Episode 13. US Military, Diplomatic Engagement With South Korea

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy (00:00): Our podcast brings together senior US diplomats and senior US military leaders in conversations about their partnerships in tackling some of our toughest national security challenges. I am Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, the producer and host of the series. Today, our focus will be on US interests in South Korea. Our guests are General Skip Sharp and Ambassador Kathleen Stephens. Ambassador Stevens was the US Ambassador to South Korea from 2008 to 2011. Her knowledge of the country is deep. She first went there as a Peace Corps volunteer in the mid seventies, and then returned twice in the eighties in diplomatic postings. Ambassador Stevens also served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Aecretary of Atate for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and was involved in the Six Party Talk efforts with North Korea. She is the President and CEO of the Korean Economic Institute of America. General Sharp commanded the United Nations Command Republic of Korea United States Combined Forces Command and United States Forces Korea from 2008 to 2011. He too had been assigned to South Korea, previously. General Sharp is consulting and is on the board of directors of several US and Korean companies, as well as the Korea Society. So let us start. Ambassador Stevens, General Sharp, you served together in South Korea, as I noted, from 2008 to 2011. During this period, tensions were very high between North and South Korea and the United States relocated and consolidated its troops in the country. General Sharp, can you describe the US military posture in South Korea and what its mission was?

Gen. Sharp (01:56): Our mission was and is to help defend the Republic of Korea and to try to deter North Korea from moving forward. So we have a combined command. What that means is that both the United States and the Republic of Korea are in one headquarters with one commander as a combined forces command. If we were to go to war, that command would be the command that would be in charge during a war time. And it, again, it is us and Republic of Korea sitting side by side in a command center, which is very different than many, many other places around the world. In most places we have a supportive relationship, but in Korea, it is truly combined to help deter North Korea and to be prepared to defend if North Korea decides to attack.

Amb. McCarthy (02:39): And what is the current level of our troops?

Gen. Sharp (02:41): We currently have 28,500 troops in Korea. The great majority of them are Army troops, about 17-18,000 army troops, about 7,000 Air Force, and then a small number of Marines and Navy. The majority of our Marines and Navy that would come to help protect Korea are stationed in Japan.

Amb. McCarthy (02:59): Ambassador Stevens, we have a very large embassy in Seoul. The team you lead as Ambassador represented many, many government agencies. What were your top priorities on the defense and security side? And how did you work with General Sharp?

Amb. Stephens (03:12): First of all, thanks to you so much for bringing us back together with General Sharp. We served together a full three years and really it was a highlight of my career, and I hope of his.

Gen. Sharp (03:22): Absolutely.

Amb. Stephens (03:22): When I arrived in Korea, when we both arrived in Korea in 2008, of course, the US South Korea relationship was one that had changed a great deal over the decades. One that was really obviously forged in the crucible of war and sacrifice through the Korean war and a continuing US military presence since that time, staying on after the Korean war ended with an armistice in 1953. So we had this alliance relationship and troops on the ground. Well, that's changed over the years, but when Skip and I arrived, South Korea was a different place obviously than it was even 10 or 20 years earlier when we had served there. It was one of the top, 12th largest economy in the world. We were hit with a financial crisis. I arrived in Korea as Ambassador the day that Lehman Brothers collapsed. So there was a sense of where is that taking us? We had a free trade agreement, which both countries had agreed to under previous administrations, but had not yet been ratified. It was the biggest free trade agreement the United States had reached since NAFTA, the biggest ever for Korea. And we had hundreds of thousands, literally, of American citizens and Korean Americans coming back and forth, and businesses. So it was a much broader and deeper relationship, you know, in 2008 than it was in earlier years. So the priority of the Embassy was obviously to look after a lot of different things, the economic relationship, the commercial relationship, to work with South Korea as a very robust partner in all kinds of global efforts. They had troops in Iraq at the time, they were the third largest contributor after the US and Britain. So security issues like that. But certainly at the center of the alliance remained keeping South Korea safe, and working together to do that. What the Embassy did with US Forces Korea is work with the civilian leadership as well as the military leadership on the Korean side to help adapt the alliance, both to changes in South Korea's capabilit, so there was a big discussion when we got there, which continued after we left about what the command relationships should be. Certainly I had to understand that and be involved in that, but it was a military matter, huge political and obviously in security implications. There was the whole issue, as I think you mentioned of the transformation of our own presence on the ground of moving out of historic bases into something that was more purpose-built and what we needed. And there was also where we were on North Korea. And in the three years I was there, we went from the six party talks, kind of sputtering along, to a period of great tension and indeed attacks. The Embassy obviously was involved in its various sections in that way. And also, Skip and I tried to set the model, I think, at the top, of working together closely.

