Clinton’s Visit to Pyongyang May Be a Turning Point

On the morning of August 4, former U.S. President Bill Clinton arrived in Pyongyang to negotiate the release of two imprisoned American female journalists. Analysts have pointed out that because of this breakthrough meeting between the two sides, Clinton would be able to bring the journalists with him back to America. However, the point of the trip was not just securing the release of the journalists, but also of finding a way to move forward on North Korea’s nuclear program.

On March 17, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for the Californian television station CurrentTV, were detained by North Korean authorities on suspicion of illegally entering the country. Soon afterwards, the reporters were found guilty of being hostile towards North Korea and illegally crossing the Chinese-North Korean border. They were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.

North Korea was trying to get Clinton to come

Because the United States and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations, Sweden had acted as an intermediary to negotiate the journalists’ release. When these efforts proved ineffective, Washington thought about sending either former Vice President Al Gore or New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as a special envoy to negotiate in Pyongyang. Gore is a former vice president of the United States, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the founder of CurrentTV, which is the company the two reporters worked for. Richardson had gone on official visits to Pyongyang in the 1990’s. Both men were very good candidates to lead the mission.

However, according to a South Korean media report, North Korea had hinted through diplomatic channels that it hoped to meet with either U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or her husband, former President Bill Clinton. While Bill Clinton was in office, American relations with North Korea were pretty good. Clinton had once actively promoted normalizing relations between the two countries. After much consideration, the Obama administration finally decided to let former President Clinton go to Pyongyang.

According to media reports from the United States, Clinton took an unmarked plane and arrived at the Pyongyang International Airport on August 4 at 11 am local time. He was met by the People’s Committee Vice Chairman Yang Hyong-sop and Foreign Ministry Vice Chairman Kim Kye-gwan. A young girl wearing a red ribbon offered flowers to Clinton. The former president was smiling at the airport and seemed relaxed, but was unwilling to answer reporters’ questions. It is worth noting that neither North Korea nor America publicly announced the official purpose of Mr. Clinton’s visit or his itinerary while in North Korea.

Clinton could take the reporters directly back to America

After the two reporters were arrested, the Obama administration demanded that North Korea let them go for humanitarian reasons. However, North Korea might have perceived letting them go as an obstruction of justice. With the two sides deadlocked, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to retract her previous harsh comments about North Korea and asked North Korean authorities to grant amnesty to the reporters. Although the wording was different, the goal was still to try to get North Korea to release the reporters. However, the latter method would obviously give the North Korean government more face. Now, President Clinton has personally come to Pyongyang to plead for the release of the two women. North Korea could use this opportunity to improve the standings of Obama and the Clintons while trying to ease the tense state of U.S.-North Korean relations.

On July 20, Hillary Clinton told the U.S. media that she was very optimistic about the reporters’ release and suggested that a secret meeting with North Korea could take place. On August 4, American political analyst Michael Chinoy said in an interview that he suspected “it was made pretty clear in advance that Bill Clinton would be able to return with these two women, otherwise it would be a terrible loss of face for him.”

How to develop U.S.-North Korean relations is the key to the talks

Chinoy believes that the true focal point of this trip is actually the development of U.S.-North Korean relations, saying of the talks that “the bigger, broader and more important question is what else could be on the agenda. Will Clinton be carrying a letter from Barack Obama for the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il? Will he meet Kim Jong-il?”

Before this, North Korea had said that it would continue to boycott the six party talks on its nuclear program. However, Pyongyang is now hinting that it is very much interested in renewing direct talks with the United States. The U.S., though, is insisting that it will only engage with North Korea under the framework of the six party talks. On July 22, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that if Pyongyang agrees to shut down its nuclear program, America will implement economic aid and a Korean peninsula peace plan and ultimately work to normalize U.S.-North Korean relations.

Korean scholars believe that Clinton’s visit to Pyongyang may become a turning point in U.S.-North Korean relations and that negotiations between the two countries have entered a new phase.