Word: pyongyang
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...misson was the former President's first high-profile assignment for the Obama Administration, and few observers expected that such a high-ranking envoy would leave without securing their freedom. "A former President is not going to show up in Pyongyang only to get stiffed," said a Western diplomat on Tuesday. "There had to have been assurances that this was the endgame" for the two women prisoners, who were arrested on March 17 along the border in northeast China while filming a report about North Korean refugees. They were subsequently convicted of illegal entry and unspecified "hostile acts" against North...
...than resolve one difficult problem (among many) between the U.S. and North Korea. It also reminds his hosts that there used to be better days between the two countries. In 1994, during Clinton's first term in office, the two sides entered into the Agreed Framework, the first time Pyongyang agreed to abandon its nuclear-weapons program in return for a range of economic benefits, including the construction of two light water nuclear reactors to generate electricity for the impoverished country. In fact, it was pursuit of that agreement that set the precedent for Clinton's current trip...
...accused the other of not living up to its details. (Both sides had a case.) But Clinton, as President, didn't waver from his belief that a grand bargain with the North was possible - not just denuclearization but an eventual peace treaty and normalization of relations between Washington and Pyongyang. In October 2000, late in his second term, Clinton sent his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, to meet with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang, where they famously clinked champagne glasses. The former President even flirted with the idea of going to North Korea himself right up until...
...Indeed, the former President's trip to Pyongyang evokes the never-ending back-to-the-future quality of dealing with North Korea. "They've repeated the same pattern over the past two decades," says Yun Duk-min of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul, a Foreign Ministry think tank. Ratchet up the nuclear tensions, declare diplomacy dead, and then hope to win even bigger concessions as talks reconvene later. But since taking office, Obama has proved no slouch at playing the game from the other side. In the wake of the nuclear test this past spring...
...great victory. It will probably say the former President's trip showed that the Dear Leader brought Washington to its knees to beg for the release of the two journalists. In fact, it shows that the diplomatic reset button is about to be hit - yet again - in Pyongyang and in Washington. Clinton almost certainly bore a message that Washington wants to talk again, in some forum. And while the U.S. might not want to "buy the same horse" now, who knows what it might be in the diplomatic market for several months hence? As for Pyongyang, as the former President...