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Analysis: Pying-Pyong Diplomacy

Council on Foreign Relations

June 21, 2007
Prepared by: Carin Zissis

The Bush administration’s policy of no direct talks with Pyongyang is no more. Christopher R. Hill, the chief U.S. envoy in North Korean denuclearization talks, made a surprise visit (KTimes) to the isolated country Thursday. With this trip, Hill aims to breathe life into a February denuclearization deal that gave Pyongyang sixty days to shut down its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and allow inspectors to return to the country. In exchange, Pyongyang would receive desperately needed food and energy supplies from members of the Six-Party Talks, the multilateral body charged with controlling North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. But the April deadline came and went with Pyongyang refusing to hold up its part of the bargain until it received $25 million in funds, which the United States says were connected to North Korean counterfeiting and money laundering, frozen in a Macao bank.

Hill lobbied with the Bush administration to allow him to make such a trip, arguing the visit would give him insight (WashPost) into the reclusive state. The White House resisted giving in to North Korean demands for one-on-one talks after President Bush famously included North Korea in the “Axis of Evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address. Since then, Pyongyang restarted Yongbyon and produced enough plutonium for as many as twelve weapons, according to a report by the Institute for Science and International Security. This CFR.org Crisis Guide examines the North Korean nuclear issue.

Months after North Korea joined the nuclear club when it conducted a nuclear test in October 2006, the Bush administration signaled the first steps in an evolving stance toward Pyongyang when Hill met with his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-Gwan, first in Berlin and then in New York shortly after the February agreement was reached.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.