Bill Clinton Visits North Korea, Meets With Leader Kim Jong Il

By Heejin Koo

Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Former President Bill Clinton met in North Korea with leader Kim Jong Il during a surprise visit that may help defuse tension over the communist regime’s nuclear program and secure the release of two jailed U.S. journalists.

The White House denied a report from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency that Clinton delivered a message from President Barack Obama to the country’s leadership during today’s meeting in Pyongyang. “That’s not true,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in Washington, referring to the report by KCNA.

Clinton was met at Pyongyang airport by Kim Kye Gwan, the country’s chief negotiator at talks to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear capability, KCNA said. The mission to secure the release of the journalists wouldn’t last long, an official traveling with Clinton’s wife, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said during a stopover in Spain.

The former president and the North Korean leader “had an exhaustive conversation” and a “wide-ranging exchange of views on the matters of common concern,” KCNA said without giving further details. The country’s National Defense Commission hosted Clinton at a dinner in his honor that was attended by officials including Kim Kye Gwan, the agency said.

The U.S. journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, were sentenced in June to 12 years of “reform through labor” for charges including an illegal border crossing from China. The imprisonment coincided with increased tension with the U.S., with Hillary Clinton pushing through United Nations sanctions against the North following the regime’s detonation of a nuclear device in May.

‘Private Mission’

The White House spokesman earlier today declined to comment on Bill Clinton’s visit, saying in a written statement, “While this solely private mission to secure the release of two Americans is on the ground, we will have no comment. We do not want to jeopardize the success of former President Clinton’s mission.”

Photographs were later released showing Clinton and Kim standing together and smiling. Kim had a stroke in August 2008, according to U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials. He appeared at North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly in April limping slightly and looking gaunt and aged. He is grooming his third and youngest son, Kim Jong Un, as heir, Japanese and South Korean media have reported. The elder Kim will soon transfer power to Jong Un, a South Korean government official has said.

Yu Ho Yeol, a professor of North Korean studies at Korea University in Seoul, said the visit “will certainly serve as a turning point in the U.S.-North Korean dialogue.”

Carter Trip

“A visit by Bill Clinton is certainly a more than acceptable level for North Korean officials, and will likely achieve good results in winning the journalists’ release,” the professor said.

Clinton’s visit echoes a similar trip by former President Jimmy Carter in June 1994. Following that visit, Clinton, as president, reached an agreement with Kim to freeze the communist nation’s nuclear activities.

In 2000, Clinton met Vice Marshall Jo Myong Rok, the first encounter between a U.S. president and senior North Korean official since the end of the Korean War. Later that year he sent Madeleine Albright, then secretary of state, to Pyongyang to meet Kim, the highest-ranking U.S. government official to visit the country.

The Clinton accord, known as the “Agreed Framework,” fell through in 2002, after North Korea admitted it had secretly restarted the nuclear program. It kicked out international inspectors and conducted a first nuclear test in 2006.

‘Higher Standing’

“Clinton in some ways has a higher standing now than Carter had in 1994, since he was the U.S. president who made the most tangible progress in relations with North Korea,” said Paik Hak Soon, a researcher on North Korean issues at Sejong Institute outside Seoul.

North Korea fired more than a dozen missiles this year in defiance of international pressure. Hillary Clinton has been gathering allies for her attempts to isolate the North, winning over China to impose the UN sanctions in June.

North Korea in April said it would never return to talks involving the U.S., China, Russia, South Korea and Japan. Last week Pyongyang signaled a softening of its stance, saying it may be open to negotiations outside the six-party setting.

North Korea had asked in unofficial contacts through its UN mission in New York that Clinton or a high-ranking Obama administration official visit for negotiations, South Korea’s Yonhap News said, without citing a source for the information.

Bill Richardson

Kim’s administration also used the “New York channel” to contact former Congressman Bill Richardson for informal talks in 2003, the White House said at the time. Richardson, who was Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the UN, negotiated the freedom of a U.S. helicopter pilot shot down in 1994 and a U.S. citizen who crossed into North Korea in 1996 and was accused of spying.

The State Department won’t comment until Bill Clinton’s mission is over, said an official, who declined to be identified. He was commenting in Rota, Spain, where Hillary Clinton’s plane was refueling.

Ling and Lee were detained in March while reporting for San Francisco-based Current TV, co-founded by Clinton’s former vice president, Al Gore.

Asked about their status last month, Hillary Clinton said the two women had expressed “great remorse for this incident.”

“Everyone is very sorry that it happened,” she said. “What we hope for now is that these two young women will be granted amnesty.”

By seeking an amnesty, the U.S. appears to be conceding that the two reporters broke North Korea’s laws, Paik said.

“The visit indicates that the U.S. and North Korea are willing to resolve this matter through dialogue,” he said. “We’ll have to see if this expands to the nuclear issue.”