Bill Clinton's North Korea Mission

TODAY IS FRIDAY, MAY 24, 2013

August 5, 2009 at 10:00 AM

Bill Clinton's North Korea Mission

In this photo released by Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service in Tokyo, former U.S. President Bill Clinton meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Tuesday. (AP)

The Obama administration dispatched Bill Clinton to Pyongyang to meet the North Korean dictator, pose for the propaganda shot, and bring out American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee.

The job done, the White House put to rest all the Beltway gossip about whether the president, the secretary of state, and the former president would serve the country or their own egos.

But the big questions are still unanswered. Up next, On Point: Bill Clinton’s mission to Pyongyang, and what it means for the US, North Korea, and an administration facing a world full of problems.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

Guests:

Joining us from Seoul, South Korea, is Evan Ramstad, Korea correspondent for The Wall Street Journal covering the Clinton mission and the release of the American journalists.

Joining us from Busan, South Korea, is Brian Myers. He is a researcher of North Korean ideology and propaganda at Dongseo University, where he heads the International Studies department, and author of a forthcoming book on North Korean propaganda titled “The Cleanest Race.”An American citizen, he has lived in South Korea for eight years.

Joining us from New York is Michael Crowley, a senior editor at The New Republic. His most recent article, “The Decider,” looks at the Obama foreign policy team. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, GQ, and Slate.

And joining us from Aspen, Colo., is Mitchell Reiss, diplomat-in-residence at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. He held several top diplomatic positions in the George W. Bush administration and has extensive experience negotiating with North Korea, including as chief negotiator for the United States in the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization in the Clinton administration. He was United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland, with the diplomatic rank of Ambassador, until stepping down in 2007.

Lilya Lopheka

Coverage of Asian Affairs on TV

Does anybody know why we cannot get Al Jazeera TV as a selection from our Cable Company. Are they not allowed to carry Al Jazeera?

Al Jazeera’s reporters are all over Asia, almost in all major cities. They have the best coverage, but we just cannot have it. There is something wrong.

Al Jazeera aired a wonderful piece about the these two “journalist” girls, their families, and how it was covered by the North Korean TV. The picture over there is total opposite of what we see here, even though they were [government TV translation] very respectful towards the US and Obama Administration.
Mike

nice that these girls can return to their families, hopefully they dont make the same mistake twice.

Very thoughtful for Bill to go there and do this for the families of the two girls.
DIANNAg

We should not think like the typical Americans with narrow focus.

How would North Korean’s wiew us during this mission?
I know that they are thrilled to have Clinton go there, but it is a mixed feeling.

I am sure millions of people around the world feel like we were exploiting these two girls, and when they are in trouble, the heavy-hitters step in and then the same arrogant policy goes on: We are always Good, if you don’t agree with us, you are Bad.
Micah

Here’s how it is. North Korea is weak. They have no real power over anyone or country but there own peasants. The North Koreans can continue to fool themselves, but to the rest of the world, they are a joke. They may or may not have nukes that will actually arm, but if they did use them, they would quickly and easily be crushed. We shouldn’t waste too much time on them, they will destroy themselves eventually.
Joanna Drzewieniecki

Before writing this note, I looked up the comments on CNN. A surprising number of people are blaming the journalists for getting caught by the North Koreans. It strikes me as rather odd and I am beginning to wonder if there isn’t some racism involved. If these women were white, would the reaction have been the same? In addition, everyone seems to be forgetting that these two journalists worked for Al Gore. And Al Gore is a friend of Bill Clinton’s. Good enough reason for Clinton to be motivated to take action (with the permission of the Obama administration).
The North Koreans love attention to a neurotic degree. They may still be fooling their own people but they don’t follow most anyone else. Americans should not fall into the trap of taking North Korean plays to the media too seriously. We have to keep our eye on our goals in dealings with North Korea.
g

Two luxury boats in exchange for two reporters!
http://portico360.blogspot.com/ Rahuldeep

Those who criticize the journalists for going into this area to cover these issues are inadvertently walking a funny tightrope of racism. Blame the hostages? Really?

What if those hostages were white women from Kansas?

For one, the entire coverage of the issue would have been different. Moreover, we would have been justified in getting those women back by whatever means necessary.

The racial element of this issue has not been aptly discussed. Wake up, America. You’re not white anymore.
http://www.human-dog.com Chris Weagel

Someone brought up this deal coming at the cost of American Prestige. What American Prestige?

