Albright Sees Economic Hardship Pushing N. Korea Out of Isolation

Two years of famine and an unraveling economy are driving North Korea out of self-imposed isolation and pushing the Communist regime to engage the outside world, senior U.S. officials said Saturday.

On a 24-hour visit to South Korea, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also suggested that the North’s economic suffering finally could nudge Pyongyang into talks with the South to formally end the 47-year-old Korean War and reunite the divided country.

“It basically depends on how much the North Koreans are hurting and whether they are willing to realize that a peaceful solution to this division is the best way to go,” Albright said.

Her comments came during a visit with U.S. soldiers serving in a United Nations unit policing the 151-mile strip known as the Demilitarized Zone that has divided the Korean peninsula since 1953. Albright’s tour of the DMZ came on the seventh stop of a round-the-world tour and followed talks with South Korean President Kim Young Sam and Foreign Minister Yoo Chong Ha that focused on conditions in the North, arguably one of the world’s most unstable countries.

Controlling the North’s long-predicted--some say inevitable--meltdown is one of many potential crises Albright faces during her tenure. Amid reports of growing levels of malnutrition among children and pledges of $16 million in emergency food aid from the United States and South Korea, the North in recent days has shown a softer face on several important issues.

For example:

* After nearly a year of foot-dragging and delay, the North announced Friday that it is ready to take part in a briefing in New York on March 5 with representatives from China and the United States on a format for formal peace negotiations to end the peninsula’s division. Peace talks would include four parties--both Koreas, China and the U.S. Pyongyang has twice before agreed to such a meeting and backed out at the last moment, but the betting is that this time North Korea will take part.

* This week, survey teams of Japanese, South Korean and U.S. technicians are scheduled to travel to the North to resume preliminary work on two nuclear reactors for the first time since a North Korean submarine incursion into the South last September threw relations on the peninsula into turmoil. The reactors are part of a multibillion-dollar deal reached in 1994 in which the U.S., Japan and South Korea will finance and build the nuclear power plants in exchange for North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons program.

* After initially threatening revenge for the defection earlier this month of a senior government official, Hwang Jang Yop, the North quietly reversed itself and is apparently willing to admit the defection and move beyond the incident.

Tracing the reasons for Pyongyang’s moves is no precise science, but those familiar with the North believe that the economy is a major factor.

“A lot of it has to do with food,” a senior U.S. official said. “You can’t go too deeply into the North Korean psyche . . . but objectively, they acknowledge they’ve got a real food problem. They know they’ll get less [aid] if the [political] climate is bad.”

As the North Koreans begin to engage diplomatically on important issues, some key U.S. officials and Korea watchers believe that Pyongyang may be looking to the United States as the country that can best help it connect.

Pyon Jin Il, a North Korea expert who publishes the authoritative Korea Report newsletter in Tokyo, asserted that North Korea now trusts the United States more than its old sponsors, China and Russia.

He argued that the Communist regime feels betrayed by its old allies for forging diplomatic relations with its southern nemesis, largely on the promise of lucrative aid and investment.

Pyongyang is suspicious of China’s “two-pocket policy” that tries to maintain influence with the North while reaping the rewards of increased economic ties with the South, Pyon said.

“North Korea doesn’t really say it, but they regard the United States more highly than Russia and China,” Pyon said. “They trust the U.S. because they don’t betray allies. Clinton is extremely popular among North Koreans. The United States holds the key to the Korean peninsula.”

At the same time, he said, Pyongyang sees the United States as continuing to stand loyally with its ally South Korea, refusing to move forward too quickly in ties with Pyongyang without progress on North-South relations.

A senior Clinton administration official appeared to agree, describing the potential for a link between Pyongyang and Washington as “not inconceivable, but we’d have to do it without damaging our ties with the South.”

The death Friday of North Korea’s powerful defense minister, Choe Kwang, is not expected to change the isolated regime’s slow and steady opening to the world.

Choe’s death marked the third loss of a high-ranking official from leader Kim Jong Il’s inner circle in recent days, following the replacement of Prime Minister Kang Song San, presumably because of poor health, and Hwang’s defection.

Analysts say the changes may provide an opportunity for an emerging class of younger leaders to pull away from the revolutionary ideas of the past and forge more pragmatic policies.