Amb. McCarthy (05:40): How Much does South Korea contribute to our military presence?

Gen. Sharp (05:46): Well, South Korea has for many, many years through an agreement called the Special Measures Agreement, helped defray some of the costs of stationing of troops in Korea, and they pay depending how you do the calculation, it's about 50% of the cost. So today it's about a billion dollars a year that they pay in order to be able to do that. And we take that money to defray the cost, but we also take that money to be able to help improve the facilities that are there in the Republic of Korea. We're moving now down to a camp that is being greatly enlarged, Camp Humphreys. It will become the best US army location anywhere in the world. It cost about $12 billion to actually build. The Koreans paid about 80% of that in an agreement for us to be able to move out of Seoul, to be able to consolidate troops that were north of the Han River, the majority of them, and move them down to camp Humphreys, which is south of Seoul. So there's been a sharing of costs for many, many years. And as Kathy said, our relationship with South Korea and the military, yes, there's a cost factor, but it goes well beyond that. This alliance has, as Kathy said, they have deployed with us around the world from Vietnam to Iraq. They have a ship off of Somalia right now, fighting pirates. So I think a lot of this alliance, and the importance of this alliance, yes, it's important for Korea, yes. It's important for Northeast Asia, but it's actually a model alliance for how we can work together as partners and the effect of that in security and stability around the world.

Amb. Stephens (07:15): Just because it's a very close alliance doesn't mean we don't have really tough negotiations. And I think this burden sharing, the Special Measures Agreement as General Sharp said, is a very good example of how we have very tough negotiations because, you know, South Korea is a democracy. They have a national assembly...

Amb. McCarthy (07:30): So I wanted to ask on the negotiations, did the Embassy get involved in these negotiations and how much was done on our military and Department of Defense side to distinguish...

Amb. Stephens (07:36): Right, this is a good example, and I think this actually is the kind of model of how these negotiations work or sometimes don't work so well. The State Department takes the lead. It's the lead negotiator who usually comes out of Washington, because these negotiations are not rolling negotiations, every several years. So you'll have a negotiator coming out of the State Department. Then it comes and gets advice, obviously from US Forces Korea from the DoD and the Pentagon, from the Embassy and goes in with a negotiating position and a team. So as a State Department, if you like, led diplomatic negotiation, led on the Korean side, also on the diplomatic side, but informed by: what do we need? What are we spending? What do we think is realistic? And there's one actually going on right now, given the emphasis that the Trump administration has put on greater burden sharing by allies. It's a very tough negotiation. Now I think in the end, we'll reach it. But it's one of those things that both, yes, it is State Department led. And there's also a question for anyone who's in Korea on the embassy side or USF-K side, to kind of manage the public reactions to this because any issue like this, we don't pay so much attention to it here, more broadly. They pay a lot of attention to it in Korea. It has big political implications. So it's something always to watch.

Gen. Sharp (08:43): You know, one example of State Department leading the discussions, but US Forces Korea being involved. You know, I had a two-star deputy that was involved in all the discussions and during the year that we went through this, one of the main issues was whether you can count in-kind construction. So South Korea gets a construction company, says we're going to build these buildings and count it as part of the burden sharing, whether we would allow in-kind or whether the money would have to come to us, and then we pick type of thing. And through discussions with Kathy and her folks and my folks, I said, okay, in-kind should count. That's part of the back and forth, is what do we need? How do we get the most out of it? And then how do we get the best capability out of that? Which is what we're really looking for.

Amb. McCarthy (09:25): When you were both in South Korea, there were very high tensions between North and South Korea. In March, 2010, a South Korean Navy vessel was sunk by a torpedo. Eight months later, the North Koreans struck again, shelling a South Korean island. Can you describe how the South Koreans reacted and what we did? And did we ever consider evacuating personnel at that time?

