SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Jong-Il’s smile said it all.
North Korea’s ruler, his leadership clouded for nearly a year by health problems, didn’t hide his satisfaction at receiving Bill Clinton in Pyongyang. For a man who wants his country to stand on an equal footing with the U.S., the visit by the former president — and husband of the current secretary of state — was a rare and lucky catch.
Photos showed Kim in animated discussion with Clinton at a conference table Tuesday, and beaming as he stood beside his guest in formal pose.
“He was one happy camper,” Ralph Cossa, president of Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu think tank, said of Kim. “To him, it’s a sign of prestige.”
The White House insisted Clinton’s mission was strictly humanitarian, to rescue two American journalists convicted of illegally entering North Korea. But coming at a time of high tension over Pyongyang’s nuclear-weapons program, it inevitably raised hopes of broader diplomatic fallout.
It gave Kim a rare opportunity to strike a statesmanlike, benevolent posture for global consumption and to have an ex-president appear before him as a supplicant.
It also enabled him to show, a year after reportedly suffering a stroke, that while he may look physically weaker, he is still fit enough at age 67 to engage in talks with a powerful Western visitor.
Clinton’s visit has come as U.S. and South Korean officials are working on a strategy for persuading North Korea to dismantle its nukes, breaking from a process littered with unkept promises.
Now Kim may feel better positioned to push forward with the negotiations and reap promised rewards in the form of aid, fuel oil shipments and political concessions, mainly from the U.S., South Korea and Japan.
His overriding aim is to ensure the survival of the communist state founded by his father, Kim Il-Sung, 61 years ago and hand off power to one of his sons. But Kim’s dilemma is that the U.S. is unlikely to embrace him until he takes real action to dismantle his nuclear program, his only true leverage in international affairs.
