TWO INTRIGUING CLAIMS recently emerged illuminating North Korea's off-the-books relationship with the United States.
First, a senior military official told the US Congress that North Korea was the nation carrying the most serious potential to involve the US in a large-scale war. General Thomas Schwartz, Commander-in-Chief of the United Nations and US forces in South Korea, warned that North Korea People's Army units were 'bigger, better, closer and deadlier' than just one year earlier. About 700,000 troops, 8,000 artillery pieces and 2,000 tanks were massed within 145 kilometres of the De-militarised Zone that separates the North from the South.
Second, despite such danger, the fragile nature of communications across the diplomatic ice between Washington and Pyongyang became alarmingly clear. Charles Pritchard, a special envoy on Korea in the new administration of US President George W. Bush, said there were currently only links between the State Department and North Korean diplomats attached to the UN in New York. When pushed by concerned congressmen about something more direct in case of a crisis, Mr Pritchard outlined the possibility of a 'very informal' ability to call Pyongyang in the near future. 'We have phone numbers; we have fax [numbers]. That's possible,' he told a sub-committee of the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives. Few were reassured.
Six months into Mr Bush's term, it seems his administration's policies towards Pyongyang can only go in one direction - up. The next few months could provide the first signs of whether Mr Bush's frosty start has damaged America's role in any reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula after the diplomatic euphoria of the last days of his predecessor, former president Bill Clinton. Riding a wave of goodwill following South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's historic mission to Pyongyang a year ago, Mr Clinton despatched then-secretary of state Madeleine Albright to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il soon after. He came close to going to North Korea himself to complete a weapons agreement in his last days of office in December.
Mr Bush, despite hearing personally from Kim Dae-jung on the importance of intensifying his 'sunshine policy', froze ties ahead of a sweeping review to realign Mr Clinton's overtures with a new Republican foreign policy. In the vacuum that has followed, Beijing, Moscow and Seoul have become closely involved. The next moves might depend on how much Kim Jong-il feels he can trust Mr Bush as he inches forward to dip his toes in the waters of global diplomacy.
Some in Mr Bush's administration seem all too keen to keep painting the North Korean leader as the head of an uncontrollable 'rogue state' bent on expanding its abilities to hit the US and its Asian allies with missiles. They use North Korea's pariah status as partial justification for the Bush administration's controversial missile-defence plans.