Stratfor
August 4, 2009 | 2021 GMT
Summary
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton traveled to North Korea and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il on Aug. 4.. Clinton’s reception in Pyongyang, including dinner with Kim, clearly shows that back-channel discussions between Washington and Pyongyang have remained active, despite the public standoff. The visit is not likely to bring about a surprise nuclear deal as did former President Jimmy Carter’s private visit to Pyongyang to meet Kim Il Sung in 1994. However, for Pyongyang, it marks a potential step toward reopening dialogue with the United States. For Washington, the visit is a low-cost option that ended up leading to the release of two U.S. journalists — and if there are other signals from North Korea, all the better.
Analysis
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton arrived in Pyongyang on Aug. 4, on an unofficial mission to win the release of two U.S. journalists held in North Korea since March. During his previously unannounced visit, Clinton met and had dinner with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, where, according to North Korean media, Clinton delivered a verbal message from U.S. President Barack Obama. The White House has denied any message was carried by Clinton, and emphasized that there are no U.S. government officials accompanying the former president on his personal visit, but has also hinted that information is being kept quiet to avoid jeopardizing Clinton’s mission.
Clinton’s visit is being likened to that of former president Jimmy Carter, who traveled to Pyongyang in June 1994 on a private mission to break the rising nuclear tensions between North Korea and the United States. Carter met then-North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang and brokered a path toward a settlement (the Agreed Framework, which ultimately failed but did reduce tensions). He also elicited an invitation from the North Korean leader to then-South Korean President Kim Young Sam to visit Pyongyang (though the visit never happened, as the North Korean leader died a month later). By October 1994, the United States had gone from drawing up plans to carry out military strikes on North Korean nuclear sites to signing the Agreed Framework to dismantle the North Korean nuclear program in return for energy aid and the construction of light water nuclear reactors.
Unlike the 1994 visit (which happened during Clinton’s presidency), Clinton’s visit is harder to characterize as unofficial. Clinton’s wife is the current secretary of state, and he was unlikely to head to North Korea without at least tacit approval (though likely much more) from the State Department. The reception he received in North Korea, including dinner with Kim, is not the sign of a spontaneous trip, but one that was well planned and one which the North Koreans would want to publicly acknowledge, with the North Koreans satisfied ahead of time with the expected content of Clinton’s message.
There were obviously back-channel negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang that led up to Clinton’s visit — likely through the so-called New York channel that interacts with North Korean diplomats to the United Nations. In addition, just a week before Clinton arrived, the North Korean Foreign Ministry issued a statement carried by North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, which discussed the failure of the six-party talks but concluded: “There is a specific and reserved form of dialogue that can address the current situation.” This referred to the idea of bilateral dialogue with the United States, which Pyongyang is pursuing, and was likely also the final signal to Washington that the Clinton visit was a go.
The main purpose of the Clinton visit is to attain the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who work for Current TV and were detained by North Korea in March for illegally crossing the border. The two were later tried and sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp, though they have been held in a guest house in Pyongyang since their detention. Clinton’s visit suggests the deal on their release was already arranged — indeed, Kim pardoned both journalists during Clinton’s visit. But there is the likelihood that Clinton also is discussing the so-called “comprehensive package” deal Washington is considering offering North Korea.
The comprehensive package in short requires the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of the North Korean nuclear program in return for a peace treaty and full diplomatic relations with the United States (and likely South Korea and Japan). This would be an all-or-nothing deal, not a gradual action-for-action deal as previous agreements have been. The long-term benefit to North Korea — normalized relations with the United States — is in many ways something North Korea has been fomenting nuclear crises for a decade and a half to achieve. However, with North Korea already testing nuclear devices, the deal may have come too late, as it is much harder for Pyongyang to agree to give up existing nuclear devices than it is to simply dismantle something like the Yongbyon nuclear reactor or allow foreign inspectors into the country.
But while the visit likely will not bring about a comprehensive solution to the nuclear standoff, it does appease North Korea’s ire at the Obama administration. Pyongyang has publicly and privately expressed anger that Washington’s point man on North Korean issues, special envoy Stephen Bosworth, has only taken the job part-time, retaining his university position as well. For a country whose diplomacy is so full of symbolism, the idea of dealing with a part-timer was untenable and seen as an intentional affront to the regime.
Pyongyang has refused Bosworth’s requests to visit North Korea, and instead has been holding out for a much more senior U.S. official, something the administration has refused to grant. Sending Clinton — who nearly went to North Korea while he was still president but decided it was politically inappropriate just before then-incoming President George W. Bush took office — allows the White House to say there is no official visit, but gives the North Koreans the high-ranking American they crave. While this may seem an esoteric distinction, smaller issues than this have often colored talks with North Korea.
Despite the potential for at least a little renewed dialogue, the main substance remains unchanged. North Korea continues to fear that the United States’ unchallenged power will leave the small North Korean state always at the mercy of U.S. whims and that it will become another country on the list of those the United States has invaded or whose regime Washington has sought to topple. The nuclear deterrent is designed to serve as a tool to make it too costly for the United States to treat North Korea in such a manner. From Washington’s perspective, any partial or step-by-step agreement is just another deal North Korea will renege on and is therefore politically untenable. Both sides are waiting for the other to capitulate first, and neither is confident enough to trust the other’s intentions.
Restarting dialogue is easy. Solving the nuclear question is a little more complex.
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