen not just extended deterrence, but Japan's own defense capability. However, as again, Mr. Fulop pointed out, time may not be on our side, so that's the major problem we face. And not just Japan-U.S. and South Korea trilateral. Both Japan and South Korea have been striving to strengthen that bilateral tie among the Japan-U.S. ROK trilateral security cooperation. Unfortunately, only last month, the long overdue G-SOMIA general and security military information agreement was reached. I hope this argument continues to be maintained and utilized in the future. I'll stop here. That's terrific. Thank you very much. You really helped kind of round out the whole picture. So let's take a look at this whole picture in a little bit more detail. And I want to kind of start with the political, economic side of things. We had a private not-for-attribution session yesterday, building on some of the work of the presentations that were prepared here today with some people in Washington, including a couple of economists who focus quite heavily on North Korea's economy. And we do get a bit of a picture of this idea of Byung-jin being the simultaneous pursuit of economic development and nuclear development in North Korea, which the United States generally says can't work. You can't have both. There's some evidence that potentially it is working. And I want to ask a little bit about that because on the theory that only relatively small gains in productivity or efficiency are necessary to have a big impact in North Korea's economy because it has been so efficient, inefficient for so long. But I'm curious. I want to ask Ysuzaki-sensei a little bit more about because you've reviewed these 90 works attributed to Kim Jong-un. And even though he has not written much or said much about foreign policy, he has been more public and more open with his own thoughts than certainly his father, I think. What have you learned about what his priorities are? Or what does he express interest in or focus on in those works in terms of communicating with his people on the domestic side? Thank you for all great and important questions. Yes, I will answer very concisely. Analyzing North Korean documents like the Rodong-shim newspaper or Kim Jong-un's speech, especially speech and conversations. So other interests of Kim Jong-un that can be gained include, one is education. Kim Jong-un has mentioned education a lot of times, many times. And sports, actually he has met Dennis Rotman three times so far, and youth and child, children, and family, also important for Kim Jong-un. And architecture, most interesting for me was the global trends or internet. Actually, former Supreme Leader of North Korea Kim Jong-un has never mentioned about internet, but Kim Jong-un has studied in Switzerland as a high school student. So he knows global trends, he knows a little, and he is very interested in global trends and internet. Thank you very much. Thank you. It strikes me it's only a matter of time before he has a Twitter account. If you're going to join this international diplomatic language. Yeon-ho, on your discussion on cell phone use, and you alluded to it a little bit in terms of central government control or monitoring of that use, I have to believe there's a great amount of potential tension from the regime's view of this is a tool that helps the people be productive and keeps them somewhat happy and occupied and alleviates potential frustration with the lack of provision of central government provision of services and resources. But it opens up the door to all kinds of outside information and communication among people. How does the government control this use of information? And what's your estimation of managing that tension out of between, I mean you worked in for a while in the field of trying to communicate and deliver news and information to people in North Korea. How do you see that situation today? Yes, the cell phone, I mean many people ask this question, why would a country like a regime like North Korea, Kim Jong-un allow their people to use cell phones? It's just poison pill for themselves.  But when I dig into this matter, I found this is very good business opportunity for the government itself first of all because before they, I mean when they launched this 3G mobile telecommunication project in late 2008, they were preparing for the celebration of Kim Il-sung's 100th birthday, Kang Sung Dae-guk, they're supposed to build up Kang Sung Dae-guk by 2012. And this, you know, one of the most advanced communication technology available to their people, the regime could claim a victory of, you know, achieving Kang Sung Dae-guk. And they could attract huge amount of foreign investment from this Egyptian company. And now what we are seeing is this Egyptian company not able to get their profit out of the country. Very sad story for the company but from the regime's point of view it was very profitable project. And when it comes to the information circulation among the people, let's put it this way. The regime successfully secured another layer of surveillance tool. You know, the cell phone conversation I was told by former secret service policemen, they cannot monitor, do the surveillance real time for the, you know, 3 million people. North Korean people, they believe, whether it is technically feasible or not, they believe the regime has capability of doing complete surveillance. So self-censorship has been practiced from their early ages. So they would never dare to speak any politically sensitive things on their cell phones. And cell phone conversations, again, it cannot be monitored all, you know, real time, all the conversation. But the voice conversations are transcribed real, I don't know, it is real time, but it's stored for at least 3 years for any potential investigation. That's what I was told by this former policeman. And the text message, you can do real time monitoring. There's a special centers for doing that. And as I said, data transfer has been blocked. But it has been cat