Envoy reaches out to North Korea in groundbreaking visit

PYONGYANG, North Korea - Embarking on a journey that seemed highly improbable just a few months ago, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright opened a two-day visit to North Korea early Monday in hopes of advancing her goal of a tension-free Northeast Asia for the first time in decades.

No other secretary of state has visited North Korea and none of Albright's predecessors had even considered the idea because of the grim state of the relationship.

Albright was greeted at Pyongyang's airport by North Korea's vice foreign minister, Kim Gye Gwan. An 8-year-old boy wearing a red kerchief presented her with a bouquet of flowers.

She quickly left the airport in a motorcade that included vehicles driven up from the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea.

In between meetings with top North Korean officials, Albright planned to visit with kindergarten children and tour a food distribution site. Also on her agenda was a performance of the Pyongyang Acrobatic Circus.

Albright left Washington shortly after midnight Sunday on the 17-hour journey to the North Korean capital, a city U.S. forces had reduced to rubble during the Korean War. It is now a metropolis with tall buildings and broad boulevards, although with scarcely any traffic.

If her talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il go well, President Clinton will follow her to Pyongyang as part of an Asia trip next month, administration officials said.

''We still believe there are very significant steps that have to be taken to meet the concerns the United States has,'' said a senior State Department official aboard Albright's plane, speaking on the condition of anonymity. ''We have reason to believe that because of discussions that we have had that North Korea may be prepared to take some very serious steps.''

The official did not elaborate, but Albright's main concern is North Korea's missile development program and its export of missiles to Iran and Syria. She will confer with Kim on those issues but officials said no agreements are expected.

The United States is considering the creation of a national missile defense, partly out of concern that North Korea may some day direct ICBM's at American cities.

North Korea has for years ignored American efforts to stop exporting missiles, and the possibility that the Pyongyang regime may now be listening to these concerns has generated excitement among arms control advocates.

''North Korea may be the most historic and important trip of her (Albright's) tenure,'' says Joseph Cirincione, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In Clinton's quest for a foreign policy legacy worthy of the history books, his initiative with North Korea seems more promising than any other, a turn of events few would have predicted six years ago when the two counties seemed close to war.

Clinton has shown patience and diligence in seeking an accommodation with North Korea. His initiative has prospered, at least for the time being, because of a surprise willingness of Kim to reciprocate.

Kim, perhaps motivated by economic catastrophe, has scrapped North Korea's policy of reclusiveness and has been reaching out not only to the United States but to other countries, most notably South Korea.

In the process, Kim has shed the stereotypical view of him. Don Oberdorfer, a Korea expert at the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies, said Kim was depicted in intelligence reports as an awful man who was ''introverted and strange.''

But he showed himself to be ''very confident and very poised'' when in June he had his historic encounter with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

Joel Wit, a former State Department official who has visited North Korea 14 times, agreed that Kim has not lived up to his reputation as being ''a little bit crazy.''

Still, Conservative groups are concerned that Clinton may be taken in by the newly amiable North Korean leader.

The Center for Security Policy cites a classified Pentagon report leaked last month asserting that there is no evidence that North Korea is changing fundamentally and that there has been no reduction in North Korea's military.

After two days of discussion in Pyongyang, Albright will fly across the Demilitarized Zone to Seoul to report on her talks to senior officials from Japan and South Korea, both of which continue to be nervous about North Korea's military. As a deterrent, the United States maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea.

Just two weeks ago, Kim dispatched to Washington his right hand man, Vice Marshall Jo Myong Rok. The visit produced a communique in which the two sides pledged ''to take steps to fundamentally improve their bilateral relations in the interests of enhancing peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region.''

The two countries do not have diplomatic relations, but have discussed the possibility of opening liaison offices in each other's capital.

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On the Net: State Department backgrounder on North Korea: http://www.state.gov/www/background-notes/north-korea-0696-bgn.html

State Department backgrounder on South Korea: http://www.state.gov/www/background-notes/southkorea-0006-bgn.html