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Seoul Still Baffled by Clinton's N.Korea Trip
CRINTON!The South Korea government was still reeling Wednesday after former U.S. President Bill Clinton's surprise visit to North Korea. A senior government official said, "The worst-case scenario for us would be to see the repetition of the nightmare of 1994." At the time, the South Korean government was completely left out in the cold as the U.S. and North Korea concluded the Geneva Agreed Framework in the wake of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's visit to Pyongyang. Under the deal, South Korea had to bear most of the construction costs for a light-water reactor that was to be traded for the North's closure of its plutonium-producing nuclear plant in Yongbyon. "It's important for us to maintain close cooperation with the U.S. to prevent us from being left out in the cold as in 1994," the official added. But a Unification Ministry official said a repeat of that disaster is unlikely. "At the moment, North Korea is excited with memories of 1994, but it seems most likely that Clinton's visit was a kind of one-point relief pitch aimed at winning the release of the American journalists. We need to watch how Washington and Pyongyang will go ahead with their dialogue," he said. His rationale was that Carter visited Pyongyang in 1994 expressly to find a solution to the nuclear issue, while Clinton visited to seek the release of the two U.S. reporters who had been sentenced to hard labor for illegally entering the country. Posted by: Steve White 2009-08-07 |
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