Korean Job Discussion Forums

[catman]

SEOUL, South Korea � Former U.S. President Bill Clinton is heading to North Korea for negotiations to secure the freedom of two detained American journalists, a news report said Tuesday, nearly five months after they were seized on the China border.

Clinton is on his way to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, where he will try to win the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unidentified high-level source.

It was not immediately clear when Clinton was expected to arrive.

The reported trip comes amid heightened tensions in the wake of North Korea's nuclear and missile tests in defiance of U.N. resolutions. Analysts have said the communist regime is expected to use the detained reporters as a negotiating card to win concessions from Washington.

The U.S. Embassy in Seoul said it was checking the report.

In Washington, Andrew Laine, a State Department spokesman, said he had seen the Yonhap report, but had no information.

Ling and Lee were arrested on March 17 near North Korea's border with China. The reporters for former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's Current TV media venture were sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor for entering the country illegally and engaging in "hostile acts."

Pyongyang has expressed strong interest in one-on-one negotiations with Washington, while claiming it won't return to six-nation nuclear negotiations involving China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States.

The United States says it can talk bilaterally with the North, but only within the six-nation framework.

North Korea has rapidly escalated tensions this year. It conducted a long-range rocket launch, quit six-nation talks on ending its nuclear program, restarted its nuclear facilities, carried out its second-ever nuclear test and test-fired a series of ballistic missiles.

As a way to pressure North Korea to return to the negotiating table, Washington has been seeking international support for strict enforcement of a U.N. sanctions resolution adopted to punish the North for its May 25 nuclear test.

Link

[mises]

Bill Maher said the US wouldn't care cause the journo's aren't white.

I wonder what they will ask in return.. Oil? Food? Bullets?

[ubermenzch]

It seems the North Koreans were especially keen on having the former president visit the country, for reasons that escape me.

[Ya-ta Boy]

When I first saw the report, I thought, "Uh oh. Bill is going to get beat over the head until he apologizes for Hillary calling NK a 'spoiled child' and 'brat' a couple of weeks ago. Then I saw these articles, which may explain why he is welcome at this particular time:

N.Korean Economy 'on Brink of Collapse'

"North Korea has press-ganged people into a "150-day struggle" of farm or factory work since April to produce results for leader Kim Jong-il's heir apparent Jong-un, but the project has backfired and brought North Korea's fragile economy to the brink of collapse, experts said Monday."
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/08/04/2009080400257.html

The N.Korean Regime's 150-Day Struggle for Survival
"Few North Korean women have lately been seen washing clothes in the Apnok (or Yalu) and Duman (or Tumen) rivers on the border with China. Korean Chinese who have been to North Korea say they see few people about in city streets. The security police round up anyone they find walking around and send them to farms, they say. As grain production is essential for national survival now that overseas food aid is on hold, able-bodied adults are driven to farms in the name of a 150-day struggle. Even housewives are mobilized, according to the Choson Sinbo, a mouthpiece for Pyongyang published by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan or Chongryon."
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/07/27/2009072700764.html

***
When you subtract the potential propaganda possibilities and then the wishful thinking, there is still room for there to be a major disaster brewing up north of the DMZ.

My guess: the price of two journalists will be set at 'a bunch' of shiploads of food aid. That would be the least controversial (but still very controversial) pay off the Norks could demand and have much realistic hope of getting.

[itaewonguy]

BILLS THE MAN!!

he will get those girls home, he knows the North Koreans well and I guess they had a decent relationship so they like each other..

[RJjr]

I didn't like Bill as a president, but he's definitely the man for this job. If he can't negotiate the girls' release, nobody can. Of course, if they arrest him, it will look like our dumbest idea ever. It's too bad nobody thought of tricking Cheney into going and then swapping him for the girls, not that he would ever have the courage to set foot in Pyongyang.

What's up with North Korea putting so much focus on grain? I don't understand how they have so many problems feeding their people. If they would just plant an assload of summer and winter squashes, that alone would probably solve their food supply problems. Okra is another crop they need to grow. You wouldn't be able to screw up a crop of okra even if you tried your very best to have a crop disaster for insurance fraud purposes. And I get the impression that the Norks don't do any canning or pickling.

[Cheonmunka]

I lost the link but there's a CNN photo of them both and I have to say I'm not convinced at all that the guy in the photo next to Clinton is KJI. The guy looks ten years younger, at least.

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

The girls are free and will be going home.

Bill did it!

I can't believe how happy I feel....!!

[On the other hand]

I wonder if anyone recalls that it was Jimmy Carter who went over to NK in '94, at the semi-behest of the Clinton administration, and negotiated whatever nuclear deal that was, thus purportedly stemming off an armed conflict. At the time, there was a bit of buzz to the effect that Carter was upstaging Clinton by doing what the president himself was unable to do. What goes around comes around...

[Kikomom]

They've got us on the edge of our seats now. THE GIRL'S ARE BEING PARDONED.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/world/asia/05korea.html?_r=1

Just not word of when they are actually coming home. I hope these are just empty promises and he brings them home with him.

UPDATE:

[Ya-ta Boy]

It was a very fast trip in and out. The articles I've seen say it is unclear if the women are onboard the plane. The speed of the trip indicates that the negotiations had already been completed before Bill C left for NK.

In the photograph I saw, the Dear Leader looks frail and thin. He's clearly been sick.

I doubt we ever know all the details of the quiet diplomacy (and rightly so), but I'm looking forward to hearing as much as we can about how the deal was pulled off. Not just about the price, but what role Gore has been playing, etc.