The Secretary of State “announced”:http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/02/119421.htm the appointment of “part-time North Korea envoy Stephen Bosworth”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1861/part-time-envoy on Friday.

Acting Deputy Department Spokesman Gordon Duguid had some “excellent adventures”:http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2009/02/119416.htm trying to explain what the job is.

Any other questions? Yes, please.

QUESTION: Secretary Clinton in Seoul announced that Steve Bosworth would be the new Special Representative to North Korea.

MR. DUGUID: Yes.

QUESTION: I’m wondering if you could explain a little bit the difference between Special Representative and Mr. Sung Kim’s position as Special Envoy to the Six-Party Talks.

MR. DUGUID: Okay. We did this a couple of weeks ago. A special envoy, in diplomatic parlance, has the authority to negotiate. A special representative, in this particular case, as well as in Ambassador Holbrooke’s case, is an authority who coordinates across the board for the United States. So Sung Kim will remain our Special Envoy and he will handle the day-to-day contact and discussions with our Six-Party colleagues. And Ambassador Bosworth will be the special representative coordinating the overall U.S. Government effort.

QUESTION: Will that be a full-time position or a part-time position?

MR. DUGUID: It will be a position that will take up a lot of his time. The question is leading to – will he be based in this building the entire time? Sorry. Of course, it’s a full-time position, but I mean, I don’t understand the question properly.

QUESTION: Okay. Yeah, he’s – it’s been reported that he’ll remain the dean of the Fletcher School?

MR. DUGUID: That is correct, he will.

QUESTION: Okay.

MR. DUGUID: Yes.

QUESTION: So it’s more like a part-time position?

MR. DUGUID: I won’t – I wouldn’t characterize it that way. He will be fully engaged in the – in the effort to try and denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. That is work enough for anyone, but he will also retain his current position.

QUESTION: So he will be based in this building?

MR. DUGUID: He will have an office here.

QUESTION: So it’s almost as if he were the U.S. ambassador to North Korea if U.S. had relation with North Korea?

MR. DUGUID: No, that’s not correct. The – Ambassador Bosworth will be our senior official handling North Korea issues and reporting to the Secretary of State as well as the President. The Secretary has asked Ambassador Bosworth to oversee U.S. efforts in the Six-Party Talks to achieve verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner. He will serve as our senior emissary for U.S. engagement with North Korea in close consultation with allies and partners. With regard to the Six-Party Talks, his involvement will facilitate high-level engagement with the North Koreans and other members of the Six-Party Talks. He will work closely with Sung Kim on this.

QUESTION: Will he travel to Pyongyang?

MR. DUGUID: I don’t have any plans – travel plans for him at the moment.

QUESTION: You seem to be suggesting that Bosworth will have a role and a dialogue with the North Koreans outside of the Six-Party.

MR. DUGUID: I am not. He is our senior–excuse me–Special Representative for the Six-Party Talks.

QUESTION: But he is going to be above the Special Envoy for the Six-Party Talks? Or who is going to decide? Who’s going to be the boss relative to —

MR. DUGUID: Secretary Clinton is the boss.

QUESTION: And so the two of them are equal?

MR. DUGUID: The two of them are working on the Six-Party Talks. Sung Kim does the day-to-day negotiating, and Ambassador Bosworth will work across the process in – for the U.S. Government. Therefore, Sung Kim is doing the State Department part on a day-to-day basis, and Ambassador Bosworth will work across the process coordinating all the U.S. Government efforts. They will work in close consultation.

QUESTION: How is Ambassador Bosworth’s job not a part-time job if he’s maintaining his other position? I mean, can you defend that in any way?

MR. DUGUID: I refer you to – well, I refer you to his – you know, Ambassador Bosworth himself on what he will be doing with his current position. He will not be leaving. But the work that he will do will fully engage his talents as we need them.

QUESTION: Right, but I mean, he’s not going to – if it’s not his only job, how is that not a diminished role than it was under the Bush Administration?

MR. DUGUID: The role that the Ambassador will play will be significant. He will lead our efforts and it will be – not be any diminution of the responsibilities that previous special representatives have had.

QUESTION: Not in terms of responsibilities, but in terms of effort.

MR. DUGUID: I think that he will engage 100 percent of his effort when the Secretary calls upon him to engage in these matters.

Yes. In the back, please.