Gen. Sharp (09:46): First off for the sinking of the Cheonan by the North Korean torpedo, it happened out towards the Northwest Islands in the West Sea. When the ship was first sunk, I don't think anybody believed it was sunk by North Korea. This was not expected at all. And so over the first six or seven, five or six days, our effort working with the South Koreans, really south Korean lead, was to see, are there any sailors that are down caught in the ship in some air, tight compartment? And to try to rescue them, that could rescue them. When it became apparent that there were not, then we went into the recovery operation. That took about a week, eight days or so to complete before we got the ship up off the bottom and it was broken into two parts and taken down to Pyeongtaek. Then we got an international set of real experts on it, to be able to come in, to look at the ship, to determine what had happened. So by the time that happened, we were probably eight or nine days afterwards. I'm laying this out to kind of give you the timeline feel, because the effect in Korea of the ship versus the artillery is like night and day. So the ship was sunk. About a week or so later, we got experts down, experts including the United States, came to an almost immediate conclusion. It was hit by a torpedo. It wasn't a mine. It wasn't a run aground. It was not an explosion from the inside, which are all theories that people had at the time. It was hit by a torpedo. There was no doubt. And then a couple of days later, the south Korean actually found the tail fin from the torpedo. So a whole bunch of evidence that, yes, it was North Korea. But now we were two or three weeks later. All of these facts came out in the press. They gave big press conferences with, you know, all of the different evidence and everything. But even after all of that, there was a large, not majority, but there were a large amount of people in South Korea that still did not believe that North Korea did it. They refuse to believe that North Korea would ever do something like this. So we continued on until November. And then in November, North Korea fired artillery on an island, killed some South Koreans, civilians. There was no doubt it was from North Korea because there were people up there with cell phones, recording, and then you could see it's coming from North Korea. That almost, in my view, changed Korea overnight. That said we're not going to stand for this anymore. This is clearly North Korean. You have killed civilians, not just military. And that changed lots of things in South Korea. I think it did change the attitude of the people that they're not going to stand for any more provocations or attacks or threats from North Korea. It greatly changed their military ,in that it changed the rules of engagement that would allow and require South Korean troops that if they are fired upon to immediately fire back. So it's all the deterrence to be able to try to say, okay, if something like this happens again. There was a response on the artillery. You could argue all day, whether it's effective or not, but there was a response. But it was not effective enough in the eyes of the Korean people. So lots of rehearsals, lots of practice. And that still holds true today, eight years later, that if there was an attack in South Korea, there'd be a very, very strong response.

Amb. McCarthy (13:04): They kept these same new ROEs [Rules of Engagement]?

Gen. Sharp (13:06): Yes, And not only kept them, but they have rehearsed, and rehearsed, and rehearsed them, and positioned troops to the point where they are prepared to deal basically anywhere across the demilitarized zone with any sorts of attacks like that. That comment on your, did we ever get close to evacuation, in my view, the answer to that was no, in both cases. We were watching very closely in both cases, but especially after the artillery attack, what else is North Korea doing? Are they doing anything else that are signs that they are preparing to actually go to war or to do more attacks? And the answer to that was no, we just did not see any action that would be required for any sort of larger scale attack. So, I mean, we talked about it, but we never got to the point of saying, okay, should we have voluntary evacuation or not. I think we, I can speak for both of us. We did not believe that that was required at the time.

Amb. Stephens (13:57): WIth respect, maybe to the last thing first though, evacuation. Yeah, that's right. We never recommended it. It is the Chief of Mission who makes the recommendation. But clearly what we were both very aware of is we had to make sure that our response was very, very coordinated. There would be rumors out, again, this is in November, 2010, when the tensions were really very high, you know, service member families or embassy families were getting on planes, going somewhere. You know, the rumor mill was quite strong. So we had to really try to control that.

Amb. McCarthy (14:26): And that would have triggered all sorts of things.

Amb. Stephens (14:27): That would have triggered all kinds of things.

Gen. Sharp (14:27): My daughter, grandkids, and son-in-law were planning to come for that Christmas. And we found out later that people were watching my daughter's Facebook page to see if she was still coming. She came, we had a great time together. But to the point, people really, really were watching because I think if the US ever says, okay, it's time for people to stop coming or to leave voluntarily, that's a huge sign to North Korea. And it's a sign that we really are getting serious about doing some things that actually could cause a war. So there's some real tension there back and forth as far as when to tell people, okay, it's not safe to come.