and mouse game. North Korean people, they are very smart enough to evade that kind of block. If you are powerful enough or rich enough, you can just bribe the policeman in the street or the government branch office where you have to submit your cell phone and get it re-registered and disabled the Bluetooth function, for example. So there are a lot of leeways, but North Korean government, they found that, you know, loopholes and tried to close. So again, it has been cat and mouse game. Thank you. And another thing we talked about a little bit yesterday, given this dynamic, some of the people engaging in this private market activity are earning more money than they have in the past. And if the efficiencies are being gained on that side of the economy in North Korea, to some extent it's at the expense of state-owned firms. You know, for example, if they're providing power, they're not paying. People who use state power are not paying for power. They're selling coal to the state to provide power. They're not paying for that. But others in China or elsewhere might be willing to pay for those things. So in some ways there's a wealth gap developing between those engaged in the private sector, those not, which, you know, can feed into tension within society or feed into the corruption side, essentially a way to extract those gains back into the public sector, those with power. Do you hear reports in these interviews of elements of tension or in that context? Or I'm also kind of curious about the potential impact of sanctions. Are sanctions an issue that affect the common people or the people who are trying to engage in these types of things? Or is that really not necessarily in there affecting them? Tensions. I would say just one part of the tensions, if there is any. I mean, when you're talking about human rights abuses in North Korea, one of the aspects is freedom of travel. But when I interviewed these former traders, they were talking about, you know, moving around the country. And so I asked her, you know, where is the lack of freedom of travel? And she said, oh, you have freedom of travel when you have enough money to bribe or enough number of cigarettes to give to the checkpoint guards. So in a way, I think there's a tension between those who are rich enough or who are actively engaged in market activities and master wealth, and those who are still suffering from economic hardships. So that's one aspect of the big gap between the people in North Korea and tension, I would say. And the sanctions, the impact of sanctions? That's something that's shown up in some of your research? I'm not an economist, but what I have heard or read is there's no significant price hikes in the informal markets so far. No big turbulence in exchange markets. And North Korean cold expert to China has increased actually in recent months. And some people suspect that might be related to the South Korea and the U.S. decision to deploy that in South Korea. So that's, and China is not, you know, really fully cooperating on this U.N. sanctions on North Korea. What I read about the economic sufferings on North Korean side is related to natural disaster like flood in the border area, but not exactly related to sanctions. And one last point I want to make is when it comes to cold expert restriction, obviously it will have impact on North Korea's revenue that they can get from the cold expert. But in response to that, they may be thinking of redirecting their cold production to their domestic use like electricity production. So in a way that sanctions measures helped North Korea to think about their domestic economy, how to manage and run their economy in a reasonable way, I guess. And I think the net effect of cold expert restriction on the North Korean economy, I think we need to wait and see and evaluate at least in several months. Thank you. Thank you. Josh, I wanted to turn to you a little bit on your discussion and draw you out a little bit more on the proliferation side of things. And to what extent? Obviously it's been a long time concern, particularly the United States. And we've had experiences in the past with sales of missiles, missile parts, even leakage of nuclear technology, or at least suspicion of that. Is that something you're seeing as prevalent, as frequent, worse, not as bad these days? Or what are some of your thoughts on that? Well, if you look at the broad sweep of North Korean military exports going back to the 1970s, overwhelmingly it's been conventional arms. They have emerged as a significant exporter to the Middle East and Africa, also Cuba. How significant is hard to say. It's not as if they're publishing statistics. There was a change in the 1980s when they began exporting ballistic missiles, first to Iran and then to others, and then began helping other customers, in some cases, set up their own missile production lines. Nowadays, sometimes when North Korean shipments are intercepted, which does happen occasionally, sometimes they are ballistic missile related. For example, in the reports of the UN panel of experts, there's been some discussion of materials going to Syria that appear designed to help the Syrians replenish their missile force, as they have been using ballistic missiles in the Civil War to attack their own cities at different points. So this is not a complete missile system or even finished components. It's just materials for Syrian industry to make these missiles. By and large, it is conventionally related exports still that seem to be the most prominent. The South Korean government, especially since the 4th nuclear test in January, has invested a lot of diplomatic effort in trying to persuade some of North Korea's customers to stop buying its military services, its military products. For example, training of police and military forces in places like Uganda. So President Park and others have gone to countries like Iran, Uganda, and others trying to exert some pressure, dangling trade deals, almost behaving the way that the Chinese have