Albright's visit breaks new ground

One wonders what went through the minds of South Korea's leaders as they saw on television Madeleine Albright giving the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, a two-handed handshake, toasting him with red wine, exchanging lapel pins and mimicking North Korean children as they sang a song glorying the Dear Leader.

Or what they thought when they observed the US Secretary of State, a champion of democracy, sharing the dais on Tuesday evening with the Stalinist leader at a propaganda show for the 55th anniversary of the Korean Workers' Party, which climaxed with thousands of soldiers marching in lock step and shouting, "We Will Support Our Powerful Nation With Rifles."

This was a diplomatic coup for Kim Jong-il, who ensured that pictures of himself and Ms Albright chatting together were broadcast across his tightly controlled country. Here he was rubbing shoulders with the top diplomat of a country which has listed North Korea as a terrorist nation since its agents bombed a South Korean airliner, KAL Flight 858, in November 1987, killing 115 people.

The event was all the more incongruous when one considers that no Western leader has accepted an invitation to share the platform at a celebration in Beijing of the Communist party of China, whose leaders enjoy close diplomatic and economic relations with the West.

"It is one thing for the Kims to embrace each other as two `brothers' breaching a wall dividing their people," said a Western observer in Seoul, referring to the historic August summit in Pyongyang between South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il. "But it was a bit disconcerting to see the American Secretary of State dancing in Pyongyang."

Madeleine Albright and President Clinton, who is expected to follow her to North Korea next month, are undoubtedly aware they are repeating history in Asia by suddenly opening up to a closed communist nation as Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon did with China in 1971-72.

But the hastily arranged American initiative does not mean that the end is nigh for the hermit kingdom of Kim Jong-il. After Nixon's meeting with Chairman Mao, it was nearly a decade before communist China began opening up. Many observers in the Asia-Pacific region indeed fear America's sudden embrace of North Korea will make the process of achieving unity on the Korean peninsula more difficult.

Engaging with the US at the highest levels has always been the goal of North Korea, which until this year's historic North-South summit in Pyongyang scorned South Korea as a US puppet. President Kim's daring diplomacy brought the two Cold War enemies on the Korean peninsula into direct contact for the first time, but the sudden, dramatic advance in US policy towards North Korea has raised concerns in Seoul that Kim Jong-il will put the inter-Korean rapprochement on the back burner again.

Already the failure of North Korea to follow through on the high expectations engendered by the summit between the two Kims has become an embarrassment for the South Korean President. Despite highly symbolic and emotional meetings between selected members of separated families after the North-South summit, Pyongyang has done little to arrange further meetings and has practically stalled economic and military co-operation. The North Korean leader has yet to name a date for a return visit to Seoul.

President Kim is being savaged by the main opposition party in South Korea, the Grand National Party, for "playing into the hands of North Korea, which consistently tries to bypass South Korea and communicate with the US". Also watching the Albright visit with some unease were the Japanese. A close strategic ally of the US and South Korea in dealing with North Korea, Japan has singularly failed to achieve a similar diplomatic breakthrough, and Tokyo fears its concerns will be ignored by Pyongyang as North Korea cosies up to Washington.

One of these concerns is the fate of 10 Japanese nationals allegedly kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. Japanese Prime Minister Mr Yoshiro Mori made the astonishing admission to British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair on Friday that he had suggested solving this dispute by pretending to find them in a third country, and he now faces a growing domestic clamour for his resignation. North Korean and Japanese officials are to meet next week for the third time to try to overcome obstacles to opening diplomatic relations, and Pyongyang has stiffened its conditions, confirming Tokyo's worries.

The Japanese, on the other hand, have reason to be grateful to Ms Albright. They were unnerved when North Korea fired a long-range missile across Japan two years ago and the US official seems to have secured a promise from the North Korean leader it will be the last such firing.

Washington, Tokyo and Seoul share the goal of bringing North Korea out of its belligerent isolation, and the Albright visit has undoubtedly eased tensions further.

South Korea has been publicly enthusiastic about the US initiative, with President Kim declaring "inter-Korean and North Korea-US relations are mutually complementary and an improvement in one has the effect of boosting the other". But privately Seoul would like more control over the sequencing of events, and frets about the North's failure to loosen up.

Ms Albright assured officials from Japan and South Korea in Seoul yesterday that Washington would stay in step as they all reconcile with North Korea.

However the message they want her to convey urgently to President Clinton is that, if and when he comes to Pyongyang, he should emphasise in no uncertain terms that conditions for normalisation of relations with the US include becoming serious about engaging the South, and about resolving differences with Japan.