Amb. Stephens (15:05): And obviously a huge impact on the south Korean economy, everyone else there. So we tried to handle that. And I think we did manage to handle that with great care. This year of 2010, where these two really extraordinary incidents happened, I mean, tragedies and the word that people tend to use is provocations. I call them attacks. I mean, this was an attack in March, 2010 on a South Korean vessel. One thing I really appreciated, it was, I don't know if I was the first phone call that Skip made, but I think I was very close to it. And I always remember him calling me to tell me, we, we have word that the ship sunk, we don't know anything more about it. So we started to track it obviously very closely. And with respect to that sinking, I mean, one thing we had to really decide is, let's remember both this and the shelling in November, this was an issue primarily about South Korea. They were in the lead, but we wanted to show support as an ally. And obviously we had very deep interest in what happened. In that early period where there was still a rescue effort going on, Skip offered what military assets were in the area to try to assist. He and I went out by helicopter to the ship that was handling the rescue efforts. And I think that was the right thing to do. We showed our support as allies.

Amb. McCarthy (16:14): That's a strong show of support.

Amb. Stephens (16:15): Yeah, it was a strong show of support. But actually, at that time, to give you a sense of the political climate in South Korea at times, there were a few voices from opposition party members, not many who would sort of say, well, that's very suspicious. Why is Ambassador Stephens and General Sharp out there? You know, the US has something to do with this? What's the deal here? But it took time. And I think we saw actually an early incident where social media takes over and maybe some outside actors do and creates doubt. As Skip has already said, November was a very different thing, but it also was actually much more challenging, I think, in terms of US South Korea management, because we had the South Koreans who by this time were saying, this is the first time South Korean civilians have been shelled, you know, with artillery from the North, since the Korean War. We have to respond. Speaking for myself, I'm out of government now, I was pretty sympathetic to that. In Washington, there was worry we were going to be dragged into an escalation, into a war the time and place not of our choosing. And a lot of our conversations with Washington, and obviously Skip and I had our own channels back to Washington, and we also sat in many video conversations together where everybody chewed this over. And it's good to know that in Washington there's caution, but they were worried that our South Korean allies were going to go too far. It was a very tense time in the South Korea US relationship, to manage and to come to a clear understanding with our intermingled forces, any war there's going to involve us, of who should be deciding what needs to be done.

Gen. Sharp (17:36): The artillery attack took place in late November. The North Koreans claimed that the reason they fired was because South Korea was conducting artillery training from the island, not pointing north, but pointed to the southwest, like they had done for many, many years before. But they used that as an excuse. So after North Korea did the artillery attack,, South Koreans fired back caused damage to North Korea, but then there became a strong desire to go and do artillery training again. North Korea would not think, okay, see, I've stopped all their training down there. And that was a lot of discussion between the US and South Korea, between Korea and here, there was obviously a strong push from the South Koreans to do this as quickly as possible. Ambassador Stephens and I worked together with the South Koreans and the US to try to explain to the US the importance of continuing to do this type of training to South Korea, to make sure that they understood that we, the US, are trying to do some things to not get into an escalatory thing. So there were discussions going on with China. There were discussions going on through other sources to be able to say, okay, we're going to continue to do this. You better not do anything else. From a military perspective, we are posturing ourselves in case, when the training started again, that there was North Korea reaction to that. And all of this was going back and forth between Kathy and I, and between the military and the state. You talked earlier about the three hats that I wore over there, three commands. In this case, the first command that you mentioned, the United Nations Command came into big play. So United Nations Command was established as part of the armistice and its responsibility to today is to help maintain the armistice. What was actually agreed to in the armistice agreement. There are 16 or 17 countries that are still part of United Nations Command today, serving with very small, but still troops in the Republic of Korea. During both of these incidents, since they happened along the DMZ, within the area that is governed by the armistice agreement, one of the responsibilities of United Nations Command was to do the full investigation as to what is really happening, and then report that back through the United States to the United Nations. So we, again, formed an international team in both of these cases to be able to lay out what are the facts, what happened, and to get those back up to the Security Council. So that's just another example how this Command and this relationship with Korea is very deep. It's different than others, but it's very deep. And it goes US, South Korea, and really United Nations, the nations that are part of United Nations Command, to be able to help try to deter North Korea and make some real changes there.

