Tempus Fugit

새로운 평화 움직임은 빌 클린턴 미 전 대통령이 이달 초 미 여기자 2명의 석방을 위해 방북한 이후 시작되었다. 이들은 즉시 석방되었고, 이후 북한의 행동에 극적인 변화가 있었다.

지난 주 북한은 4개월 간 북에 억류되었던 개성공단 현대아산 직원을 석방했다. 이후 김정일 위원장은 한국의 현대아산 현정은 회장과 네 시간에 걸쳐 오찬을 함께 했으며, 이산가족 상봉, 한국인의 대북 관광 재개, 개성공단 재개 등을 약속했다. 반면, 유엔주재 북한대표부 관계자 2명이 빌 리차드슨 뉴멕시코 지사와 면담을 가졌다.

국제위기 그룹의 한 분석가는 지난 6월 “핵프로그램 종결을 위한 회담을 재개하는 방법을 찾는 것은 북한의 나쁜 행동에 보상하는 것처럼 보일지 모른다. 그러나 여전히 외교가 최선의 길이다. 북한을 6자회담에 복귀시키는 것은 미 국무부 내에서 북한문제가 다뤄지는 방식에 있어, 미국의 고위급 접촉을 포함해 상당한 변화를 필요로 한다”고 적었다.

이제 새로운 접근법이 진행 중인 것처럼 보인다. 미 국무부는 한반도 비핵화 관련 회담에는 “6자회담이 최선의 포럼”이라는 말을 계속 반복하고 있다. 그러나 리차드슨 주지사가 이번 주 시인한 것처럼, “그들은 6자회담을 좋아하지 않는다. 그들은 새로운 포맷, 즉, 미국과의 직접대화를 원한다.” 이제 김정일이 이 목표를 향해 착실히 움직이고 있다.(김홍)

They shook hands with the sons of South Korea's late peacemaker president, bowed their heads at the portrait of the deceased, burnt incense at the mourning altar and finally left a wreath, emblazoned with the name of their boss, Kim Jong-il.

This was North Korea's first dispatch of envoys to Seoul in nearly two years, reviving hopes that the reclusive communist state might be ready to resume negotiations, nearly three months after a nuclear test that shocked the world.

The man they were saluting was the late South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his long, stubborn and eventually successful efforts to start rapprochement with the North. He died this week aged 85 and his funeral is tomorrow.

The new peace moves began after a visit to Pyongyang by Bill Clinton earlier this month on what was characterised as a purely private errand of mercy, to plead for the freedom of two American female journalists who had been sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment in a labour camp after apparently straying across the border from China.

The liberty of the two women was speedily obtained, and since then North Korea's behaviour has undergone a dramatic change.

Last week it released an employee of the North-South industrial joint venture Hyundai Asan who had been arrested four months earlier. Later, Kim Jong-il had a four-hour lunch with the South Korean woman who heads the venture and reportedly promised a slew of concessions, including the resumption of reunion meetings between families separated by the Korean War, the return of South Korean tourists to the north, and the re-starting a joint venture industrial park in the north. Meanwhile, two diplomats in North Korea's mission to the UN in New York, who are never normally allowed far off base, were welcomed to Santa Fe, New Mexico, by the state's governor Bill Richardson, an intermediary between Washington and Pyongyang under President Clinton.

After the meeting Mr Richardson told CNN: "They feel... that by giving us the two American journalists, that they've made an important gesture... They do feel they are owed a gesture on the US part." He added that he noticed, "a lessening of tension, good vibrations" from the North Korean side.

It was the arrest and conviction of the American journalists that precipitated Mr Clinton's diplomacy. But it was the nuclear test in June, with all the perils it menaced, that made a new dialogue with North Korea urgent.

The test provoked what were called "unprecedented sanctions" by the UN, "teeth that will bite" according to the American ambassador to the UN, Susan Price. But the world was reminded how narrow its options regarding the hermit crab really are.

"Finding a way to resume talks on ending the nuclear programme may appear to reward Pyongyang's bad behaviour," wrote an analyst with the International Crisis Group in June, "but diplomacy is still the least bad option... Getting North Korea back to talks will require significant changes in the way the portfolio is handled in Washington, including a high-level approach by the US".

Now that new approach seems to be underway. Washington continues to repeat the mantra – as reiterated this week by an administration official – that "the six-party talks" with South Korea, Japan, China and Russia "are the best forum" for negotiations over the de-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsular. But as Mr Richardson admitted this week: "They don't like the six-party talks. They want a new format... direct talks with the United States." Now Kim Jong-il is moving steadily towards that goal.