By then, the Perry trip was shaping up as a potentially historic breakthrough. The American met with the No. 2 man in North Korea’s communist hierarchy, parliamentary chief Kim Yong Nam, and gave him a letter from President Bill Clinton. Though specifics of his message remain secret, the document is believed to lay out a grand plan for rapprochement. Under Washington’s formula, North Korea must abide by the landmark 1994 nuclear deal, under which Pyongyang froze its nuclear-weapons program in return for new civilian reactors. Pyongyang must also mothball its long-range missiles, including the multistage Taepodong, which was test-fired over Japan last year. And it must cease selling weapons to Iraq and other rogue states. In return, the United States would move to lift the trade embargo against North Korea, which dates to anti-communist legislation of the 1950s, and to grant this erstwhile enemy full diplomatic recognition. One senior South Korean official familiar with the Clinton offer called it “a comprehensive solution that could eventually end the cold war.”
Pyongyang hasn’t jumped at the deal, yet there are clear signs of a thaw. The North is allowing greater access to American officials searching for the remains of U.S. soldiers killed during the Korean War, and last week opened a huge construction site to U.S. arms inspectors. The United States had suspected that the site at Kumchangri was a new nuclear-weapons facility, but found only a big, empty tunnel. That is sure to ease the way for further talks with the regime of North Korea’s reclusive “Great Leader,” Kim Jong Il, though Kim himself refused to meet with Perry on this trip. Says one Pyongyang-based development expert: “The whole atmosphere has changed.”
It certainly has. Having abandoned the belief that Kim’s regime is on the verge of a Soviet-style collapse, the administration has decided that it has little choice but to do business with him. And the North Korean leader apparently realizes that without U.S. support, he’ll never get the international financial backing he needs to ease a crippling famine, and revive dying industries. But Kim still has enemies in the U.S. Congress, where many lawmakers had hoped that Perry’s visit would toughen Clinton’s approach, and were dismayed that his visit had become a peace mission. They introduced legislation last week to curtail aid to North Korea, challenging the very spirit of Clinton’s peace offer before it was fully unveiled.
