But when Tang met Rice, who’s currently touring the region to build support for U.N. sanctions aimed at bringing Pyongyang back to the negotiating table, he didn’t say Kim vowed not to test again. Nor did he recount any expressions of North Korean remorse. “The Chinese did not, in a fairly thorough briefing to me, say anything about an apology,” said Rice, who believes the North Koreans “would like to see an escalation of tensions.” And on Friday, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency reported that 100,000 celebrants gathered in Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung square to “hail the success of the historic nuclear test.” The agency quoted North Korean official Choe Thae Bok saying, “No matter how the U.S. imperialists try to stifle and isolate our republic … victory will be on the side of justice.”
That hardly sounds remorseful. Kim has used admissions of wrongdoing as part of his negotiating repertoire in the past; whether he said “sorry” may have more to do with diplomacy than regret. In September 2002, when Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Pyongyang for a landmark summit, Kim owned up to North Korea’s abduction of 13 Japanese nationals. Pyongyang allowed five abductees to return to Japan. But relations chilled and Pyongyang now maintains the eight other abductees are dead.
Kim has always tried to leverage what he has–abductees, missiles, nukes–for international talks, energy and food imports or cash. In 1992 Pyongyang allowed American government officials into North Korea for the first time to search for Korean War POW remains. The United States was allowed to repatriate several sets of remains, but only after paying exorbitant recovery fees.
While Kim’s an accomplished missile salesman, he’s also negotiated to stop such exports for cash. The most outlandish of Kim’s let’s-make-a-deal adventures: in the early 1990s, Israeli negotiators began secret talks with Pyongyang because they were alarmed by North Korea’s Mideast missile exports. The two sides negotiated an arrangement in which North Korea would shut down the arms pipeline for $1 billion, the promise of normalized diplomatic ties down the road and a visit by the Israeli Prime Minister to clinch the deal.
The South Korean government was apoplectic when it caught wind of the pact and informed Washington about it. In February 1993–about the same time Pyongyang was threatening to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty–acting U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger summoned Israeli negotiators to the State Department. He asked them to stop talking with Pyongyang. “Eagleburger basically said, ‘Stop this, our first priority is to address North Korea’s nukes’,” recalls former State Department official Kenneth Quinones, a Korea expert. Thus ended the Israeli connection; no prime minister visited.
When North Korea began talking with Clinton administration officials about decommissioning nearly its entire missile arsenal, Pyongyang’s demands echoed what they’d asked for during the Israeli talks. (The price tag was a lot higher this time.) Kim reportedly wanted Clinton to put the finishing touches on the pact by visiting Pyongyang in 2000, a trip that never materialized. But negotiations bogged down–and then lost momentum when the Democrats lost the presidential election. Cursory talks have gone nowhere under George W. Bush.
What’s Kim’s next move? Typically, after precipitating an international crisis Pyongyang has returned to negotiations. Chinese delegates are trying to persuade North Korea to return to the six-party talks Kim has shunned since last November after the United States froze overseas bank accounts controlled by members of the Pyongyang elite. (Participants in the multilateral talks were the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.) On Friday North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye-Gwan, told ABC News that Pyongyang was ready to return to the talks. And South Korean media, quoting unnamed sources, suggested that negotiations could resume once the United States dropped financial sanctions. But that’s something Rice says the United States will not do. Meanwhile, to up the pressure, four Chinese banks on Friday stopped doing business with North Korea and Chinese authorities considered curtailing crucial oil supplies to Pyongyang if Kim remains recalcitrant.
At this point, Kim’s relationship with America resembles that of a spurned lover. Pyongyang had considered the United States to be key to North Korean economic reforms because of the quality of American technology, its abundant capital and its influence with multilateral lending institutions like the World Bank. Now Kim feels rejected by Bush. “Kim loves American movies, music, culture,” says retired Peking University professor Cui Yingjiu, a Chinese citizen of Korean ethnicity who attended graduate school in Pyongyang in the early 1960s. During that time, Cui met Kim, a second-year economics undergrad. “He was quick and knew a lot of things, especially about international relations,” says Cui. “He never really explained his feelings. He just said this person is good, or this person is bad.” Cui adds: “He [was] falling in love with America. But the U.S. didn’t care. Little Kim loves Little Bush, but Little Bush doesn’t love Little Kim.” Maybe Kim has some apologizing to do.
