By Michael Breen
The unexpected mission to North Korea this week by former U.S. president Bill Clinton indicates the Obama administration is deploying a new weapon in the struggle with its most difficult opponent in Asia.
That is, its willingness to exploit the North Korean weakness for face.
The dispatch of such a senior elder statesman had more impact on the North Koreans than all the brawn and threats that characterized the Bush years because it touched the proud, impoverished state where it most hurts: its international isolation and inability to escape its need to behave badly.
North Korea is like the clown in the street playing for pennies. He would rather be among friends in the audience, but knows no other role. When a nice and important person, like Bill Clinton, steps out from the annoyed cinema queue, cash in hand, and asks if he's having a good day, he gets normal for a moment.
Clinton's formal mission was to secure the release of the two American reporters, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who were arrested in March after illegally crossing the Chinese border into North Korea. In this, he was no doubt assured of success before he left.
Lee, 36, and Ling, 32, were on a filming mission for Current TV, a network co-founded by Al Gore, who was Clinton's vice-president from 1992-2000. Although exact details are not known, we may presume the two TV journalists thought there was no one looking when they waded over the shallow river that marks the boundary. Detained on the spot, the two were tried in Pyongyang in June and found guilty of ``committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry" and sentenced to 12 years corrective labor. It is not known if anything bad has happened to their local contacts.
The incident was one of several that marked a first half of high tension after Pyongyang tested a nuclear device and fired off a number of ballistic missiles, moves which led to UN sanctions.
This is not the first time that a retired American president has gone to Pyongyang to coax a diplomatic rabbit out of the hat. Jimmy Carter, U.S. president from 1976-1980, visited then-ruler Kim Il-sung in 1994 during a similar period of nuclear-tipped tension. Carter secured Kim's promise to restart nuclear talks, as well as a commitment for a North-South Korean summit. (Kim died a few weeks later, but his son and successor, the current leader Kim Jong-il, honored the agreement and signed a pact with the U.S. The promised Korean summit was deliberately torpedoed by the South Korean President, Kim Young-sam, who called Kim Il-sung a ``war criminal").
Bill Clinton's visit will almost certainly have impact extending from the mission to secure the release of the two jailed Americans. But, while irrelevant to the North Korean dictatorship, the role of rescuer played by such a senior politician is an enormous lesson. South Korea, in particular, is at a loss in democratically balancing the plight of its individual citizens and the interests of the state.
From the perspective of progress with North Korea, the choice of Bill Clinton at this time is interesting for two other reasons.
The first is, of course, that he is the spouse of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the American Secretary of State. Mrs. Clinton and North Korea have not been getting on well recently. She has pointed out the hurtful truth that North Korea has ``no friends left" and has ``no place to go." They, in return, have referred to her as ``a schoolgirl" and ``by no means intelligent." Clearly, Pyongyang thinks she needs a spanking, and who better to deliver it than her husband and their new friend?
The second point of interest is that Bill Clinton has real motivation to create some movement in the relationship with North Korea. One of the ironies of the 1994 Carter visit was that the Clinton White House at the time was playing tough with North Korea. It resented the interference and only gave Carter permission to accept the invitation when there seemed to be no other course left. By his last year, Clinton himself had turned his interest to engagement with North Korea. But it was too late. In retirement, he regretted he had focused so much on the Middle East and all but ignored the communist state.
The trip this week gives the former U.S. president an opportunity to revisit that regret and gives us in the region hope that something lasting may come from it. That, and the welcome return home of the two reporters.
Michael Breen is chairman of Insight Communications Consultants and exclusive partner of FD International. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.