North Korean officials and U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s Korean affairs advisers have held their first meeting.
Director of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s U.S. affairs bureau, Ri Gun, is visiting New York to discuss the nuclear verification issue with the U.S. His delegation on Saturday attended a conference of Korean Peninsula experts hosted by the U.S. National Committee on American Foreign Policy. The North Korean officials listened to presentations on a range of topics, including Washington’s foreign policy stance during the presidential transition and the normalization of U.S.-North Korean ties.
The U.S. President-elect’s chief aide on Korean Peninsula policies, Frank Januzzi, also attended the conference. The National Committee says the event was held to introduce the new U.S. administrative officials to North Korea, pave the way for the six-way nuclear process and boost bilateral understanding of pending issues.
The committee confirmed the attendance of former U.S. officials, including ex-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and ex-Ambassador to Seoul Donald Gregg. But it refused to comment on whether new administrative officials attended the meeting. [KBS Global]
Frank Januzzi's past record on North Korea should give everyone some indication of the direction of President Obama’s North Korea policy. Januzzi is a believer in the philosophy that if we only understood North Korea better we could get it to change.
North Korea is not going to give up its nuclear ambitions anytime soon since that is its single largest bargaining chip with the US and the world. Its leaders will continue to employ the policy of extortion - which has worked amazingly well so far - and attempt to change the US rather than them changing. After all, North Korea is not the ones who are anctious about having a nuclear program....the US is.
I guess we'll just have to see how Januzzi will handle things this time around.
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