North Korea’s FM responded to the 13 May “bilateral meeting”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/index.php?id=603 between US and DPRK officials with a “positive statement”:http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2005/200505/news05/23.htm:

bq. The DPRK will continue to closely follow the U.S. attitude and its stand will be officially conveyed to the U.S. side through the contact channel in New York when an appropriate time comes.

Well, postive for the North Koreans, who also complained that some US officials issued …

bq. …an endless string of balderdash at a time when the DPRK is seriously studying the U.S. stance, which it had learned through the contact in New York, in connection with what the Bush administration has said. This only creates confusion in guessing the U.S. stand.

Pyongyang objects to a pair of statements by Rice and Hadley regarding a Security council “referral”:http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2005/05/16/afx2031943.html and other “punitive measures”:http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0505/15/le.01.html should North Korea test a nuclear weapon.

Seoul’s neighbor to the North is livin’ large in a glass house when it comes to endless strings of balderdash, but the complaint is reminder that people like _our_ Dear Leader should take Ari Fleischer’s advice to “watch what they say” while trying to get the talks back on track.

Jack Pritchard — who knows something about dealing with North Koreans — recently commented on President Bush’s tendency to say “whatever pops into his head”::http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/04/20050428-9.htm at a “Center for American Progress event”:http://www.americanprogress.org/atf/cf/%7BE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03%7D/050519%20NORTH%20KOREA.PDF:

…there is a concern I have had that this administration has a schizophrenic approach to North Korea. I was thinking, you know, you got to be very careful. That’s a medical term. So you
know, I’m very judicious here.

I went and I consulted with a very eminent medical person and he said, “No, I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think they have a schizophrenic approach. I think it’s more basic than that.

I think the president of the United States has a very little known disease called Kim Jong Il-itis. It’s a rare form of Tourette Syndrome in which in an uncontrollable and unexplained manner he will just explode and talk about Kim Jong Il; perhaps as his chief negotiator is, oh, say Tokyo, Beijing, talking up the advantages of a policy.”

I jest a little bit, but not by much.