SEOUL — The top U.S. diplomat in Korea dealt a devastating snub last week to a veteran Korean politician's grandstanding bid for a visit to North Korea by a U.S. Senate delegation led by Hillary Clinton.
Hahn Hwa-Kap, chairman of the Millennium Democratic Party, spread the word that he would ask Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Korea and newly appointed assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, to help arrange the visit to North Korea.
The reports generated widespread coverage in the United States and worldwide.
Hours later, Hill cancelled the appointment.
At the same time, the U.S Embassy put out a statement saying that Sen. Clinton's office "has denied recent media reports that Sen. Clinton is planning a trip to North Korea."
The embassy spokeswoman, Maureen McCormick, said flatly that the Embassy in Seoul was "not involved in the planning of any such trip" and that press reports had "incorrectly indicated" that Hill had requested the meeting with Hahn "to discuss a Senate trip to North Korea."
Hill was particularly eager to scotch any suggestion of support for such a trip in view of his role as the chief U.S. negotiator on North Korea.
Diplomatic analysts saw any move by U.S. politicians to cozy up to North Korea as compromising and interfering with Hill's efforts at drawing North Korea back to the six-party talks on its nuclear weapons. Hill goes to Tokyo this week to meet his Japanese counterpart, Kenichiro Sasae, then travels to Washington for more consultations — all in advance of a trip next week by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul.
The carefully worded embassy press release said Hill's meeting with Hahn "had been scheduled a long time ago as part of a series of courtesy calls on political leaders and had nothing to do with Sen. Clinton or any alleged visits to North Korea."
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New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton with Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh in New Delhi, India, on Feb. 25.
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Analysts saw the unusually frank denial as a tough effort on Hill's part to distance himself from any South Korean effort at drawing the United States into a compromise on reconciliation with North Korea.
Hill was particularly upset by a claim by one of Hahn's aides that both the U.S. and South Korean government favored a visit by a U.S. Senate delegation that would also have included Republic Senators Conrad Burns of Montana and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
The prospect of such a visit conjured memories of the visit to North Korea in January by a delegation led by Rep. Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican whose soft-line approach on North Korea is sharply at variance with that of the Bush administration.
Hahn is politically aligned with Kim Dae-Jung, the former president who forged the sunshine policy of reconciliation with North Korea and once led the Millennium Democratic Party.
The MDP, previously a major force in the National Assembly, now has only nine members in the Assembly, including Hahn. Many former MDP members defected to the Uri Party, which Roh Moo-Hyun formed in a political power struggle early in his presidency, even though Roh is also dedicated to reconciliation with North Korea.