Amb. McCarthy (20:18): And in our response, you can see the diplomatic elements and the military elements and decisions being made on both sides. Well, there was an armistice at the end of the war, but a peace treaty was never signed. And there've been many rounds of diplomatic negotiations, in some periods of little or no contact between the North and the South. The current President has just held his third meeting with North Korea's leader and is seeking to deepen inter-Korean cooperation. As I understand it, the US position is that we need to see North Korea denuclearize before any peace declaration. The North Koreans want a peace declaration before any serious move on denuclearizing. And the South Koreans are trying to bridge this divide. What would be the key elements that would need to take place, if there's a serious chance at a peaceful outcome?

Amb. Stephens (21:00): Broad question, we probably need to do another podcast about it, and as we, as we talk today, we know that president Moon Jae-in, having just spent three days in North Korea last week, is in New York to meet with President Trump. I think that if we look at where we are now, you can kind of see the glass half full, or the glass half empty. What has happened is that the North South relationship, I think, has moved to a level that it's never been at before. At least in terms of the two leaders, they've met three times, we have the young leader in the north, Kim Jong-un, now saying he's going to go to Seoul before the end of the year. No North Korean leader has ever done that ever. So I think if we're sitting here in Washington, we have to watch and remember, this is the Korean Peninsula, and there are dynamics that are going on there that we need to pay attention to, whether we welcome them, or we approach them with some caution, things are moving. Things are shifting. I think the plates are shifting in some ways. Now a lot of what's happened so far between North and South has been symbolic. We do have a leader in South Korea, Moon Jae-in, who has said that he certainly wants to see North Korea denuclearize, that is give up its nuclear weapons program. But something is very different from when Skip and I served there even 10 years ago, is North Korea now has nuclear weapons and a missile delivery system. I do think that the North Korean leader thinks that if he can just kind of keep pushing on wanting to develop his economy, wanting to have a peace regime, that he can sort of say, pay no attention to those nuclear weapons in the closet over there, it'll be all right. I mean, it happened in Pakistan. It happened in India. It happened in China, actually, if we're going to talk about the US approach to nuclear. I think that would be a mistake if it happened with North Korea, but I think that's the reality of what we're faced with. Now what do we do? I do think it's absolutely essential, and it's not easy to do, for Seoul and Washington to work together. I think Moon Jae-in understands that. Denuclearization is a process, it's going to take some time. In fact, the Korean war was never a war, according to President Truman, it was a UN police action. One part of the agreement in Pyongyang last week, between the leaders of North and South, it hasn't gotten much attention, and I don't know if Skip's had a chance to look at it, is some very concrete changes in the military alignment on the DMZ, which is between North and South. But this is going to be a process, and it's very important that we stay in close contact, certainly at the leader level, but also all the way down in our military and our diplomatic layers. Because as you can see, this is a really complicated relationship.

