More Tough Words from Washington

U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow is not backing down:

Ignoring North Korean growls over the weekend that earlier remarks had jeopardized nuclear weapons negotiations, Alexander Vershbow, the U.S. ambassador to Korea, said yesterday that if those nuclear talks failed, Pyongyang would be to blame. He also asked that Seoul’s economic projects in the North should be “coordinated” with those negotiations.

“The signals from North Korea in recent days have not been encouraging, as they have raised artificial obstacles to the renewal of talks,” the ambassador told a forum organized by the Korea Institute of International Economic Policy.

Note that Vershbow refers to economic, not humanitarian, aid. And why is this linked to nuclear issues?

Mr. Vershbow also warned yesterday that Seoul should be cautious in inter-Korean economic cooperation. “Coordination of our efforts is necessary,” he said. “We cannot make the mistake of transferring technologies that will end up increasing the North’s military threat.”

While reiterating that Washington does not oppose inter-Korean cooperation per se, he added without further elaboration, “We also see a need for coordination between economic cooperation and progress on the six-party talks.”

The Korea Herald has more:

“Despite our best efforts to engage with North Korea, and despite our best intentions, we cannot turn our faces away from the fact that North Korea remains a military threat, with over million troops, claims to possess nuclear weapons, and has near-total control of its own people,” Alexander Vershbow said at a forum hosted by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.

“It remains to be seen whether North Korea is truly prepared to eliminate its nuclear programs, and do so in a prompt and verifiable manner,” the ambassador said.

Next up, Jay Lefkowitz (speaking last Saturday), who is determined to pulverize the crushed fragments of my ill-fated prediction that he’d say nothing further of substance:

Jay Lefkowitz, the U.S. envoy for human rights in North Korea, said the international community has been working on a series of approaches to improve the rights situation in North Korea. At a hastily called news conference yesterday afternoon, he urged Seoul “to participate and be a little more vocal.” He added, “There is never an inappropriate time to talk about human rights.”

Referring to the recently adopted UN resolution condemning the North Korean regime’s rights abuses, Mr. Lefkowitz said it was time for Seoul to stop dithering. “In the future, South Korea can join,” he said. The United Nations General Assembly adopted the resolution last month, but South Korea abstained, as it has consistently on such resolutions.

Let’s all hope he proves me wrong again very soon.

I caught the end of President Bush giving a speech on Iraq to the World Affairs Council today, and heard him add a gratuitious comment on North Korea, which is close to a direct quote.

North Korea is a nation that brazenly admits to having nuclear [nyoo-cloo-lar: how it grates] weapons. They are counterfeiting our currency, and they are starving their people.

Nobody’s off the reservation here. This is a significant rhetorical shift. Just don’t ask me what it means yet, other than that Pyongyang’s actions have at least temporarily tipped the balance in favor of the hard-liners in Washington.

Maybe this explains a few things. It looks like South Korea’s most reflexive appeaser of North Korea, Chung Dong-Young, has been apple-bobbing in the honeypot again.

Lefkowitz reportedly requested a meeting with Unification Minister Chung Dong-young on Thursday. But Chung dodged it, saying that he is “not in the same league,” a source in the government said.

The man is out of his head. Lefkowitz reportedly has the ear of President Bush. How is that supposed to affect U.S.-Korea relations?

Instead, Lefkowitz attended two separate meetings with a senior Unification Ministry official and Chun Young-woo, the foreign ministry’s deputy minister for policy planning and international organizations.

He’s the one who washes Chung’s car.

Chun and Lefkowitz waged warfare in words from the start. “I know that the human rights situation in North Korea is a very immediate issue for the South Korean government,” Lefkowitz said. The American official said that he wanted to discuss ways the U.S. and South Korea can “cooperate together bilaterally” on the issue.

Chun agreed that South Korea shares “serious concerns” about the situation and wants to see human rights conditions improve. “But we have flexibility in the ways and means that we employ to achieve the same objective,” Chun said. The conversation clearly showed the two sides’ differences on how to approach the North’s human rights conditions.

It was thought that Chun would be the highest-ranking official whom Lefkowitz could meet in Seoul, but the foreign ministry arranged another meeting the next day between the American envoy and Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Yu Myung-hwan.

What might have raised Lefkowitz’s eyebrows was the time and place of the meeting: a teashop outside the ministry at 7:30 a.m. What they discussed was not released to the media. In a nutshell, Seoul gave Lefkowitz a frosty reception to deliver a strong message that, even though it did not thwart the Seoul Summit hosted by human rights groups, it did not want to irritate North Korea by giving a warm welcome to the special envoy.

Lefkowitz asked for a meeting with him, Chung gave him the most contemptuous snub imaginable, and Lefkowitz just called a press conference instead, thus racheting up the rhetoric even more, and further widening the U.S.-Korea split over human rights.

Good going, Chung. You’ve certainly influenced some senior U.S. officials! A hard-liner can’t find better allies than Chung Dong-Young and Kim Jong-Il!