We launched an illegal war in Iraq that has killed a million innocent people – and it continues to this day. That’s in addition to a near endless list of other atrocities we’ve supported around the world for more than a century.

“American Prestige” is an absurdity that could only exist in the snow globe world of American Political/Media Power.
David H

Bill Clinton is neither a current elected official nor appointed official of this administration. So-called Republican hypocrites would be nay-saying this (for that very reason) if it suited their propaganda & got them air-time. We should not let N Korea frame the significance of *Bill* Clinton’s visit, for us. To do that, would be the very kind of kow-towing that has NOT happened. The reporters are freed, any other “meaning” here is just as much up to us
Alice

I think people are overlooking the reality of gender in North Korean culture. Bill Clinton being sent to North Korea does not marginalize Hillary – it was a practical response to dealing with a country that not only cares little for diplomacy but cares even less about issues of gender (not to mention race). I think Hillary is smart enough to know that to get the women out, the question would be better recieved if spoken from a male voice. It’s unfortuante, but a reality in what is a woefully isolated and xenophobic culture.
Helena

I’m usually a huge fan of On Point, but I have to say how disappointed I’ve been over the recent several shows covering North Korea. Brian Myers has now been on the show twice, and it seems that there is no attempt to get a diversity of views among the guests invited to the show. Painting the North Korean government as simply an incorrigible rogue regime doesn’t begin to get to the source of the conflict between North Korea and the US which goes back more than 50 years to the Korean War. There are many others with extensive experience that could provide alternative views such as Selig Harrison, Bruce Cumings, and perhaps Korean scholars in South Korea with a perspective of their own.

As regards the issue itself, it is blatantly wrong to call the two journalists ‘hostages’. They crossed the border illegally and were arrested for doing so. We wouldn’t go around calling the many Mexicans that get arrested for crossing the border into the US ‘hostages’, would we?
carlos

Hostages?

During the entire hour of this show, US Border Patrol has taken 14 Latino Hostages from South America who accidently have crossed the border.

They are all being kept in hot and stinking detention center at Laredo, TX, right now. No communication with their families and no ex-honduran prez is coming to Washington for their release. No media coverage for them either.

What hostages?
Leslie Burg

Essentially, I agree with Helena’s comment above. In addition, the emphasis on what former President Bill Clinton’s visit did to damage US prestige in the eyes of the world is a patently ridiculous one. I had to turn off WBUR this morning, I was so annoyed at the way this subject was being handled and with the lightly veiled insinuations being cast.

Ostensibly, the two women journalists made a mistake by trespassing on land belonging to a belligerent nation and were arrested for it. We have a history of sending envoys to negotiate the release of US citizens, whether considered hostages or not, being held by nations with which we do not have cordial relations. Bill Clinton was a perfect choice in this instance since he had relatively good relations with North Korea during his presidency, is now a private citizen, and is a friend of Al Gore, for whose paper the women work. And he got the job done!

The US should not need to worry about what it is “giving up” to North Korea because of the decision to send Clinton to negotiate for the women’s release.
I would think we are more secure than that, and was frankly disgusted with some of those comments made by callers and discussed seriously by the show’s host and guests alike. In fact, I question why this was even a topic on which to spend the entire first hour of the the show?
justanother

It is a good thing that a good portion of American care about political issues and stay as closely as they could from our government, medias and other sources, but do remember that these sources are still single sources which basically generated from American views.

Of course, part of the portrayal about North Korea are true, but those views can vary from what kind of environment you were born and raised at. I came from another country, it’s very interesting to learn how most American view where I came from. They made comments like “That must have been horrible!”, and I answer “I didn’t feel that way at all”. And I fully understand why they made that comment given the fact I have lived here for quite some time. My personal experience really helps me to realize that if reality is told by a story teller, it become a story. We all are thrilled by drama not reality, reality is for real people living their daily life and how they feel internally, do we know exactly how people feel in North Korea?
Lilya

This whole thing is a sham.

These two girls had phone conversations with their families before the plane took off.

The whole deal was sealed and they they act like they were shocked when they saw Clinton.

Way too fishy. Has anybody seen a Spy with the word “Spy” tatood on their forehead?
Richard Johnston

The dude in South Korea’s problem is that his focus is the reunification of the 2 Koreas. He doesn’t really care about American interests.

