(CNSNews.com) – Almost nine years after he called off plans to visit North Korea, former President Clinton has arrived in the reclusive Stalinist nation, reportedly on a mission to secure the release of two jailed American journalists.
 
Pyongyang’s official KCNA news agency said Clinton was met at the airport in the capital on Tuesday by Yang Hyong-sop, the vice president of the North Korean parliament, and Kim Kye-kwan, the regime’s chief negotiator at six-party nuclear talks.
 
It did not state the purpose or intended length of the visit.
 
Reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling were detained along the North Korean-Chinese border in March. They were sentenced in June to 12 years’ “reform through labor” for an unspecified “grave crime” against North Korea.
 
The two worked for Current TV, a San Francisco-based television station co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore.
 
The link sparked speculation that the Obama administration may send Gore as an envoy to negotiate their release. Another name mooted was that of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who helped to secure the release of Americans held by North Korea in the 1990s.
 
Clinton’s surprise involvement follows appeals by his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for North Korea to grant Lee and Ling clemency and deport them.
 
A week after their conviction, KCNA in a report said an investigation had found that that the two had crossed the border to get footage that would be used in an anti-North Korean “smear campaign over its human rights issue.”
 
“At the trial the accused admitted that what they did were criminal acts committed, prompted by the political motive to isolate and stifle the socialist system of [North Korea] by faking up moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it,” the state agency said.
 
The report said the 12 year term handed down by the Central Court was “unappealable.”
 
Checkered history of relations
 
Clinton’s visit comes at a time when relations between North Korea and the U.S. are at a particularly low point. The six-party talks have been stalled for months and Pyongyang, which fired a long-range rocket in April and carried out a nuclear test in May, has declared the negotiation process dead.
 
Just days ago, North Korea’s foreign ministry poured scorn on Secretary Clinton, after she compared the regime to a child demanding attention and said the response should be that of a parent, not giving in to the demands.

In its reaction, Pyongyang called Clinton “a funny lady” who was “unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community” – adding a personal gibe, “sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping.”
 
The arrest and trial of Lee and Ling raised concerns that the regime may use them as bargaining chips in its long running drive aimed at obtaining economic and diplomatic concessions from the West.
 
Like its predecessor, the Obama administration has rejected proposals by North Korea for bilateral talks, insisting that any dialogue should take place within the six-party framework, which also involves South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
 
Clinton’s visit may change that, however. The fact he was met at the airport by Pyongyang’s top nuclear negotiator suggests that North Korea has a broader agenda than the imprisoned journalists in mind.
 
The last time a former president visited Pyongyang was in 1994, when Jimmy Carter traveled there for talks with Kim Il-sung, aimed at defusing a crisis precipitated by his threat to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
 
That visit led to the Agreed Framework, an agreement under which North Korea agreed to mothball its nuclear complex and admit U.N. inspectors and surveillance cameras to monitor the freeze, in return for U.S. aid and the provision of alternative energy supplies.
 
Bilateral relations improved in the ensuing years, and in October 2000, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright paid a historic visit to Pyongyang.
 
Her visit was meant to pave the way for a visit by Clinton shortly thereafter, but in late December of that year the outgoing president said the visit would not go ahead as there was “insufficient time.”
 
One of the reasons for the visit not taking place, analysts said later, was the fact that U.S.-North Korean talks in Malaysia over Pyongyang’s missile programs had stalled over the question of verification. (North Korea was demanding $1 billion a year in return for stopping missile exports.)
 
Agreement collapses
 
The incoming Republican administration placed renewed emphasis on North Korean compliance with agreements, and then Secretary of State Colin Powell said in April 2001 the U.S. was nowhere near establishing diplomatic relations with the “totalitarian regime.”
 
At the same time, President Bush on several occasions held out an open invitation to hold talks with North Korea “any time, any place” without preconditions.
 
Relations worsened after Bush in his 2002 State of the Union said regimes like North Korea, Iran and Iraq, along with their terrorist allies, formed an “axis of evil” which threatened world peace.
 
In July of 2002, the State Department said plans to send officials for talks in North Korea were called off because of the North’s reluctance to commit to a meeting.
 
In October that year a meeting did take place in Pyongyang, where State Department officials confronted the North Koreans with evidence that they been violating the Agreed Framework for years, by carrying out a covert uranium-enrichment project. The U.S. officials said North Korea admitted to having the clandestine program; Pyongyang denied making the admission.
 
The agreement quickly unraveled as North Korea expelled the inspectors, disabled the cameras, and resumed activities at the reactor and associated reprocessing plant. It also made good on its earlier threat and withdrew from the NPT.
 
The six-party negotiating framework was then developed in response to the crisis, with numerous rounds of talks held from August 2003.
 
In 2007, the talks finally produced an agreement: North Korea pledged to declare “all” of its nuclear programs and to “disable” three specified plutonium-based facilities in exchange for economic and diplomatic concessions.
 
After further delays and hurdles, Washington last October struck North Korea off its list of terror-sponsoring states – a longstanding demand – but in December the process stalled yet again amid disagreement over how to verify that North Korea was in fact disarming. There have been no talks since.