Again Twinkles?
by Christian Kim, Special Contributor

During the dying days of the Clinton Administration, the Secretary of State at the time, Madeline Albright, visited Pyongyang in the hopes of coming to an agreement on North Korea's testing and development of long-range missiles. Her visit indicated the thawing relations between North Korea and the United States as well as between North Korea, South Korea, and Japan. The twinkle of hope began after the historic meeting of the two Koreas' leaders, a meeting made possible by South Korean President DaeJung Kim's Sunshine Policy. The policy established a neutral stance towards North Korea rather than the traditionally antagonistic stance.

Soon after, the change in the U.S. administration severely slowed the thawing relationships. Similar to the dark days of U.S.-North Korean relations during the Cold War, the United States and North Korea nearly ceased to hold dialogue during the first year of the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration stood fast on its policy towards North Korea insisting that the United States and the communist regime can only hold serious dialogue if the North Koreans agree to talk about a long list of issues besides missile proliferation. Bush's policy also upset relations between North Korea and its closest non-communist neighbors for North Korea seems to categorize the United States as the "kingpin of evil" and South Korea and Japan as pins of evil. The relationships continued to decline when President Bush labeled North Korea an "axis of evil" soon after the attacks on September 11th.

Even so, there were recently little twinkles of hope that the icy relationships between the two states and the relationships between North Korea and its two neighbors are again thawing. North Korea used diplomacy as its primary tool to charm the United States. In the first week of August, NamSun Paek, Colin Powell's counterpart in Pyongyang contacted the U.S. State Department with hopes of holding a casual meeting with the Secretary of State in Brunei where Powell was attending a forum for the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

North Korea's charming offense also sparked a little twinkle in their relations with South Korea. A week before Paek's meeting with Powell, North Korea surprisingly announced that it "regretted" the naval clash with their southern neighbor in late June. North Korea followed by offering to restart their talks with South Korea in which the two states agreed to reconnect the Koreas by road and rail. Then in late September, during the 14th Asian Games held in Busan, South Korea, athletes from the north marched in unison with South Korean athletes during the opening ceremony under the flag of a united blue Korean peninsula on a white background. Brighter than the ceremony was North Korea, which was taking part in an international sports event hosted by their southern neighbor for the first time.

The twinkle was also present in the communist regime's recent efforts to better their relations with Japan. In mid-September, Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minister of Japan became the first Japanese Prime Minister to visit North Korea. In Pyongyang, Mr. Koizumi carried on talks with JongIl Kim, the leader of North Korea, where the Prime Minister "honestly admitted the historical facts that [Japan] had inflicted huge damage and suffering upon the Korean people during its past colonial rule". Mr. Koizumi also agreed to offer economic aid to North Korea in the spirit of the declaration and exert all efforts to establish diplomatic ties.

Unfortunately, the twinkle did not glimmer past September. On October 5th, James Kelly, the U.S. State Department's top East Asia official returned from North Korea with the words "frank" and "useful" to describe his meeting with North Korean officials in Pyongyang. North Korean officials in turn referred to the Bush Administration as "high-handed" and "arrogant". The Bush Administration then made it clear that in order to improve relations with the U.S., North Korea must come to dialogue on issues such as the development of weapons of mass destruction, sales of ballistic missiles to rogue states, and poor human rights records. As this story is going to press, there has been no new development in North Korea's relations with the U.S. and its relations with South Korea and Japan.

Although twinkles seemed probable despite the October meeting between Secretary Kelly and senior North Korean officials, there is new evidence to believe that darkness looms and it's possible that relations will get darker. During his meeting with North Korea's First Foreign Minister SokJoo Kang, Secretary Kelly learned that North Korea has a secret nuclear arms program based on enriched uranium (nuclear weapons similar to those dropped on Japan during World War II) and much more. This is in clear violation of the 1994 pact where North Korea promised to cease its nuclear weapons program in exchange for two civilian nuclear power reactors and a 20-year supply of heating oil. According to Joel Wit, a former State Department official, the U.S. and its two allies have three choices. First, they have the twinkle choice of appeasing North Korea; second, they have the darker choice of using sanctions as they did in the 1990s; or third and darkest choice, the U.S. can threaten North Korea with preemptive strike as it is currently doing with Iraq. In North Korea's fickle relations with the U.S., South Korea, and Japan, the drama continues and will not cease for a long while.