toward Taiwan in the past, saying it's us or them with other countries, saying, you know, pick the China you would like to have relations with. Well, the South Koreans are sort of saying, I'm inferring, pick the Korea you would like to have trade relations with. And clearly it's much more advantageous to trade with South Korea for most countries. What I have not seen is anything that I would characterize as nuclear related. There were a few incidents in the past. There were shipments of uranium hexafluoride that reached Libya. There were some sort of murky exchanges of technology with Pakistan that we still don't fully understand. And there was the reactor supplied to the Syrians, which appears to have been the most serious of these efforts. In all of these cases, there was a long standing relationship with the partner on ballistic missiles and in some cases on conventional arms as well. Perhaps all of those cases, it's not entirely clear. So I tend to suspect that a certain comfort level, a certain trust level is necessary before such a transaction can be pursued. Of course, at the time of the Syria transaction, the North Korean reactor program was dormant. So the personnel to build the reactor and help get it operational may have had some time on their hands. So that's no longer the case. So perhaps we don't have to worry about that again. But we do have to be concerned, I think, about the North Korean centrifuge program. There is always a possibility that they could offer to export the technology.  That goes double for their light-water reactor technology. I don't know who would be crazy enough to buy a North Korean light-water reactor when you can buy a South Korean light-water reactor that is actually going to work and be safe. But if the North Koreans should succeed in getting their first light-water reactor operational, and it's been under construction for many years now, but if they should succeed at getting it working, it's conceivable they might try to market it. If nothing else, it provides a rationale for having an enrichment plan. That's how they've justified their enrichment plan at Yongbyon. And maybe they would market those as a package to countries in Africa and the Middle East. Again, I think you'd have to be incredibly foolish to entertain such an offer. But there are countries that have continued to deal with North Koreans on arms, on ballistic missiles. Of course, Cuba and Syria are one thing. The question is, of course, other countries. And that's a big question mark right now. The best results that the world, the international community, has gotten, I think really have depended on leaning on the potential buyers. And that is probably where efforts will have to be again in the future because the North Koreans are not receptive to pressure on these issues. And so I think we're going to have to take a look around the world and say, who is buying and where do we have levers and where can we encourage them to stay away? Countries that have had past relationships like, say, Egypt, I think are worthy of a second look. No, that's a good point. And it's both positive and negative in terms of negative incentives, not to deal with North Korea, but also offering something else, some alternatives. And we've seen some of that in Myanmar and some other places. So that's a good point to keep in mind. I'm going to ask one last short question, and then I want to open it up to the audience if you have questions. Akuta-sensei, you alluded to this a little bit, and I just wanted to ask a more pointed question. You kind of highlighted the Nodong threat. You highlighted the submarine context as areas to keep an eye on. Japan, as we know, is dealing with a wide range of security challenges. They have PKO forces in South Sudan and giving them new powers to aid other forces, so they're training for that. There was just an exercise yesterday, I think, in Japan beginning to look at overseas rescue of Japanese nationals as another new capability that they're looking at under pressure constantly in the East China Sea around the Senkaku's from China and, of course, North Korea. But is there any one of these things in particular that you think Japan is keeping an eye on that if North Korea makes particular progress on a particular type of system or weapon capability that will really change Japan's calculation and say, we need to invest even more on the North Korea side of things? Well, I think North Korea's nuclear and missile capability has crossed way beyond Japan's red lines. So I would say it does really make no, it does really make a difference. It's already there? Yeah, it's, you know, so... And we have seen pretty significant increases in missile defense investments? Yeah. So the kind of policy Japan is looking for in terms of missile defense is not just specific to Nodon. You know, it's looking for the future potentials as well. So maybe one of the few changes Japan would have to consider would be the policy shift rather than enhancing capabilities. For example, in terms of missile defense, our system is basically the mid-course, but we might think of, you know, look at it from a different perspective.  