This didn’t take long to happen:

North Korean officials and U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s Korean affairs advisors have held their first meeting.

Director of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s U.S. affairs bureau, Ri Gun, is visiting New York to discuss the nuclear verification issue with the U.S. His delegation on Saturday attended a conference of Korean Peninsula experts hosted by the U.S. National Committee on American Foreign Policy. The North Korean officials listened to presentations on a range of topics, including Washington’s foreign policy stance during the presidential transition and the normalization of U.S.-North Korean ties.

The U.S. President-elect’s chief aide on Korean Peninsula policies, Frank Januzzi, also attended the conference. The National Committee says the event was held to introduce the new U.S. administrative officials to North Korea, pave the way for the six-way nuclear process and boost bilateral understanding of pending issues.
The committee confirmed the attendance of former U.S. officials, including ex-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and ex-Ambassador to Seoul Donald Gregg. But it refused to comment on whether new administrative officials attended the meeting.  [KBS Global]

Well at least William Perry wasn’t there.

One Free Korea called this one because he said that when Biden was nominated as the Vice President Frank Januzzi would be elevated in an Obama administration and now he is in charge of North Korea policy.  Januzzi’s past should give everyone some indication of the direction of President Obama’s North Korea policy.  Januzzi is a believer in the philosophy that if we only understood North Korea better we could get them to change:

Frank Januzzi on the left

In 2001, Januzzi tried without success to arrange a visit to Pyongyang by his boss.  In 2004, Januzzi joined strident appeaser Siegfried Hecker as part of a congressional delegation to Yongbyon and Pyongyang (….)

On human rights, however, Biden raised objections to some provisions of the North Korean Human Rights Act that succeeded in watering the bill down before it went to the full Senate for a vote (none of the reports specify which provisions).  Even then, an unnamed Biden staffer had to be subjected to intense lobbying by the National Association of Evangelicals before the bill was able to get a vote.  (….)

My googling revealed no substance of any comments by Januzzi on human rights, although I vaguely recall Januzzi’s comments from an October 2003 panel I attended, at which Januzzi revealed an ambivalence about pressing the issue lest our comments cause regime officials to become defensive about it.  That more or less reflects the general ambivalance Biden has shown on this issue.  Biden probably has no idea of the actual gravity of the situation or the fundamental linkage between the issues:  the worthlessness of dealing with those who refuse all demands for transparency and demonstrate no interest in preserving human life.  [One Free Korea]

I am open minded enough to give Januzzi a chance and see what happens, but like I have said over and over again; North Korea has no intention of giving up their nuclear weapons for a variety of reasons and will continue to play the same games with the Obama administration that they did with both the Clinton and Bush administration.  That is the only thing about North Korea people need to understand.