Second: none of the these guys has shown me what damage is done by Bill Clinton going to Pyongyang to chat with Kim Jong Il and retrieve these 2 naive, misguided ladies who broke local law and got arrested for good reason. The North Korean leaders are nuts, so what’s wrong with supporting their egos and continuing embargoes and UN resolutions. They know very well that if they ever use a single kiloton of those nuclear weapons they will be instantly obliterated.
Sean Powers

O.K. Let me think. It is 2009. Two “American journalists” get lost in communist China and traipsed into perhaps the most notorious dictatorship-run country on earth, namely: North Korea. Not to belittle this, some “American hikers” trot through war-torn Iraq into a presently very hostile country called umm… oh, Iran. Now, I didn’t get a high school diploma – just a G.E.D. – but shouldn’t they get a President Obama “stupid” award? …and for your opportunistic and jingoistic guests who called them “hostages” – please tell them to spend their time talking to Dan Quayle or somebody. Entering countries without permission is probably illegal, like in the U.S. NPR should dig deeper than this – Jane Clayson tried to pass off information about more “American hostages” in North Korea as if it was fact… If this drama is so compelling, how come it hasn’t been on National Geographic’s “Locked-Up Abroad”? There’s something funny going on…
carlos

It was disappointing…none of the guests ever dared to touch the reality in this ordeal.

What if they were really really really spying on North Korea?

Look at the “Hikers” in Iran. They were involved in Middle East politics up to their necks before. One of them was going to Yeshiva University in Brooklyn. Other two wrote articles about Israel/Palestine issues.

One said “I was exploring my Arabic roots” in Iraq. Excuse me, when you are an Arab, you don’t wander around in Kurdisthan, entering Iraq from the “North”. Da! Kurds and Arab’s don’t mix these days.

Who hired these guys? Either the CIA or Israel.
justanother

*****Who hired these guys? Either the CIA or Israel.*****

I thought they work with the travel website company “Lonely Planet”, don’t they?
Ralph Chang

On the show yesterday, I was offended and found innaccurate comments by a male caller who labelled the 2 women former hostages “stupid” because “they knew they were illegally crossing the border”. The caller has jumped to conclusions that have no basis in fact. A number of experts on North Korea and China, including some on NPR, although I didn’t hear this among your guest experts yesterday, have pointed out that the border between N. Korea and China is long and ill-defined. A Chinese pastor who actually had been a guide for the 2 women in the past said that the border at that point was difficult to know. Furthermore, we don’t know that they WERE in N. Korea, that’s only what the NK government said. It’s quite possible that the N. K. border guards or military, in search of American reporters who they’d heard were doing a story about their ill treatment of refugees crossed over into the Chinese side to capture them. The history of N. Korea in the last 30 years is filled with examples of their doing similar aggressive and–under international law–illegal acts. For example, the Japanese know positively that NK has kidnapped Japanese who were IN JAPAN and taken them by submarine back to NK to use them to teach the NK military or spies how to speak Japanese. Second example, when the NK military attacked and killed at least one American soldier in the de-militarized zone during the Johnson admin with axes. Do you want to call the Japanese hostages “stupid”? and blame them, too??
The caller was stupid. The women journalists may not have done the brightest thing in the world, but they were not stupid nor were they doing it “only to further their careers.” I agree with Rahuldeep (commented here on Aug. 4) that there is an implicit level of racism in people who not only call the women stupid but say they should have been abandoned there by the Obama administration, which is what the caller yesterday on the show said. Would this caller have called the women stupid if they were WHITE women and if they had been doing an important story about the severe abuse of WHITE refugees captured while trying to escape a homicidal government that treats it’s citizens who try to escape like the Nazis treated the Jews? The story L. Ling and Euna Lee were doing was an important story that reflected poorly on both N.K. and China. Because the Chinese government permits Chinese citizens who are slave traders to enslave many of the NK refugee women and sell them as sex slaves, usually somewhere in Asia. Others are forcibly returned by the Chinese government to N.K. where they are known to be put into concentration camps that are very similar to Auschwitz.
People who call other people stupid who have no real knowledge of the situation should not get a free pass from On Point’s experts. Usually they don’t get a free pass from Tom, but both Jane and the other experts let this guy get one.
Rod

The collective facial expression of BC & KJI says it all. This was previously planned (behind closed doors) it is not as if the mere presence of BC got the journalists freed. Clearly political move with major concessions from the US. KJI’s regime baffles me -how a communist leader can hold practically any foreign citizen hostage simply for their political gains and get away with it.. X_x
IDunno

