I watched the vast majority of this hearing (missed a little bit of Thae's opening statement, and the opening remarks from the chairmen and ranking members), and there were some great takeaways. The most complete summary I've seen was from Joshua Stanton (who also talked about the CSIS briefing
. It's a good summary if you don't feel like going through the entire testimony.
Some points I thought stood out:
-He reaffirms something I've said before: the DPRK wants nukes not primarily for deterrent against external attack from the US, but as leverage in their efforts to reunify the peninsula (at 1h32m into the Congressional testimony, he mistakes a question and goes into this in detail, citing that the DPRK's example for this is what happened to South Vietnam, in that once they can chase the US off the peninsula, the next target will be various businesses).
-He notes that a major legitimacy gap for KJU is in fact he has no relation w/Kim il-Sung. KIS was never even aware KJU's existence (KJU's mother was appropriated from another man, and thus was never welcomed into the official family). We can also infer that he never knew about the little-discussed KJ Chol, Un's older brother. From a domestic regime legitimacy standpoint, this has major implications.
-Side Note: this is also the kind of high level palace gossip that we have little information on, with the noted exception of Kenji Fujimoto and a few other sources.
-I thought his comments on subversive media needs to be made for North Koreans, not just South Korean media sent over, to be a really good one.
-on the subject of the "soft power" approach: I think a lot of the West (not saying you specifically, ngati) are taking the idea that this is a bloodless path forward, ignoring that the Norks would view this just as much as an attack on the legitimacy of the regime as anything else (they've threatened to use artillery against balloon launching points in the ROK, and attacked Sony Studios for making the movie The Interview). If we want to do this, we need to be willing to understand and not be surprised when the Norks respond with force. I don't think a lot of ppl pushing that have made that connection yet (eg this headline).
-militarily, KPA commanders apparently have weapons release authority to counterattack any US/ROK strikes.
-the regime views its primary threat as internal, not external
-he called for one meeting with KJU to make clear that the US would not tolerate the current DPRK path and and would destroy him if he continued on it. He caveated that with the statement that there is nothing that we could offer him that would convince him to give up his nukes or weapon programs.
-sanctions should be reinforced and kept up; it's too early to know their effectiveness yet.