Gen. Sharp (23:26): I had a Korean friend, recently, and we were having these discussions and he said, "You know, there's a difference between the way the Asians think and get things done, and the US." And he laid it out that, in Asia people usually build relationships, which lead to trust, which in this case could lead to denuclearization. Where the US says, denuclearize, then we'll trust you, and then we can build relations. To Kathy's point, is how do you bridge this between the US? Look at decades and decades. There have been agreements that have been broken by North Korea over and over again. So where that trust falls into this, that they're really going to move forward, I think really gets to the crux of the issue. I do believe that Kim Jong-un is very different from his father and he's in a different place than where his father was. He's somewhere between 38 and 42, but he's young. He sees that if he wants to stay in power for 40 more years, he's going to have to make some changes in North Korea, economically, quality of life wise, in North Korea. He is facing a population who is very, very controlled, information from the outside world is tough to get in, but it is getting in. They've got over 2 million cell phones. And I think he is smart enough to realize that if he just did the same old ways as his father, he would not stay in power for 40 years. So I do think that he is trying to work through a way to be able to improve the economy, improve the quality of life in North Korea. I think there was a solid fear in his mind that there could be a potential push from the United States or South Korea to force him out. That's, I think, the key to the nuclear weapons, why he said, okay, this is why I need to get nuclear weapons, so nobody would dare attack me. So that's kind of, I think how we got to where we are right now, and with President Trump pushing very, very hard that we're not going to stand for a nuclear weapon, got people, along with some South Korean initiatives, got the leaders to start talking and to start engaging as we go through. I think the way forward has got to be that North Korea has got to do something in the eyes of President Trump, that's solid enough to really show, and verified enough that, okay, I am committed to denuclearization. Here are some things that I will do and am doing to show it. I think what we believe so far, what he's done to destroy a test facility of a nuclear site, to some degree that's yet to be verified, destroy a missile test facility, a launch facility where, that's interesting, but he has already proven a mobile capability. So this static capability really is not significant in our minds. But to be able to do some other things, to be able to take some reactors down and all of that, and to be able to verify it, I think would be a very good signal. I don't believe that when the US says complete denuclearization, what they mean by that is we're going to keep everything in place, sanctions, everything in place until we have verified the very last bomb is gone, there's no more nuclear reactors, I think. But we do need to get down that path of that process and to understand what that path looks like. And then I think we'll be able to work together. It's going to be interesting, in fact, it may be happening as we speak, right now, with President Moon and President Trump talking together in New York. This is a key time, and I've had people say, it's an inflection point and it's got to go one way or another because unfortunately if it tips back the other way and goes back to where we were a year ago, we're going to be in for some very challenging times here, I think.

Amb. McCarthy (27:02): Well, I wanted to ask a little bit about the use of sanctions as a tool and we've imposed sanctions over years in North Korea over not only its nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, but cyber attacks and other things. Kathy, can you talk a little bit about the use of sanctions as a diplomatic tool and how we work that, and then I wanted to ask you Skip a little bit about the role of the Department of Defense and our military in enforcing these sanctions.

Amb. Stephens (27:24): North Korea has been sanctioned by the United States, and to some extent by the international community, since the end of the Korean war, anyway. My experience with sanctions, and I've seen them in other parts of the world, including the Balkans, is sometimes you keep sanctions on for a long time. You could look at Cuba too, and societies adapt. Sometimes in ways that make them survivors, but you know, it doesn't necessarily make it easier to achieve our policy goals. The leadership in North Korea made such a priority, has made a priority of developing nuclear weapons, missile delivery systems, cyber capabilities, chemical weapons, a variety of other things that certainly deserve sanctions and condemnation. It hasn't stopped them. That's been the priority and they found ways around it. It doesn't mean that sanctions is not an important tool. It is. And I do think that the sanctions that were imposed and enforced, I mean, it's not that you just turn on sanctions and one day you're done. They have to be enforced. Over the last year, in the wake of this very, very aggressive and accelerated period of testing of both missiles, ballistic missiles, and nuclear tests that we were in in 2016-2017, those had an impact. They're a means to an end, not an end in themselves, and they change over time. And my concern now is that I think sanctions right now, honestly, for the international community, as long as North Korea is not testing, is a depreciating asset. It continues to be important. It is a very important part of what our negotiators need to bring to the table. North Korea does want to see not only the sanctions off, they want to be a part of international institutions. They want to get loans from the World Bank or whatever. It's not a silver bullet, to mix my metaphors here. It is a tool and we have to be really clear eyed about how we can use that tool most effectively to move forward in a process. But sometimes that means at the right moment, I think Skip has suggested this, you trade it for something.

Gen. Sharp (29:11): The military's role, primarily, on there is to do with our military assets from satellites and other sources to be able to watch, to see, are people breaking sanctions. That's number one. So it's part of the intelligence gathering, but then also to have options for the President. And if he decides to take it, to be able to actually intercept ships out at sea, if we believe that he is proliferating, or things that are happening, that go against the sanctions, to have the military capability to stop that.

Amb. McCarthy (29:43): I wanted to ask a little bit about, going back to South Korea. South Korea is a major purchaser of US military equipment.

Amb. Stephens (29:50): I think certainly it's one area in which we have long worked closely with the South Koreans and the Embassy and the US forces and US military working closely together. The US embassy in Seoul has a fairly large section that's explicitly devoted to this kind of military cooperation. It's staffed mostly, but not entirely, with US military officers who are on secondment to the State Department. And so, that small group of military people on the Korean Peninsula, who report to the Ambassador and not to the Commander of US Forces Korea. The point here is obviously not just to make the sale, but because we are so intimately involved in the defense of the Republic of Korea, to make the sale that we think is going to make the most sense to our joint defense.

