Special to WorldTribune.com

By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com

The visit of Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, to Pyongyang has got to be a sign of hope for improving relations between North Korea and its two arch foes, the U.S. and South Korea.

As head of a delegation from a little known organization called the Pacific Century Institute, Gregg has yet another platform for perpetuating his views on dialogue and reconciliation with the North as he’s been doing ever since serving as CIA station chief in Seoul in the mid-1970s and then as ambassador to South Korea in the early 1990s.

Gregg’s message during his tours in Seoul and later as a frequent return visitor and chairman of the Korea Society in New York is that dialogue is needed to overcome differences and that eventually personal contacts and cultural events such as the concert by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in Pyongyang six years ago will pay off.

He’s also been known to say the U.S. has no reason to maintain such a large military force in South Korea, and he was an ardent admirer of the Sunshine Policy propounded by Kim Dae-Jung during his presidency from 1998 to 2003.

Gregg is such a nice guy that it’s hard not to applaud whatever he does in the interest of peace and reconciliation on the Korean peninsula. The Korea Society in New York has provided a forum for any number of exchanges, a driving force for understanding of U.S.-Korean concerns and interests.

Three times, after publication of books by me that had to do with Korea, he’s invited me to speak at the Korea Society. Those meetings were always pleasant, well attended and fun.

After all those nice words for Gregg, though, there just has to be a “but.” The “but” is — but during all those years in which Gregg was proselytizing for dialogue, for inter-Korean happiness and for everyone getting along with one another, North Korea has only gotten worse. Think about it. Right after Gregg’s time as ambassador to South Korea, the North plunged into a famine in which as many as two million people died.

While Kim Dae-Jung was president, pumping funds into North Korea to persuade Kim Jong-Il to invite him to Pyongyang for their summit in June 2000, North Korea persisted in developing nuclear warheads.

The record of human rights abuses has worsened as Kim Jong-Il’s son, Kim Jong-Un, ruthlessly purges friends and relatives of his regent-mentor, Jang Song-Thaek who was executed last month.

Gregg, who served as national security adviser for George H.W. Bush when H.W. was vice president in the 1980s, has been an outspoken critic of the record of the second Bush presidency, that of George H.W.’s son, George W. Bush.

He has spoken privately of “the good Bush” and “the bad Bush,” and he has blamed George W. for undermining the Sunshine Policy of Kim Dae-Jung.

Neither DJ nor Gregg ever forgave George W. for including North Korea in his “axis of evil” along with Iran and Iraq in his State of the Union address in January 2002. No way, as far as Gregg was concerned, should the U.S. get tough with North Korea. Dialogue would be the only recourse.

The trouble with dialogue is that it has never worked. Four-party talks, six-party talks, one-on-one talks — they’ve all failed. North Korea has never honored agreements to begin to do away with its nukes.

In recent years, the North has said it needs its nuclear stockpile for defense against the U.S. And, unbelievably, I’ve heard Donald Gregg repeating this argument to justify the North’s nuclear program while also questioning, seriously, if it was a North Korean torpedo that sank the Cheonan nearly four years ago.

All of which is not to say, good luck, Ambassador Gregg. Let’s hope this time you’ve talked your North Korean friends into behaving nicely toward the U.S. and South Korea no matter what they’re doing to their own people.

It would be great to think this supremely nice guy might cap off his career in the CIA, the White House and the State Department by getting the North Koreans to change their ways.

No doubt about it, right now North Korea wants to ease tensions. North Korea is doing so badly economically, and probably is so divided politically, that strategists surrounding Kim Jong-Un see a show of reconciliation as a fine idea. You have to hope that Gregg’s mission to Pyongyang won’t wind up as a prelude to disappointment.

Certainly that’s been the record so far regardless of all the nice talk by those who believe appeasing the North Koreans will really deter them from wielding the nuclear club over South Korea, the region and the U.S.

Columnist Donald Kirk has been following the ups and downs of dialogue with North Korea since the Red Cross talks of 1972. He’s at kirkdon@yahoo.com.

  Donald Gregg, Jang Song-Thaek, Kim Jong-Un, North Koreans still behaving badly despite years of sunny talk by nice guys, Pacific Century Institute