Professor Park Sung-soo writing in the Joong Ang Ilbo gives a scenario of how he foresees the North Koreans trying to get the United States to restart nuclear talks with him:

The U.S. Democrats who used to criticize the Bush administration’s hard-line North Korea policy were so upset by the North’s provocative behavior that they changed position to favor pressuring Pyongyang.

How, then, did Kim propose to sell the nuclear program for the third time? Outside of the North, the exact content of the proposal would only be known to those participating in any meeting between Obama and Clinton, but the gist of it could be as follows:

“North Korea had observed faithfully the terms and conditions of the 1994 Geneva Agreement. It was the United States that broke it. If only Washington did not promote a hostile policy toward us, and fulfilled obligations of supplying heavy oil and constructing light-water reactors, we would have fulfilled our denuclearization obligation. Since the Bush administration promoted a hostile policy toward us and failed to fulfill its duties, we had no choice but take self-defense measures.

“Now, we must return to square one. Let’s nullify all that happened during Bush era and go back to the year 2000 when you, as president at the time, considered an official visit to Pyongyang. If President Obama decides to visit Pyongyang, we will give him a heartfelt welcome. If Washington wants to inspect all nuclear sites in North Korea, we will open any desired location and accept inspections.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

Does anyone know when does the statute of limitations on blaming Bush for everything runs out? 

Anyway, I could see this scenario happening.  The North Koreans are going to eventually return to negotiations if it means more free goodies for them.  However, they wanted to use the transition period from Bush to Obama as an opportunity to perfect their weapons programs so they can go back into negotiations with a stronger hand.  The Obama administration has so far said they want North Korea to return to six party talks, but possibly the North Koreans could lure the Obama administration into bi-lateral talks by promising to full nuclear inspections.  Remember they promised Bush the same thing and the North Koreans eventually reneged.  For those that haven’t figured this out yet, the North Koreans have no intention of ever giving up their nuclear weapons, but are more than willing to talk about doing so if it means free goodies.  

Any visit by the US President to North Korea would be an absolute foreign policy disaster.  I continue to offer my advice that President Obama should do is demand that Kim Jong-il keep his promise that he gave to former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung to visit Seoul for an inter-Korean summit before any US President is to visit Pyongyang.

I do have to wonder when anyone in the Obama administration is going to utter any mention of the horrendous North Korean human rights situation?