Diplomacy? What diplomacy?

Well, who'd of thought it, but kudos to President Bush, or, perhaps Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, for finally netting a diplomatic success. In Beijing yesterday, the parties to the six party talks signed an agreement in which North Korea will disable its nuclear program in exchange for increasingly normalized relations with the U.S. and Japan and economic aid (full text). In February, North Korea agreed to shut-down its reactor and reprocessing facilities, and in July inspections showed that they had followed through. They have now agreed to permanently disable these facilities.

Whether there is any reason to trust Pyongyang is an open question. What Bush and co. deserve credit for is offering to "[remove] the designation of the DPRK [North Korea] as a state sponsor of terrorism and advance the process of terminating the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to the DPRK." That is, to finally renounce the "axis of evil" bigotry and approach foreign affairs in a rational manner.

Of course, credit is also due to Kim Jong Il, for pushing our buttons in just the right way to get just what he wants. Having nukes is not about blowing things up--it's about threatening to blow things up. We've all know this since 1945. Did anyone notice that the Bush administration's stance softened only after a nuclear weapon was successfully tested? Does anyone else foresee a parallel here with Iran?

It's interesting, though, that North Korea has totally abandoned its old claim of self-sufficiency. It is now quite clearly willing to trade whatever it can for energy aid and open economic relations. Perhaps this has something to do with its cooling relations with China. Whether willing to admit it or not, North Korea has been on a rapid decline at least since the fall of the Soviet Union and the famines in the early '90s. According to the CIA (who cites an OECD estimate from 1999 as their best source), North Korea's GDP is about $40 billion. From parity with the North after the Korean War, South Korea's economy has grown to be thirty times that size. (The South's population is about double the North's). The only possible way for reunification to happen is for North Korea to greatly expand economically. And this will clearly take incorporation, to some degree, in the the international market.

To that end, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun arrived in Pyongyang on Oct. 2. His goal is to set up another special economic zone in North Korea, like the one at Kasung, and to expand the integration of the two economies. If you haven't seen the video of President Roh's arrival in Pyongyang, you should check it out here.