N. Korea Contacts Improving, Ex-U.S. Official Says After Visit

In a further sign of gradually warming contacts between the United States and North Korea, former Assistant Secretary of State Gaston J. Sigur said here Friday that he has just completed a week of “frank, candid and constructive” talks in North Korea.

“The talks I had I would certainly call constructive, and they were carried on in a good atmosphere,” said Sigur, who dealt with East Asian and Pacific affairs at the State Department in the Ronald Reagan Administration and the early months of the Bush Administration.

He said he met with Vice President Li Jong Ok, Foreign Minister Kim Yong Nam, who is also a vice premier, and Ho Dam, a secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party, which is North Korea’s Communist party.

Sigur, who is now a professor at George Washington University, visited North Korea as a private citizen, but he said he will discuss what he learned there with friends in the Bush Administration.

“I’m sure they’ll be interested in anything I have to say,” he said.

North Korea, which is ruled with an iron hand by President Kim Il Sung, is generally considered one of the most hard-line Communist nations in the world. But in recent years it has begun to show signs of wanting to be more open to the world. Its leaders speak frequently of their desire for reunification with South Korea.

“I came away firmly convinced that the paramount goal of the DPRK (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is to reunify Korea, and it was emphasized to me that this was to be achieved through peaceful means,” Sigur said.

The United States has kept troops in South Korea ever since the 1950-53 Korean War, which began with an attempt by North Korea to overrun the south. There are about 43,000 U.S. soldiers in the southern half of the divided peninsula, and the departure of those troops is a major goal of North Korean foreign policy.

Sigur said that in North Korea he also met academicians, saw cultural performances and “had a chance to look around a great deal and see the economic development that’s taken place in the country.”

North Korea’s ambassador to China, Chu Chang Jun, said here Tuesday that in order to promote better relations between Pyongyang and Washington, his government is willing to approve visits by U.S. Congress members.

Asked to comment on Chu’s invitation, Sigur said he believes that face-to-face contacts between North Koreans and Americans are necessary.

“We talked about further exchanges, and I think those are good things,” he said. “I think the more we can talk, the better it is.”