It is so easy to immediately play the race card, and understandably so; but even if the photos and videos of the released “journalists” were not in play, and all references to their ancestry were ommited, the same questions are still relevent. I have been to the DMZ and it is immediately apparent that anybody who does not want to die should not tread near it. The comment here by Mr. Chang stated, “The story L. Ling and Euna Lee were doing was an important story that reflected poorly on both N.K. and China. Because the Chinese government permits Chinese citizens who are slave traders to enslave many of the NK refugee women and sell them as sex slaves, usually somewhere in Asia. Others are forcibly returned by the Chinese government to N.K. where they are known to be put into concentration camps that are very similar to Auschwitz.”
The point is: Knowing this, the journalists MUST HAVE KNOWN THEY WERE RISKING THEIR LIVES even as they were just in China…and then to be even in the area of the border of North Korea – hello ?? – EVERYONE KNOWS about the Korean War… and that there is still a STATE OF WAR THAT EXISTS NOW, and that the U.S.A. was and is involved ! Now, the “journalists” work for a person who is named AL GORE, the former VICE-PRESIDENT… everyone can understand that these “journalists” would be suspect for spying or even just something that irritates the governments. One of the “journalists” was born in South Korea, which adds more to the situation. It may matter to some people, but if we leave color or race out of the questions, the questions still beg answering. I am not saying that President Clinton should not have gone there – even if it was an unfortunate political move – because it is the responsibility of our government to protect it’s citizens first and foremost. I am happy they were saved from worse treatment. I also hold no illusions about the actions or moralities of the North Korean government. At the same time, U.S. citizens most usually forget their own history in regards to foreign affairs. We are no angels. As was stated yesterday on NPR, every year the U.S.A. does arrest HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people deemed illegal. They put them into overcrowded prisons along with murderers, gangs and serious criminals. Some die every year in prison. They do not have rights or lawyers most of the time. So, things are not so one-sided, or black and white.
“The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.” —Katha-Upanishad.
Ralph Chang

The assertion by IDunno, as contrasted with Joanna’s, Rahuldeep’s, and mine above, that “the race card” was being played is wrong. Although his post was thoughtful and interesting, there are a number of mistaken statements in it. For one thing, any person of minority race in the US knows that racism is still REAL. I was born in this country and speak English like most educated Americans, but I still experience low level racist behavior in liberal Mass. quite often. Just yesterday a white kid yelled at me in mock Chinese as I rode by him on my bicycle. I think that the statements by the caller I was criticizing were racist and is not in my imagination and a “card”.
The observation by IDunno that the 2 woman journalists were in danger even if in China due to the poor reflection of their upcoming report on noth NK and China has some truth. As I said before, their as-yet-unpublished story is an IMPORTANT one and was WORTH working on. The women did have some risk of being arrested by China, although this had not happened after several months of their being there. The reason? My guess is that the Chinese government, while some elements of it tolerate the female trafficking, other elements don’t. It is a mistake to think that China’s government is a monolith. It ISN’T. There are thousands of protests in China every year that are not suppressed violently or with mass arrests. A good example of an area that has the government on both sides of a topic is the environment, pollution, and climate change. While the air and water pollution in China is terrible and local officials wanting to improve their local economies often tolerate polluting factories, the new environmental laws passed on the national level in China are in many ways stricter than in the US. Check out the NY Time’s Nov. 19, 2007 article on the Three Gorges Dam and the environmental controversy. It says, “To ease its addiction to coal, China wants 15 percent of the country’s energy consumption to come from renewable sources by 2020, compared with 7.5 percent today. To do that, it is developing solar, wind and biomass projects so rapidly that some experts say it could soon become a world leader in renewable energy.” IDunno made the probably false statement that Ling and Lee being hired by Gore was a debit with respect to relations with China. In fact, China probably respects Gore MORE than we do. On page 30 of the Aug. 24,’09 (just arrived at my mailbox) Time magazine, column 2, it says that only 44% of Americans in a recent poll wanted action to be taken on global warming, whereas 94% of Chinese do!
The various statements by people above that hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are arrested in the US every year and that the arrest of the 2 journalists are the same sort of thing are partly correct. IF, in fact, Ling and Lee were actually on NK territory, they were rightfully arrested. How many Mexican illegal immigrants get sentenced to 12 years of prison?? The real reason for Ling and Lee’s capture was political.
R. Chang

One last thing. Here is a good weblink for people who want to know more about the female trafficking through China:
http://www.protectionproject.org/human_rights_reports/report_documents/china.doc.
RC

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