Is North Korean visit martial arts diplomacy?

‘Axis of evil' speech deepened divide
The estrangement between the Bush administration and the military regime of Kim Jong Il hit new lows after 2002 when Bush declared Pyongyang part of an “axis of evil,” along with Iraq and Iran. Since then, Pyongyang has retreated from its commitments to nuclear transparency and withdrawn from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty it signed in 1985.

The relationship reached a turning point this year. North Korea agreed to resume the so-called “six party talks” aimed at achieving an agreement to dismantle its nuclear programs, and a final draft is reportedly under review. The Bush administration rewarded Pyongyang’s willingness to talk in September by authorizing $25 million in aid and 50,000 tons of heavy oil for the impoverished nation.

And this week, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun is in Pyongyang meeting with Kim Jong Il, in just the second North-South summit. This meeting has little of the giddiness that surrounded the meetings in 2000 when former President Kim Dae-jung went to Pyongyang under the rubric of his “sunshine policy,” but experts are taking it seriously.

“There seems to be the perception that this new diplomatic opening is for real, and there seems to be some real optimism about it,” says Keith Rabin, head of KRW International  consultancy in New York.

But a State Department official, who agreed to discuss the North Korean visit on condition of anonymity, dismissed the notion that this cultural exchange is a harbinger of flowering bilateral relations.

‘Ping pong tae kwon do? I don't think so'
“Ping pong tae kwon do? I don’t think so,” said the official. “The real thermometer of relations and how they are going to go is what happens in six-party talks" in Beijing.

Www.usnktkd.com Members of the North Korean tae kwon do team expected to visit the U.S. this week.

He also noted that these types of visits by North Korean have been allowed since 1988, when then-President Ronald Reagan signed a law permitting visits by non-governmental delegations from North Korea, including sports teams.

But the reality is that they rarely happen.

North Korea sent teams to compete in Women’s World Cup soccer in the United States in 1999, and the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, but this is the first time a team has visited for reasons other than an international sporting event.

A few U.S.-North Korean scholarly exchanges also take place. For example, Syracuse University has a fledgling information-technology exchange with North Korea's Kimchaek University of Technology.

Individual scholars do visit, and stay on a short leash —usually accompanied by one translator and one political apparatchik to keep tabs on the other two, according to Sorenson, the University of Washington professor.

Savage, of the Nautilus Institute in Seoul, said that even if the taekwondo tour doesn't point to a near-term political settlement, it is the type of cultural exchange that helped ease tensions between the Soviet bloc and the West and ultimately helped end the Cold War.

Not ‘brain-washed automatons’
“Americans get to see North Koreans as something other than brain-washed automatons…,” he said. “And importantly, North Koreans get to see that all Americans are not wolves. … In that alone I think it is a useful exercise.”

“Although most of the delegation will be athletes, there will be some handlers along who will be politically trustworthy members of the elite,” said Savage. “Getting people like that exposed to the United States and involved in foreign travel definitely has long-term value.”

The Seoul-based newspaper The Korea Times sees the tae kwon do tour as part of a modest renaissance of cultural contacts taking place amid improving ties. It reported that a group of North Korean boxers is expected to travel to Chicago later this month to compete in the World Boxing Championships and that the New York Philharmonic is considering an invitation to perform in Pyongyang.

Slideshow   Korea conflict in pictures A click-through history of the peninsula’s liberation, partition and militarization

But Marcus Noland, a fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics, said the tae kwon do team’s visit does not necessarily mean that U.S-North Korea relations will continue to improve.

"The taekwondo team could play the role it was intended to play as an icebreaker … toward gradual rapprochement," he said.

Noland sees two major potential stumbling blocks that could derail the warming trend: The Bush administration has hinted that it might tighten sanctions on North Korea’s missile exports — a move that Pyongyang would take as an act of hostility. And from the U.S. side, if rumors — so far unproven — that North Korea is providing Syria with nuclear technology are verified, the diplomatic gains could be erased.

"If that’s the case," Noland says, "it’s going to take a lot of tae kwon do teams to patch it up."

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