And proactive. Yes. So we're looking for, you know, layered system as well as speeding up the capability to detect, you know. Okay. Thank you very much. So we will turn to the audience. I will turn here first. I think we have microphones that will come because we'll need them for the video audio to be able to hear them. So we have somebody up front here. They're getting the microphones together. Just let us know who you are, where you're from, and... Yeah, but I think for the video camera we need a mic. Here, I'll kind of repeat the question just so the audience can hear it. But basically, we're looking for an evaluation of North Korean stability, kind of political, economic, now in this fifth anniversary year after Kim Jong-il's death. We certainly, I was in the Defense Department at the time when Kim Jong-il died, and we were all kind of on guard, waiting, you know. Not sure is this going to be, because there was so much unknown about the succession. And yet, here we are. Certainly we've learned a little bit about it today, but does anyone have any, would like to give their quick... As I mentioned, actually, North Korea is much more blackboard than Kim Jong-il era. But I think, I believe we should never forget the 20 or 25 years ago, at that time, North Korea's colors, Japan was South Korea in the United States. They only discussed about only on hard landing or soft landing of North Korea. We didn't discuss about the third way that is succession to Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-il's son. I'm sorry, I'd like to read very shortly. The survival of the regime is a premise of all North Korean policies. And it is quite easy. It is quite simple to emphasize North Korea's instability for us. But the reason must be eliminated. For researchers, for us, it is easy to insist that North Korea may collapse, is close to demise, is stable from the short to mid term, but unstable in the long run. It's very easy. But to declare that North Korea will not collapse would require great courage for us. But I think only from domestic factors, very strong regime. Yes. I'd like to add to that. I certainly endorse that basic perspective. It is sometimes said that crises always take longer to occur than you expect, but then unfold much more rapidly than you could have imagined when they do. And I imagine that that's how it will be. We can all envision this, but who knows when it will happen? In the short run, I can say Kim Jong-un appears to have consolidated his power. This year, one of the reasons for nuclear and missile and space activity this year was to glorify the regime in advance of the Seventh Party Congress, which reorganized the leadership substantially, restructured a number of things, basically pushed men in uniform to the bottom of the power lineup. I think that Kim Jong-un has successfully curbed any potential threats to his power from the military by purging and rotating the senior leadership repeatedly, and now by downgrading the standing of senior military men within the power structures of the Korean Workers Party. Finally, the session of the Supreme People's Assembly, which is the legislature, came about a month after the Seventh Party Congress, I believe, was back in May. They rewrote the Constitution, changed how the state is organized, and the state is subordinate to the party, of course, and elevated Kim Jong-un with a new title, Chairman Mao. I think it's pretty clear now that his power is uncontested, judging by the external signals, at least. I don't know what signals we would want to watch, but one sleeper issue, something to think about for the long term, is the growth of market activity. How much longer, really, can the party maintain its grip on the hearts and minds of North Koreans under these conditions? They don't feed North Koreans. North Koreans feed themselves, and that, over time, I have to believe, will change mentalities, change mindsets, change the sense of what they owe, if anything, to the party. We've had a generation now that has grown up under these conditions, bound to be these long-term shifts in mentality. I think, of course, that the North Korean leadership is aware of this, but that is probably, now that they've tamed the military, that is probably where the real long-term danger to them lies. I'm not saying the military couldn't come back as a problem someday, but the youth, as Dr. Isosaki was saying, the youth is something they're very aware of and probably right to think about the mindset of the youth. Interesting, and this did, oh, please. Let me follow up on Josh's point. When it comes to Pyongjin, yes, not only the nuclear side, but the economic side, we're seeing some dramatic increase in the efficiency in the market activities. So in the short term, Kim Jong-un seems to be doing a very good job on his Pyongjin, but if we look a little bit deeper, what we're hearing is booming trading activities, not supported by strong manufacturing base. So I'm not sure how long it can last without any solid manufacturing bases, possibly supported by foreign investment. And on the point of crisis, you never know when it comes. I talked to defectors and asked them, you made a lot of money in North Korea by doing trade business, and don't you think that's part of Kim Jong-un's performance? I mean, your cell phone is not what you provided. It's the government service. Their response was, you're joking. Kim Jong-un is kind of, and the regime is kind of cumbersome existence. I mean, without them, I would have made more money, but they're just asking for taxes for their trading and business in the informal market or more and more labor mobilization. So there is a strong hatred among the people based on very practical reason and people who are enjoying foreign media. Even though Kim Jong-un, he himself ordered his special units to specifically focus on this foreign media issue and crack down on the people who doesn't follow the government's direction, people still risk their lives for watching South Korean drama. Can you imagine that? You're risking in this country your life for watching House of Cards. So I think there is a very strong resistance and hatred toward the regime which may or may not be sparked by any significant or history-changing events. We never know, but I think there is elements of some instability on the ground. Thank you. Professor Noon, you said Bahami. Basically the question will be regarding the diplomatic aspect to work with the DPRK. As you know, the most important thing in the DPRK relationship is the acceptance. So when you talk about the DPRK, consciously we have to accept that the president Kim Il-sung is eternal. That's something that the people of North Korea believe in and that Kim Jong-il is also an eternal head of the parliament of North Korea. The fact that the Juche calendar is their calendar has to be respected and the