Stephen Bosworth, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, plans to travel to the North Korean capital tomorrow for bilateral discussions aimed at bringing the nation back to six−party talks on its nuclear program.
Bosworth's visit to Pyongyang marks the highest−level exchange and the first bilateral talks between the United States and North Korea since President Barack Obama assumed office in January.
Bosworth is the United States' special representative for North Korea policy, a position he took on in February.
Bosworth will meet with the country's vice foreign minister, Kang Sok−ju, during his stop in North Korea. He will remain in the country until Thursday.
The South Korean news agency Yonhap reported yesterday that it was unclear whether Bosworth would talk with the North Korean leader Kim Jong−il or visit Yongbyon, the country's main nuclear facility.
The secretive communist state requested bilateral talks between itself and the United States months after it pulled out of the six−party talks to protest international criticism of a missile test it conducted last spring. The United Nations imposed additional sanctions on North Korea after it conducted further nuclear tests in May.
North Korea is expected to call for a peace treaty to officially end the Korean War, which took place from 1950 to 1953, before agreeing to return to multilateral talks over the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
American officials have maintained that North Korea must return to the framework of the six−party talks before negotiations can begin and South Korea has said that it must be included in any peace treaty. The Korean War, between the North and South, concluded with an armistice.
"[The North Koreans'] whole objective is to engage the U.S., and six−party talks they regard as simply an ornament that we insist upon," Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy and a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told the Daily.
U.S. officials have maintained that Bosworth's visit is aimed at persuading North Korea to return to the six−party talks. Obama announced the trip last month during a meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung−bak in Seoul.
"The U.S. has been pushing North Korea to return to the six−party talks and China has been joining with the U.S. in pushing North Korea to get them back to the six−party talks," Harrison said. "North Korea's position has been, ‘We won't go directly back to the six−party talks, we have to have bilateral talks first.'"
Bosworth could not be reached for comment last week as he was in London for the Fletcher School's Seventh Annual London Symposium on Thursday, according to Linda Warner, his executive assistant.
His visit has the support of the other countries participating in the six−party talks. These include South Korea, Russia, Japan and China in addition to North Korea and the United States, according to Harrison.
In London Bosworth tried to curtail high expectations about the outcome of his trip last week, according to reports. "I don't expect much from the first visit to the North," he told Yonhap on Thursday.
Yet Bosworth's visit comes after a period of relatively warm relations with North Korea, according to Jim Walsh, an international security expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"It hasn't been a particularly combustible time," Walsh told the Daily, noting the October trip Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao took to North Korea. Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie visited the country two weeks ago.
"Those sorts of visits are most likely associated with some movement of action rather than more of the same," Walsh said.
Bosworth will land in a North Korea that has reportedly suffered public unrest following the devaluation of its currency last week, a move apparently aimed at curbing inflation and extending the regime's power. Strict limits on the amounts of money that can be exchanged for the new currency has effectively knocked out many people's life savings, according to reports.
