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In October of 2000, you go to Pyongyang. We know that you're there to try to get them to put away their missile program, to stop making their long-range missiles. What is Kim Jong Il up to, in your opinion?

Well, I think at that stage he wanted very much to have a relationship with the United States. The purpose, I think, generally, of his policy was to get some recognition from the United States that North Korea existed, that we should have diplomatic relations. So he was really quite open, in discussions that we had, in terms of limiting his missile program, and it was very evident that what he wanted to do was to be involved in a negotiation, which would lead to a meeting with President Clinton that would result in a better relationship.

If he's willing to give away his missile program, why does he embark on that in the first place?

Well, I think that the whole issue probably goes back to the end of the Cold War, where he had lived under the patronage and with the support of the Soviet Union and China. Then all of a sudden the Soviet Union, his major patron, disintegrates, and the question is what is the status of North Korea, in itself, in the world, which explains, I think, a lot of what happened from '93, '94 on.
We talked to Stalin, we talked to Mao, we talked to Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. We made agreements. I don't consider talking appeasement.

What I think he wanted to do was to establish himself as a leader on the world stage, and the only way he could do it was by developing various aspects of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, and to have some kind of missile projection, because that's their only cash crop.

It is an economy that doesn't work, but they do manage somehow to figure out how to build various high-tech missile components.

And sell them to people like the Yemenis or the Syrians or--

There are a lot of people out there who want various weapons, and this is what they sell. That's why the situation is so dangerous.

Is he delusional?

I don't think he's delusional. I've thought a lot about this, and I obviously prepared a lot before I went there. I talked with Kim Dae Jung, president of South Korea, who had been there and met with him.

For the most part, we had very peculiar information about Kim Jong Il that he was a recluse. I think delusional actually was a word that was used. But Kim Dae Jung had reported that it was possible to have perfectly decent, rational conversations with him.

For me, the situation was that here is a person who is isolated, but not uninformed, who has operated in his own system where he is deified and, at the same time, wants to be in the outside world where nobody will pay any attention to him.

So I can't imagine what it is like to be raised in a society where their only statues that exist are to you and your father.

He wanted to show you how he was deified after that first day of negotiations.

Well, he was trying, I think, to do many things; one, to show that, but to be a good host, and also to show that it was a country that was filled with joy and color.

Just describe [your trip] for me, if you could.

Well, what happened was that he was the host, and so it was a little hard always to say, "I'm not going to do whatever you're suggesting."

So, at the end of about three or four hours of official meetings, he said, "I want to take you tonight to a huge celebration," and when we got there, we walked in, and we were in a stadium, where there was something like 200- to 250,000 people in the bleachers who applauded wildly at his entrance. It was evident that what we were going to was the recreation of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Workers Party.

Even though there had not been anybody in the streets -- there were very few people on the streets -- all of a sudden all of these people materialized.

And then the performance itself was kind of two-tiered. You know how they do those flash cards at our big football games where students can deliver various messages? Well, this was done in the most precise way, where they showed tableaus of farmers with Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and various agricultural projects, and various scenes of countrysides.

And then there was one, and they were so good at it that they could make a rocket go up by moving the cards. At that point he turned to me, and it was a Taepodong missile. ...

It's very, very odd for you to be sitting there. You're there to negotiate a missile deal, and you're taken to a stadium and shown a depiction of a missile going up. What was going through your head?

Well, we were in the middle of our talks, and so the next day, when we returned to our talks, I had, with my delegation, worked out a series of questions that we needed to have answered about what the propositions would be to work out some kind of an agreement to limit the production of missiles and their export. ...

But what was interesting was that, as I said to him, "I have a series of questions for you, maybe you'd like to ask your experts and get me the answers," and he said, "No, just give me the piece of paper."

And what he did was systematically start answering the questions, without advising or asking advice from his advisers sitting next to him. So I think that he is informed on the subject, technically, and very much wanted to show that he was in charge.

And so, to go back to an initial question of yours, he's not delusional, and he's not someone who only is interested in watching bad movies, but someone who really is very much involved in the best product that he thinks his country has.

I would imagine this is one of the stranger visits you've experienced to another country as a negotiator, as a Cabinet member.

Yes. I mean, I had spent my life as an academic studying communist systems and had been to many communist countries and, actually, in various periods, as a private citizen, met with communist officials. So it isn't as if I'd never seen a communist country.

But this was the most totalitarian city I had ever seen, because certain marks of it, in terms of huge buildings, very wide boulevards, all designed to make the individual feel like an ant, and then basically all of these statues or monuments to the Great Leader and the Dear Leader, of the father and son, and then the fact that it was pretty much an empty city.

I've been in many motorcades, and usually people wave or are surprised to see such a long line of cars. Nobody paid any attention to us, as if they had motorcades all the time.

Obviously, we saw only what they wanted us to see, but it's evident that there were apartment buildings that had no electricity in them beyond the lower-level floors, and pretty dingy in that regard. But his own guest houses and the things that we were taken to were very ornate.

Did you feel uncomfortable at that celebration of the Workers Party, sitting next to Kim, being photographed?

... Of course it was uncomfortable. I didn't have the sense that people were looking at me. He was the center of attraction, and to have everybody robotically applauding him, it was like being in some very strange movie myself.

But I have to say I was fascinated because here this country is dead poor, and somehow he managed to make all of these people come and perform. He said that people loved it, you know, that all the students had volunteered to be a part of this. This was a big part of their lives. They just thought it was, you know, a great pleasure to perform like this. But it was pretty strange.

Did you ever raise with him the anomalies that pervade his country, the fact that so much of the resources go to the military, and yet people are starving?

No. What we did talk about, at one of the two dinners, actually, was we started talking about the farming situation, and he said that there clearly were serious problems and that it was due primarily to bad weather conditions. So we talked about whether people had enough to eat, and he said, well, the weather, there had been a drought and various things. ...

The hawks, people like Richard Perle, will say you cannot negotiate. You shouldn't talk to people like Kim Jong Il. You can't negotiate with them, that essentially it's appeasement.

I completely disagree, because I believe that it is essential to see whether there's a way to have some agreements. We talked to Stalin, we talked to Mao, we talked to Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. We made agreements.

I don't consider talking appeasement. It depends on what it is you agree to, but I think it is very much worth having conversations and delivering a very tough message. And when you actually go and you say, "You have to get rid of your missiles," or, as was done in terms of freezing the fuel rods at Yongbyon, I think it's worth the conversation.

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