Cholima's ideology also has to be accepted by the other people. So I was thinking about using sports, for example, for peace. When North Korea qualified to the 1966 World Cup in England, there were no representation of North Korea in the UK and the FIFA had to find a way to get the team to play the soccer World Cup and from that point the relationship has evolved between the UK and North Korea. There is the UK Embassy in Pyongyang and I think today probably since Kim Jong-un is a great fan of basketball, why not inviting him to an NBA game here in the States to start conversations. Sports can help sometimes. Thank you. In many ways that's one of the issues that we're going to talk about in our second session, which is what are the options for both on the far ends of the spectrum of preemptive military strikes and opening up dialogue and engagement and other types of interaction. There's all kinds of options there. I'll let our panel think about if they want to respond specifically to that but let's take another question as well. Thank you very much. I'd like to make a very... What is the likelihood of accidental kind of speech to any part of Japan, not the sea area but where any land part? The threats of nuclear development. I'd like to know why. Okay, thank you very much. So let's field these quickly if we can. If anyone wants to comment on the kind of sports diplomacy aspect, we can look at it. I'd be kind of curious how that might be received in North Korea. We could talk about the strategy from an alliance point of view in the next session but would that have some kind of potential impact or what kind of impact might that have domestically in North Korea? And then what is the kind of the nuclear threat or the more tangible nuclear use potential vis-a-vis Japan in that regard? Who would like to start? The North Koreans have shown their openness I think to both sports and cultural diplomacy. Cultural diplomacy with the United States probably going back to the New York Philharmonic's performance in Pyongyang in 2008 but also the NBA player Dennis Rodman visits. Getting anyone from North Korea to come here I think will be harder. They would like to receive American dignitaries there. They go pretty far out of their way to attract senior American officials by detaining American citizens and saying, come and get them, they're available if you want them. Clearly there are memories of ping-pong diplomacy between China and the United States in early 1971 before Henry Kissinger's two visits that led to President Nixon's visit the next year and I think the North Koreans are very aware of that and they're open to that but they really would like us to go there. As they did with South Korean leaders both high-level summits were in Pyongyang. On the question of the nuclear and missile threat to Japan I would look at it fundamentally in the context of a war scenario. If a war broke out on the Korean Peninsula Japan would be supporting American forces, forces based in Japan, forces arriving from the United States proper. So just as ports and airfields in South Korea are targets ports and airfields in Japan are targets. Two points. One is on the question of the North Korean sports diplomacy. Already in Olympics North Korean players played quite good, judo, wrestling and also soccer. For soccer as you know in Japan there's a North Korean community there. Some of the young and good soccer players joined the Olympics. So yes there's a cultural exchange there. But I'm not sure if that would be any major breakthrough or spill over into a more official diplomatic occasion. So we're careful about discussing the sport diplomacy and more significant dimension. And on the question of North Korea's nuclear missile threat on Japan Yes I said and also our government used the words like the North Korean threat is serious and imminent. That's because as I already said whether nuclear or not the missile fell within the EEC and it was just a matter of luck that there were no fishing boats or aircraft. If there were any Japanese casualty that would put Japanese government really in a hard situation. So that's usually meant by saying imminent. Yes that's the nature of the threat that Japan is. That's exactly I would say a struggling with. Thank you very much. Well obviously we're just really beginning to scratch the surface here on today's North Korea. But I think we've managed to at least paint a bit of a picture that really sets us up for the second session to think about the regional dynamics and then policy options and pros and cons for the alliance. So we're going to take a 15 minute break. I ask you we have refreshments outside in the back and come back at four o'clock. We've got Katsu Furukawa from the U.N. Panel of Experts, Victor Chas, Sue Terry, Evan Maderos to talk about these things. And then we'll have our reception at the end of that session downstairs. So please join me in thanking our panel for this first session. And we will start again at four o'clock. Thank you.


Johnson goes on the outside down the left, Adam Smith struggling to get with him. Sinclair's in the middle here, beats him, but doesn't beat him. For Scott Sinclair, breaks away, and he sees Perkevich. Breaks for Scott Sinclair. He sees a pass to Daniel Johnson, stealing him behind in the back post. The road this season, and they've done to Bournemouth what they did to Redding a few weeks ago. They're three-nil up.  Stanislaus goes over there, over for Junior Stanislaus to eventually get the set pieces back to the level. But we know they can beat, and with 20 minutes left, the Cherries' lead to the lifeline. Junior Stanislaus gives it to them. Antony, left-hand side, tries to go past Brown, who blocks his pass. Jaten Antony pulls it back to him.


