We’re glad former President Bill Clinton was able to use his stature, charm and diplomatic skills to secure the release of two U.S. journalists who were seized by North Korea under highly questionable circumstances.
Despite Kim Jong-Il’s obvious glee in having such esteemed attention, North Korea should not labor under the delusion that it means the U.S. will engage in bilateral relations with the rogue nation.
The U.S. must continue to insist on a return to six-party talks and a resumption of North Korea’s nuclear disarmament.
Until Kim returns to the six-party negotiation forum and makes good on his promises to end North Korea’s nuclear programs, he won’t get the global respect he so desires.
Bringing Kim and North Korea into the mainstream would be a positive development both for a world that is warily watching this unstable dictator pursue nuclear arms, and for North Korea’s starving people.
In a troubling development earlier this month, an Australian newspaper reported that North Korea is helping Myanmar’s military junta construct secret nuclear facilities.
If it’s true, then North Korea is becoming far more than an outlaw nation shooting off defective missiles to get attention. It means the country is spreading dangerous technology that could dramatically change the security equation on a regional and global level.
Bringing North Korea to the table with South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the U.S. is the best way, along with continued sanctions, to get a grip on the situation.
It has become apparent, as North Korea has reneged on one agreement after another, that it’s a task best accomplished with pressure. And that is best applied by China, which is North Korea’s largest trade partner and biggest source of food, fuel and arms.
China has made some promising moves in that direction in recent months and years. Given that China shares an 800-mile border with North Korea, it is in China’s interest to keep North Korea from asserting itself aggressively or imploding, which could send a flood of refugees into China.
The release last week of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for allegedly entering the country illegally, was a positive development.
Perhaps the episode also played to the vanity of Kim, the ailing leader of the communist regime, who in officials photographs with Clinton, grinned like the Cheshire Cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
But it should not be seen by North Korea — or pursued by the Obama administration — as a change in this nation’s insistence that North Korea participate in multinational talks with an eye toward nuclear disarmament.
