Did They or Didn’t They?
I took a few days off from blogging and figured by today I’d know if Chris Hill had succeeded in giving away the store to the North Koreans, but the reporting today is ambiguous.
The New York Times says that Hill left Pyongyang with the main “issues unresolved” but quotes or cites no hard authority to substantiate this. The Chosun Ilbo quotes “observers” who see “signs” that Hill’s visit “produced some results,” and also quotes or cites no hard authority to substantiate its version.
The impression this leaves is that the North Koreans told us what the deal was going to be — the pro-North Korean mouthpiece Chosun Sinbo called it an “ultimatum” — and we’re still thinking it over. Reuters reports that the North Korean terms included a demand for more (wait for it) “compensation.”
Expect a decision from the Bush administration the first week of November.
Welcome back – I was really looking forward to a post about Roh Moo-Hyun comments on how he “defended the North and gave the utmost support to North Korea’s position”. Figured that would be classic, but GI Korea and the Marmot covered for you pretty good.
You know, aside from that, I’d say that (a) nothing Roh said really surprised me or really went beyond some of the stupid sh*t he’d said in office, and (b) who cares what this discredited has-been says anyway? At least DJ bought himself a legacy. As for Roh, no one is looking back on his success at reducing tensions, making enduring improvements in relations, moderating the regime’s brutality, encouraging reform, or denuclearizing the North. Roh’s record, which stands in sharp contrast to all of the airy promise of his inauguration, speaks so well for itself. What can I add to that? Just the fact that some of us have already forgot how incompetent and delusional he really was.