Dancing with Google DPRK-Style
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Recommended Citation"Dancing with Google DPRK-Style", NAPSNet Policy Forum, January 16, 2013,https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-policy-forum/dancing-with-google-dprk-style/

Go to the weekly report for 17 January 2013
A recently completed private mission to North Korea has been described as “useful idiots” (JohnMcCain) or at least as “failed” (no agreement to open the DPRK to the Internet or some-such wasannounced). The Obama Administration publicly disowned the mission as “unhelpful” even before
they hit the ground.
In reality, no-one except the delegation and a few North Koreans know what was said to whom in
Pyongyang.
All we know is that they didn't get the arrested American--and that the coincidence of their trip with
his incarceration was serendipity, not planned, and therefore incidental or a distraction from thereason to go.
To some commentators, the propaganda treatment of the “Google mission” (it was in fact aRichardson mission with Google’s Schmidt tagging along, set up by Tony Namkung; the American
media got this wrong before the North Korean began to portray as such) as paying “tribute” to theDPRK’s present and past leadership. This portrayal reminded them of the disrespectful treatment ofJimmy Carter on his second trip to Pyongyang in April 2011.
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The public portrayal of this mission to ordinary North Koreans as “tributary” is simply what you
would expect at this time, given that the mission apparently didn't bring any serious private "tribute"or the North Koreans didn't want what was on offer or conditions related thereto. If they had, andthere was something substantive to announce, then the language might have been moderate, orthere might have been less dissonance with the external prop-agit related to the mission. My best
guess us that the mission didn't come bearing serious tribute, that is, a Google-funded initiative ofsubstance of the kind that Roger Cavazos and I outlined, and whatever the North Koreans wanted
wasn’t something Google could deliver.
The timing to go to Pyongyang on an independent mission is almost never good, from the WhiteHouse's perspective. Ironically, the White House dislikes independent political forces almost as
much as Pyongyang distrusts civil society.
But propagit treatment of Americans of any size, shape, or color is epiphenomenal. Its primarysignificance in this case is that it shows that the North Koreans have almost nothing at stake now intheir relationship with Washington to worry about risking with disrespectful prop-agit. treatment.
It's too easy to attribute the US mission members' motivation to Namkung's alleged naivete about
the North Koreans (of which, to be blunt, there is zero evidence and much to the contrary),
Richardson's craving for publicity, etc. He may well seek the limelight; but he has not gone to
Pyongyang over the last few years because he judged the timing to be not propitious.
This time, he decided it was time to go--he may have been wrong, but I am sure that there wasreason to believe that some productive outcome would occur. Again, this is sheer speculation on mypart, but it is not uncommon for one part of the DPRK UN Mission to say one thing, and for anotherpart to say something else; or even for the DPRK UN Mission to say one thing in NY, and later finditself on a limb cut off in PY by someone opposed to engaging the US.
In short, this discussion does not consider many factors that affect how such missions are fielded,
and is far too judgmental, too early, as to its true significance based, ironically, on evidence from theleast trustworthy of sources—North Korean propagit.
And, we still don't know what was said by whom that could actually be worth knowing. Maybe
nothing; maybe something of great significance. And before you go, there is no way to know what
you might get. That was the case when Richardson went to request the release of the downed
helicopter pilot in '96. I am sure that was the case again this year. It's always the case when you go
to North Korea.
Given the stakes, especially when no-one in the White House has a plan to seriously engage theNorth Koreans in ways that might work, you go to talk when the opportunity arises, not when it isoptimal.

- Peter Hayes, NAPSNet contributor

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