So first I'd like to thank the organizers of the Congress for allowing me to come and speak to you today in Dr. Insel's absence. He was scheduled to be here, but had to attend a meeting on the Brain Initiative in Minneapolis. So because I oversee a technology portfolio at NIMH and I am involved at some level in the Brain Initiative, I was selected to come in his absence. As I'm sure most of you know, on April 2nd, President Obama made a big announcement in the White House about the Brain Initiative. He did this in front of 200 scientists and with Dr. Collins at his side and we at NIH were very excited to hear about his dedication and commitment to the work that we do at the NIH and we were all very interested to know how this was going to be executed and unlike Clay's talk where he very clearly defined what the goals of Minescope is and how the Institute is going to approach this initiative, we're in quite a bit of a different situation at NIH and I will be happy to answer as many questions as I can. My talk is very short. Tom usually leaves a lot of time for questions. Hopefully I'll be able to address those for you. But the bottom line is we all know that brain disorders affect all of us. There are many brain-based disorders that the work of NIH is dedicated to understanding and the Brain Initiative is an attempt to understand better how the brain works and what its role is in these disorders. So we've listed a number of different diseases here that are represented by many of the institutes at NIH. In general we have something called the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research and that represents 16 institutes at NIH that have an interest and a focus on neuroscience research. So the need is great to understand how the brain works. Brain disorders affect over a hundred million Americans alone and rates are increasing not only in America, the United States, but also across the world in autism, Alzheimer's disease and in our soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder and TBI. And with those increases in these disorders, obviously there's an increase in the cost to society. $200 billion alone are spent on treatment and care of folks with dementia. As you see on the graph here, brain disorders account for the largest amount of dysfunction and cost in society. Okay, so the president's goal of understanding the dynamic nature of the brain is really quite lofty and quite unreasonable to expect that of this year commitment of 40 million dollars is actually going to be able to address that. But what we like to think of is he's he's dedicated to the research and hopefully with some dedicated funding towards developing techniques and tools that will study the brain in a focused way. We may be able to continue this program and find some some great advances. So at the NIH we support research at a number of different scales. Neuroscientists are dedicated to understanding in a number of model systems as well as research focused on the humans. And what we what we know is that we were reasonably good at measuring activity through imaging technologies that we correlate with certain behaviors or activity. And we know a lot about the molecular basis of how neurons communicate with each other. But what we don't know is sort of what comes in between. And we're hoping that this brain initiative in the first instance anyway will focus on developing technologies that will help bridge that gap. So one of the questions is what scale should we focus our efforts at? What model system should we dedicate our resources to? And asking a group as large as the folks at NIH to come up with that decision is really quite difficult. So Dr. Collins engaged the advice of an advisory committee. Not updated slides. So what what we have represented here are a number of projects that we funded at the NIH where folks are looking at different different scales and different models. This is just an example of work of Thomas Sudhoff at Stanford. We've shown some work by Carol Svoboda at Janelia Farms looking at imaging of synaptic activity. And work by Jeff Lickman and Josh Sains at Harvard created this technology called BrainBow. BrainBow allows you to label hundreds of different cells with varying intensities of fluorescence. And I think there's a couple of slides shown here how you can distinguish these different cells in the hippocampus here shown in layer 5 cortex. And this is just you know one example of technology development that has advanced neuro anatomical tracing and studies of brain function in animal models. This was developed for the mouse, but it's also used in Drosophila and C. Elegant. So one of the technologies that I'm particularly excited about is this recent development of clarity. Probably most of you have heard about it, but if not I can briefly describe it. Carl Dysaroth applied to one of our special programs at NIH called the Transformative R01. And this is an unusual program that allows people to submit proposals for really big projects, large amounts of money that they're not constrained by the usual budget caps. And Carl came to me a couple years ago at the Neuroscience meeting and said, you know, I have this new thing I'm really excited about. What do you think? And I said, go for it. Apply for it. Ask for what you need. And he did. And he came in with a lot of preliminary data. It was reviewed in an unusual review process with these large scale initiatives. Don't go through the standard study section process. And after much discussion, we were able to get support for this project. And very quickly, Carl turned around and published paper in, I believe, April of this year in nature. And this technology allows a different type of neuroanatomy. He can clear an entire brain. The lipids are basically removed from the brain and replaced by a hydrogel. And this allows you to stain the tissue multiple times. He can stain for a variety of different antibodies, take them out, do another series. And this is shown in the mouse brain, but it's also applicable to any other organism. In fact, the technique could be applied to any different organ in the body as well. We're particularly interested in the brain, of course. And we have a video just showing a three dimensional view through a mouse