Kim Jong Il offered deal on all long-range missiles to gain foreign currency
By Roy Castellano ·
U.S. intelligence painted Kim Jong Il as strange and moody while the leader sought foreign currency in exchange for his entire long-range missile program.
Madeleine Albright described the contrast between the Eastern Bloc and the West as “like the difference between black and white and Technicolor.” This comparison, recorded in a December 5, 2000, cable from the State Department to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, captures the disorientation of a diplomat moving between worlds. The file's catalogue entry records a briefing Albright gave to South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and Japanese Foreign Minister Kono Yohei following her visit to Pyongyang.
For years, the American intelligence community and the public narrative had painted Kim Jong Il in a specific, limiting light. The catalogue entry notes that the accepted view of the North Korean leader was that he was “strange, moody and hypersensitive.” Albright, however, returned from her meetings with a different conclusion. She found him “practical, pragmatic, decisive, and non-ideological.”
"Practical, Pragmatic, Decisive"
The shift in assessment was not merely a matter of diplomatic courtesy; it was based on what Albright described as a “rational discussion.” The catalogue entry reveals a glimpse of the leader's private environment: Kim Jong Il had three computers in his office and had asked for the State Department’s e-mail address. This detail suggests a regime leader far more attuned to the tools of the modern era than the image of a hermit kingdom usually projected to the West.
Albright’s realization—that the U.S. had “failed to understand what type of person he really was”—mirrored an admission that previous assessments were wrong. By aligning herself with the views of South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, Albright argued that direct engagement was the only viable path to assess the leader's thinking and secure tangible results. She reportedly pushed back against domestic critics and the press, asserting “she was not born yesterday, and that her glasses were not rose-tinted.”
Document imagery from nsarchive.gwu.edu From the files: nsarchive.gwu.edu
All Long-Range Missiles
The primary objective of these exchanges was the North Korean missile program. The catalogue entry records Albright's relief that Kim Jong Il did not attempt to distinguish between Taepodong and Nodong missiles. Instead, he stated clearly that he was “willing to make a deal on all long-range missiles,” acknowledging that these weapons were the central cause of concern for both the U.S. and Japan.
More telling than the offer itself was Albright's assessment of the motivation behind it. She concluded that Pyongyang’s missile programs and the export of missile technology were “strongly linked to its economic situation and need for foreign currency.” In the eyes of the State Department, the threat was not an ideological crusade, but a financial transaction. The task of hammering out the “details and modalities” was left to Assistant Secretary of State Robert Einhorn, who was scheduled to resume talks in Kuala Lumpur the following week.
The Abduction Issue
While the U.S. looked toward a potential breakthrough, the Japanese government faced a more visceral set of domestic pressures. The file's catalogue entry describes an “abnormal” relationship between Tokyo and Pyongyang. For Foreign Minister Kono, the priority was not just missile counts, but the “abduction of Japanese citizens” by North Korea—a violation of sovereignty that created a political minefield in Japan.
Tokyo’s struggle was compounded by the weight of history. The record notes that Japan had to contend with a “contentious issue from the past” regarding how to apologize for its colonization of Korea. This historical baggage made the provision of food aid to North Korea a volatile issue; Japanese officials feared that cash payments would be diverted to military programs, while the public remained skeptical of any concessions to a regime that had kidnapped its citizens.
A Six-Month Period of Good Behavior
The meeting in Seoul concluded with a discussion on whether to remove North Korea from the list of nations supporting terrorism. The catalogue entry notes that Albright was unsure why North Korean officials had not raised the matter during her visit to Pyongyang. Despite the optimism surrounding the missile talks, the U.S. maintained a strict condition for removal from the list: a “six-month period of good behavior.”
Ambassador Wendy Sherman, who accompanied Albright, noted that the U.S. had intentionally chosen “ambiguity” regarding the specific steps North Korea needed to take to be removed from the list, stating only that the North Koreans “understood what they must do.” This strategic vagueness left the terms of "good behavior" undefined in the public record, leaving it unclear exactly what benchmarks the Clinton administration required for a formal diplomatic pivot.