Gen. Sharp (30:31): We work very closely together with the State Department in the Republic of South Korea to be able to help, from a military perspective, identify what are the capabilities that South Korea really needs in order to be able to deter North Korea and to be prepared to defend. In my hat as the Combined Forces Commander, I had to, once a year, put together a report that went to both the Minister of Defense and Korea and the Secretary of Defense of the United States, try to work with the South Koreans in order to be able to say, okay, the money that you do have that you're putting towards defense, and they are one of the strongest allies as far as the percentages of their GDP that are going to their defense, it is increasing. It's not going down like many of our other allies. So that gets you to the $13 billion that they have bought from US materials. Now, I will say that South Korea has got a very strong defense industry, that's growing even stronger. One of President Moon's real desires and pushes has been that South Korea become a net exporter of defense goods. So they are building their defense and have built some really good equipment. So we're able to see, share and act the same as it were from the same military.

Amb. McCarthy (31:43): You worked closely together in South Korea and your careers have taken you to other places where both US military capacities and diplomatic capabilities advance our interests. What words of advice do you have for rising leaders in our military and diplomatic ranks about working together to protect our national security?

Gen. Sharp (32:02): To be able to help coordinate diplomatic actions, to be able to make sure that we, as the US, are speaking and acting in one voice, meaning words and actions are coordinated and they mean the same thing. And then I fast forward, I was in Bosnia for a year, and became even closer in a relationship to the embassy, you can solve and deescalate things through a lot of diplomatic efforts that you then don't need the military action. And that's where you really want to be obviously, is that you're talking with words rather than with bullets. And then when I got to Korea with Ambassador Stephens, I mean, this was the ultimate that showed the importance that the US military and the diplomatic side have to work together in one voice. So all of the incidents that we have, we shared everything together. I mean, one of the really unique things I thought worked out very well in Korea is Kathy participated and her staffs participated in all of our exercises. We were involved in many of her diplomatic discussions, both in Korea and back to the United States. I mean, we really shared everything over there to make sure that, again, words and actions were linked and we were moving in the right direction as a nation.

Amb. Stephens (33:16): I really appreciated what Skip did while we were in Korea, not only in terms of our own partnership and friendship, but that he really modeled by example for all the generals and colonels and everybody else who worked in his very large command that we needed to work with the embassy, because frankly, there can be turf issues wherever you are. Yeah, breaking news here. And the military, in many places, and some of the places get mentioned, especially, but in Korea, is a larger presence. You know, it has a bigger budget, has more stuff and more reach. And a lot of people on the military side really don't know what an embassy does or is or who these people are. So I think the leadership from the top really, really helped a lot because I mean, I actually would hear it, I don't know if I ever sort of told you this, but sometimes you know, I'd meet some Colonel and they'd say, oh, General Sharp says, we need to pay attention to you.

Amb. McCarthy (34:05): So the orders were passed down.

Amb. Stephens (34:07): You know, I mean, I would say, yeah. I joined the foreign service in 1978. This is before there were many women in the military. So I never thought of that as an option. Maybe if I had, you know, in a different age, I would've thought about that. But for me, the military, and I didn't grow up in a military family, you know, I didn't know what the ranks were. I didn't know how it was organized. So it was definitely learning on the job. And now I realize later in my career, I think as Skip is implying, than it should have been. And I would also say that we also have to look at what has happened. I think over my career in the last couple of decades, which is, the weight has shifted. And I think we certainly saw that in Korea. We saw it in the Balkans. We see it around the world.

Amb. McCarthy (34:45): Well, thank you for sharing your experience in a key part of the world. And thank you for your great partnership that you developed. It's an outstanding example. This has been an excellent discussion. So I want to thank you again for sharing your time and your experience and your leadership. This has been a new episode in the series, The General and the Ambassador: a Conversation. Thank you for listening. The series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy, with the generous support of the Una Chapman Cox foundation. You can find the podcast on all major sites and on our website, generalambassadorpodcast.org. We welcome input and suggestions on the series. Please let us know your thoughts via general.ambassador.podcast@gmail.com.