I’m sure Lee Myung-bak understands that North Korea has no intention of giving up their nuclear weapons, but offering the North Koreans a “grand bargain” is a good thing to do to show that he is trying to provide constructive options for the North Koreans, but they are refusing to take it:

President Lee Myung-bak has proposed a “grand bargain” on the North Korean nuclear issue during his visit to New York.

The package deal entails dismantling key aspects of North Korea’s nuclear program through the six-party talks and at the same time providing the North with a security guarantee and international aid.

Speaking at a luncheon hosted by The Korea Society and the Council on Foreign Relations early Tuesday morning Korea time, the president called for a fundamental and comprehensive approach to resolving the nuclear issue.

He then urged Pyongyang not to misunderstand such a process as a threat to or besiegement of its regime.

He said that over the past 20 years, concerned parties have compromised with the North on a nuclear freeze and compensation without addressing the key concern — complete nuclear dismantlement — while Pyongyang would violate the accords and revert back to square one.  [KBS Global]

What the North Koreans want is a grand bargain where they need to give little to nothing in return.  Past grand bargains such as both Agreed Frameworks did not have good protocols to ensure that the North Koreans were not cheating on the agreement.  The Bush administration originally resisted such an agreement, but then gave in to a smoke and mirrors verification protocol in order to get a deal done in order to make it look like they had some kind of foreign policy success.  Such a policy was doomed to failure and in due time it did fail.  It will be interesting to see if the Obama administration can resist the urge to come up with their own smoke and mirrors verification protocol in order to cut a deal with North Korea in order to get this issue to go away for a while.