By Keith Luse, NCNK Executive Director
In August of 2002, as a U.S. Senate staff member, I made the first of my five trips to North Korea. The United States had been providing food assistance through the World Food Program (WFP) and Senator Richard Lugar, then-Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, wanted to know the extent to which U.S. aid intended for the neediest of North Korea’s citizens was finding its way to them. WFP officials were concerned that food distribution was not allowed in some counties and there were challenges to monitoring the delivery of food.
My hosts for the seven-day visit were Foreign Ministry diplomats Madame Choe Son Hui and Mr. Hwang Thae Hyok. Choe, now the Foreign Minister, and Mr. Hwang honored my request for a range of site visits, including food aid distribution stations in remote areas, an orphanage, a biscuit factory and other locations. Hours-long car rides through the countryside provided an opportunity to absorb a range of views and to engage in extended conversation with Madame Choe and Mr. Hwang. Images of farmers working in the fields, coal miners walking along the road; ears of corn, picked prior to maturation drying in the road and long dark tunnels have been embedded in my mind since that first visit.
Through my interaction with Foreign Ministry officials, I was admittedly stunned by some of their analysis of U.S. policy toward North Korea, as well as their profile determinations of American leaders. It was informative for me to gain insight on the significance of certain cultural traits unique to North Korea or the Peninsula as a whole.
My interactions with North Koreans convinced me that their judgement about Americans and U.S. foreign policy positions was sometimes based on faulty analysis. Through subsequent years, I realized that American assessments about North Korea and its leaders were similarly not always on-base. Since my return to the U.S. and continuing to this day, my initial visit to North Korea prompted a reoccurring thought – that miscommunications and lack of understanding between the two countries could strike the match of war.
While in Pyongyang in 2002, North Korean officials expressed frustration with the refusal of the George W. Bush Administration to conduct high level negotiations on any issue. This refusal to negotiate along with the “axis of evil” brand applied by President Bush had convinced the North Koreans that the U.S. was seeking a military confrontation. Upon returning to Washington, I carried a written invitation from a North Korean official for Senator Lugar to visit. Lugar consulted with Secretary of State Colin Powell, who asked that he not make the trip. On a subsequent trip to Pyongyang, the North Koreans issued a second invitation for Senator Lugar which was again vetoed by the Bush Administration. Lugar, however, continued sending his staff to the North. Over the next six years I made four additional trips, two of which occurred with Frank Jannuzi, my Committee counterpart who worked for then-Senator Biden.
Given North Korea’s interest in the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, Ken Myers, another Committee colleague, accompanied me on a separate occasion. Two of my visits to North Korea included going to the Yongbyon nuclear complex, concurrent with trips to the facility by Dr. Siegfried Hecker, former Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Former State Department officials Jack Pritchard and Joel Wit and the late Professor John Lewis of Stanford University were also traveling companions along the way.
During my ten years working at the Foreign Relations Committee, North Korea was part of my portfolio. I was continually frustrated by the lack of available information about conditions within the country as well as a knowledge vacuum on the inner leadership structure and the Kim regime’s decision-making mechanism, on the part of the U.S. government, leading think tanks and other foreign policy-related institutions.
While striving to develop a deeper understanding about North Korea, I often turned to the National Committee on North Korea (NCNK), which was under the leadership of Karin Lee. Established by the international aid organization Mercy Corps, NCNK represented a rich fabric of humanitarian workers, academics, scientists, former diplomats and others, with extensive experience of interacting with North Korean citizens at the local level as well as meeting North Koreans outside of their country. In time, it became obvious that impressive “people-to-people” diplomacy had been underway for years as U.S. humanitarian and development workers regularly engaged with local North Koreans.
Over the last twenty years, due to changes in Administrations and policy divisions within each, the U.S. has been inconsistent in its approach toward resolving North Korea-related issues. As “red lines” were drawn by Presidents and Secretaries of State opposing North Korea’s nuclear program, and Administrations veered from patience and attempted engagement to sanctions and other pressure tactics, North Korea successfully developed a significant nuclear weapons arsenal. While one Administration would pressure North Korea on human rights, another would remove the issue from discussion. According to the respective Administration, the issue of families divided by the Korean War has shuffled on and off the priority list.
Presidents have been inconsistent in pressing North Korea, China and Russia on behalf of Americans left behind at the end of the Korean War. The repeated admonition by American military leaders throughout time to soldiers heading into war that “we’ll have your back” did not apply to many who served in Korea and were forced to remain behind.
For the two decades of NCNK’s existence, through the variations of U.S. government policy approaches, NCNK members have continually promoted principled engagement with North Korea. Whether it has been on-the-ground interaction with North Korean citizens or by meeting North Korean officials for Track II talks in a third-country, NCNK members have consistently pressed for dialogue, to reduce the prospect of war and to improve the lives of North Korea’s neediest citizens.
The deep freeze imposed by Pyongyang on contact with most of the international community including the U.S. following the COVID-19 border shutdown and the failed Trump-Kim Summit in Hanoi is beginning to thaw. NCNK members are exploring renewed contact with North Korea on multiple fronts, just as they actively engaged with North Koreans over twenty years ago.
As NCNK member Suzanne DiMaggio, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, states: “NCNK has distinguished itself as the only organizing hub for supporters of principled U.S.-North Korea diplomacy, providing opportunities to exchange information, explore best practices, and share lessons learned. Given the growing danger of confrontation on the Korean Peninsula, NCNK’s efforts have never been more relevant and needed”.
As in the past, through the ups and downs of U.S. foreign policy, NCNK will persist in promoting principled engagement with North Korea.