QUESTION: Just wanted to clarify. Is Ambassador Bosworth – is he going to be attending head of delegation meetings when they have Six-Party meetings, or will that Sung Kim who will attend those meetings?

MR. DUGUID: I don’t think we’ve got that down for you yet. We’ll make the announcement of our delegation when we have those meetings, and it will be based on the conditions at the time.

You can “watch the video”:http://www.state.gov/video/?videoid=13775861001, too. The fun and games start at 1:54.

From tonight’s _Nelson Report_:

The other night we reported, correctly, that Tufts Fletcher School dean Steve Bosworth will be the Special Envoy for N. Korea, but we need to amend, or extend that information with the following:

Bosworth will be working part-time, not full-time, and he’ll continue his job as dean. When we wrote “confirmed” we meant to imply that, after Gen. Zinni, it’s trust but verify. This job will NOT be “Senate” confirmed.

Sung Kim, A/S Chris Hill’s special envoy for the 6-party talks, will be the primary negotiator , but on those occasions when high-level negotiations are needed, Bosworth will be called-in as the Special Envoy.

We would be less than candid if we did not also report that while the Korea commentariat thinks the world of Bosworth, there is concern that his post NOT being Senate confirmed makes it questionable he would have the top-level access required to achieve real decisions with N. Korea.

Go figure.

Bosworth’s profile is “here”:http://fletcher.tufts.edu/faculty/bosworth/profile.asp.

A previous mention of the envoy rumors is “here”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1844/track-i-and-a-half-in-pyongyang.

“Musical bonus”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll6LLGePYwM.

The Secretary of State has something to say about fissile material in North Korea, but the transcript is not yet online. [Update: here’s the “transcript”:http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/02/117345.htm.] From “Glenn Kessler”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/15/AR2009021501790.html:

“There is a debate within the intelligence community as to exactly the extent of the highly enriched uranium program,” Clinton told reporters traveling with her to Asia on her first voyage as the chief U.S. diplomat.

[snip]

“The Agreed Framework was torn up on the basis of the concerns about the highly enriched uranium program,” Clinton said. “There is no debate that, once the Agreed Framework was torn up, the North Koreans began to reprocess plutonium with a vengeance because all bets were off. The result is they now have nuclear weapons, which they did not have before.”

[snip]

“My goal is the denuclearization of North Korea,” Clinton said. “That means a verifiably complete accounting of whatever programs they have and the removal of the reprocessed plutonium that they were able to achieve because they were given the opportunity to do so.”

“When they move forward” on ending the program, she added, “we have a great openness to working with them,” including “a willingness to help the people of North Korea.”

Perhaps Secretary Clinton meant to say that the North Koreans have more nuclear weapons than before the Agreed Framework was torn up. (If memory serves — this was back in late 2002 — the North Koreans were the first to declare the AF dead, but remained within the NPT and kept Yongbyon on ice until the U.S. cut off HFO deliveries.) But perhaps she meant exactly what she said.

Jeff has already “laid out the issue”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1907/north-korean-reprocessing-campaigns, so it needn’t be explained all over again here.

Tonight’s “Presidential press conference”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1843/obama-on-nuclear-diplomacy touched on three hot nuclear-diplomacy issues: engaging Iran, launching post-START talks with Russia, and strengthening the nonproliferation treaty regime.

One subject not touched on was North Korea. Intriguingly, though, a revolving procession of U.S. academics and think-tankers in and out of Pyongyang is now underway, with each delegation followed shortly by the next, or so it seems. Two such delegations are mentioned “here”:http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090209_4835.php, and I’ve also heard of another.

This isn’t exactly Track II diplomacy, since the NK interlocutors are government officials — call it Track I and Half.

This sort of thing has been going on for years, actually, but the pace seems to have picked up. The “recently concluded visit led by Stephen Bosworth”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jIUMgKnfmtyg8T8wMAghB4V2lInAD966LP2O0 of Tufts University may be of special interest, since he’s allegedly in line to be a “special envoy to North Korea”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jQU3AClp9uLyW4tZ44e9D6nn1Uww.

_Update: The reports about Bosworth appear to be pure speculation and rumor._

Update II: Now Bosworth supposedly will be a “part-time envoy”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1861/part-time-envoy.

This year’s top wonk memento has got to be an “Air Koryo”:http://www.korea-dpr.com//Air%20Koryo/about.htm air sickness bag.