brain that's stained for thigh one. And this is going to take you through at a low resolution and then zoom in higher where you can see full projections throughout the entire brain. So this is the type of technology that had it come, you know, a year after the brain initiative was announced, we'd say success. This is really fantastic. So the bar is high. We need we need more technologies like this. And some other technology that's been supported at the Institute also from Stanford. Believe me, we also fund people all over. These examples have just coincidentally come from there. Mark Schnitzer has developed a miniature microscope that he can put on a behaving mouse and monitor neuronal activity using calcium imaging. And I can show you another video. So you can see that the cells on the right here are lighting up as the animal traverses this maze. And this technology is something that's been supported with regular research funding as well as small business funding. The NIH has a small business innovation program and Dr. Schnitzer has received funding in both ways. I'm going to skip the slide, have a couple more videos. The work on the right is work from Van Bedeen and his colleagues. And this is part of the Human Connectome Project, which was also funded by the Blueprint for Neuroscience. This is another large scale activity that Blueprint sponsored. And they work separately in Boston, but the main component of the Human Connectome Project has been funded at Wash U and University of Minnesota. And those data are made available, the first release was early this spring. The Human Connectome Project has imaging data from twins in the St. Louis area, and they'll be looking at these subjects over time. And as the data come in, they make them available. So it's a great resource. So again, just a few examples, but we think the science is ready. There's lots of progress made in tools and technologies, but we need to speed up the process. We need to facilitate the development of the tools for the wider neuroscience community to use. And that's what we think the first phase of the brain initiative is going to focus on. So despite these advances, we're still limited in our ability to understand how the brain works, how it encodes, stores and retrieves information, and new levels of understanding will be achieved through sophisticated tools and technologies capable of assessing how the parts of the brain work together to generate patterns of activity and how these patterns of activity are translated into behaviors and how dysfunction of these brain circuits are involved in disorders. So the goals of the brain initiative are to again accelerate the development of these technologies, construct a dynamic picture of brain function and how it integrates neuronal and circuit activity over time and space, and to build on a growing scientific foundation, including neuroscience, genetics, physics, engineering, et cetera, to catalyze interdisciplinary effort of unprecedented scope. How are we going to achieve the goal or the vision of the president? He said at his announcement, he said, as humans, we can identify galaxies light years away. We can study particles smaller than an atom, but we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears. But today scientists possess the capability to study individual neurons and figure out the main functions of certain areas of the brain. So there's this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked and the brain initiative will change that by giving scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action and better understand how we think and how we learn and how we remember. And that knowledge could be, will be transformative. So how will it work? That's the big question. As I mentioned, they put together, they put together an advisory committee that's going to help summarize the state of the art, help make suggestions for where the dollar should be focused in the coming years. And the way that committee is working is they've held a series of workshops where they invite specialists in a number of different fields. These are two-day workshops in the, so first let me just call out the folks that are on the advisory group. The co-chairs are Cory Bargman and Bill Newsom and then the regular members are David Anderson, Emery Brown, Carl Diceroth, John Donahue, Peter McLeish, Eve Marder, Richard Norman, Josh Sains, Marc Schnitzer, Terry Sinowski, David Tank, Roger Chen, and Camille Ugrabel. So in these workshops, they invite about 10 to 15 specialists that come in and give 15-minute talks. They're asked to give their view of what's most needed in their area of research and how these limited dollars could be best spent to achieve the goals of the Brain Initiative. After they each present, there's an afternoon of discussion where they go back and forth with those invited speakers. And then the following day, the committee meets alone and discusses in greater depth and detail what was presented the day before. At the end of the four workshops, they're supposed to come back to the director with a set of recommendations and a summary of these meetings. And at that point, the folks, myself and several others at the institutes, will be tasked with putting together RFAs to get these initiatives out on the street. This slide shows a list of the dollars that are potentially going to be invested in the Brain Initiative. I can only speak for NIH. We can't really speak for the other agencies how much money they're going to be put in or whether this money is additional money or the same dollars that they're directing towards neuroscience research. Anyway, for FY14, NIH is dedicated to spending $40 million on this initiative. And we're often meeting in collaboration with all of these other agencies and trying to figure out how we can make the best progress by combining our efforts. So I do apologize. This is an older set of slides and I've already said those things. So the four workshops that I mentioned started in May. The first