Pyongyang Parley

• Share

After a recent speech in Washington, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill was asked which was harder: negotiating with Pyongyang or trying to forge a coherent North Korea policy within the Bush Administration. Hill laughed, but it was no joke. More than five years and one North Korean nuclear test after George W. Bush said he "loathed" Kim Jong Il, the U.S. stance toward Pyongyang has now flip-flopped. No longer is Washington trying to isolate the dictator's rogue regime. Instead, on March 5 and 6 Hill held talks with the North's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-gwan as a preliminary step toward normalizing diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Not since Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright flew to Pyongyang and offered a champagne toast to Kim has Washington's embrace of his regime been tighter. The cranked-up diplomacy was set in motion by the recent breakthrough in the six-party talks aimed at getting the North to end its nuclear-weapons program. Last month, North Korea struck a deal with the U.S., South Korea, China, Japan and Russia to shut down its Yongbyon reactor, which produces the plutonium material necessary to make nukes, in return for a variety of economic and diplomatic benefits, including an emergency delivery of 50,000 tons of fuel oil. The Bush Administration's goal is not only a North Korea without nuclear weapons, but also a wholesale thaw in the Northeast Asian security environment. As Hill put it: "Our [talks are] really an effort to address broad problems in the overall region, of which denuclearization is but one."

It's an ambitious target, given the complexities of the nuclear issue alone. The six-party agreement calls for a carefully scripted process just to get the North to suspend activity at Yongbyon, which must be verified by U.N. inspectors. If that's achieved, the foreign ministers of the six nations will convene in Beijing to talk about the next stage: enticing the North to dismantle Yongbyon, rather than just idling it temporarily. In an interview with TIME, Hill says this week's talks included "extensive discussions [about] the next phase, which includes disabling the reactor" at Yongbyon, and he added that further bilateral talks are now scheduled for March 19. Still, he knows this will be a slow process. As Hill said last month: "It is unlikely that the North Koreans will roll out of bed in the morning and say: 'We are going to make a strategic decision to get out of [the nuclear-weapons business.]' More likely, they are going to make decisions to move on a step-by-step basis."

But even if all goes well, those steps will lead to the vexing question of whether the North is engaged in another nuclear-weapons program—one not addressed by the agreement—that involves processing highly enriched uranium, not plutonium, to make bombs. The U.S. confronted Pyongyang in 2002 with intelligence it claimed to have about the program, and according to U.S. diplomats at the time, Pyongyang confirmed it did indeed exist. Since then, the North has denied it has such a program—and now even Washington appears less certain. Last week, Joseph DeTrani, a key intelligence official, stunned a Senate panel by testifying that analysts now only had a "mid confidence level" about the program's existence.

Hard-liners who had pushed for the isolation of North Korea pounced, suggesting the Administration was downplaying the uranium program to smooth the way for talks with the North. However, Hill said that while the U.S. lacks hard evidence, it intends to press Pyongyang for "complete clarity" on the program. Indeed, rather than lightening up on the North, U.S. Treasury Department officials appear poised to issue permanent sanctions against Banco Delta Asia, the Macau bank where about $24 million in assets allegedly belonging to North Korean officials have been frozen on grounds that the money is linked to illicit North Korean businesses, including counterfeiting. Pyongyang has been adamant that economic sanctions be lifted in exchange for cooperation on nuclear talks. But Hill told reporters in New York that he has made it "abundantly clear to them that this counterfeiting business has got to stop. It's something no country in the world can look the other way on."

Still, Washington must tread cautiously if it is to avoid scuttling its hard-won dialogue with Pyongyang. Kim has repeatedly shown his willingness to walk away at the slightest provocation. Just this week, while the U.S. was parleying with the North Koreans in New York, similar talks between Japan and the North in Vietnam hit a roadblock. According to Japan's Foreign Ministry, Pyongyang temporarily suspended negotiations after Tokyo demanded that it account for Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and '80s. Considering how tricky talking to the North can be, just achieving the immediate goal—the shutdown and dismantlement of the Yongbyon reactor—would be a significant diplomatic feat. And as Hill is the first to acknowledge, it's a long way from here to there.