Our policy against North Korea isn't working

[letswastemoney]

I just read this book the other day, Somewhere Inside, about the 2 journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee who were captured after crossing the North Korea border and held in a prison for a couple of months.

What fascinated me was that all it took was a little pow wow meeting between Bill Clinton and Kim Jong Il to free them. Add in a formal dinner thrown in Clinton's honor, and suddenly the journalists' 12 year hard labor sentence is forgiven?

North Korea is insulted by the move by our current government to get them into the 6 party talks regarding the nuclear issue etc. etc. They want countries to have bi-lateral discussions with them, so I feel this 6 party push is a waste of time.

I mean if you think back to when Bill Clinton was president, our relationship with North Korea was at an all time high around late 2000. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made an official visit which seemed to go well. Clinton was considering visiting back then, but ran out of time before his term was up. But I suppose Clinton made up for it in his visit last August to rescue the Laura and Euna.

There was one particular part from the book that particularly struck me as interesting. Laura was describing Clinton and Kim Jong Il's meeting. The North Korea leader told Clinton that he always appreciated how Clinton called him in 1994 to offer condolences over his father's death, and that Clinton had called him even before any of his usual allies had called.

Perhaps if the Obama administration was a little more direct with North Korea, things would be slightly better. I'm not saying we'd be total buddies with them, but I was a little disappointed that Obama seems to be continuing Bush's hard line stance in dealing with North Korea. I thought Obama wanted to open a dialogue, as stated at some point during his campaign.