was held in San Francisco and focused on molecular approaches. The one in June was on large-scale recording technologies. The July one was computation theory and big data. And the one that's being held today and tomorrow is at the University of Minnesota on human brain measures and measurements and analysis. And so the folks who are invited to give their input to these meetings are listed in the next series of slides. The first one, genetic access to neurons. We heard from Nat Hines, Jerry Rubin, Hong Kui, and Feng Zhang. Monitoring circuits. Lauren Luger from Janelia at Sushi Miyake and Alice Ting. Tracing circuits. We heard from Clay. We heard from Ed Calloway and Lee Kuan Lu and Carl Diceroth. And I don't know how to say his first name. It's a cough. Sorry. In June, the large-scale recording technologies included, I won't read all the names. You can see them all up there. But these folks all have great advice and great goals for how we should spend the money. And the computation theory and big data group is listed here. And then I don't have today's because they just posted the agenda last week. And I have the old slides. So there's also a presidential commission for the study of bioethical issues surrounding the Brain Initiative, making sure that the work that we go ahead and fund is done in a thoughtful and ethical way. I was able to sit in on one of these discussions, well, through a webinar last week. And it was really a very interesting and thoughtful group of people contributing. And this is a quote that Tom likes to end with. The new directions in science are launched by new tools much more often than by new concepts. The effect of a concept-driven revolution is to explain old things in new ways. The effect of a tool-driven revolution is to discover new things that have yet to be explained. So I'm happy to take any questions and try to clarify any misconceptions about the Brain Initiative if anyone has them. Could you elaborate on discussions that may have been had on the data sharing model? So I can tell you in terms of the data sharing that we, my office, where I work and Dr. Insel and the Institute is very, very committed to data sharing. We've been involved in a number of discussions across the Institute's how we can better facilitate that. So one way we've been putting in more terms and conditions and awards that people are expected to share their data. There's been always a $500,000 any grant over 500 you have to. But we're now, especially with technologies and tool development, making that a standard exception. So the initiatives will be hopefully out shortly after neuroscience. As you see, it was FY14 dollars. So they're going to be happening really quickly. So people should be paying attention. So Michelle, what if you're someone who's not, let's say an engineer, you're more of a basic neuroscientist, but applying some of these new tools to, let's say, new model systems or addressing new questions? Is that something that? So from my perspective in general and work that we support, we're constantly trying to encourage these collaborations from neuroscientists with engineers, biostatisticians, neuroinformaticists, getting people to look at a question from different angles. We think that it's more valuable if you have that input. Okay. Thank you. So there was a recent meeting in Washington concerning the completion of the National Centers for Biomedical Computing at the National Centers of Biomedical Computing, the NCBCs. Obviously that is very relevant to the neuroinformatics community as a whole. And that program is now kind of coming to an end. Now, given that there are all these new exciting developments going on at NIH, could you comment on what we can expect to see in terms of the programs that will replace the NCBCs? And specifically, are they going to be kind of smaller scale so that they can affect researchers at a slightly lower level than big centers, which are pretty big? So it's hard to say because we have not received the recommendation from the advisory group yet. I can see that some of those programs that have been very valuable, this might be kind of a way to keep them going. But until we get the recommendations, and frankly, the director of NIH is going to have a lot of say in which direction we go. There is, as I'm sure you know, a large program now from the Common Fund, the Big Data to Knowledge Program, where I think a lot of the issues related to the Brain Initiative can be addressed. And in fact, I had another slide that there's an RFI, a request for information. I think the deadline is September 5th. So if you have some input to that, it would be great to go and put that in. Hi, Gordon Shepherd. I think, as you know, there are many in the field who are concerned about the possible effect on normal R01 funding. Absolutely. So what I can say is only relevant to fiscal year 14, these 40 million dollars are aside from our regular fiscal year 14 budget, which we still don't have. So this part of it will be sort of organized and managed through the blueprint. And these are new dollars. What happens in the coming fiscal years, we don't know. But you know, what I say is I think that our focus should continue to fund innovative research that's going to help us understand the brain. So I think the key question is, will this lower the funding line? No. Now, the new budget may lower the funding line. Oh, yes. But this will not. One last quick question. As neuroscientists, what can we do to help you give us Brain Initiative money? I didn't hear it. Could you repeat it? Yes. My question is, as neuroscientists, how can we help you better provide to us Brain Initiative money? Absolutely. So there is a NIH brain webpage. Type in NIH brain. There is a place to give your feedback and comments. And really, we're listening. We're trying to spend the money in the most useful, efficient, helpful way. So nothing's been written yet. The initiatives are in a lot of people's heads. We're listening, and we really do want your input.