North Korea Leaders 'More Pragmatic,' Bill Richardson Says After Trip

Back from an unofficial diplomatic mission to North Korea, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson says leaders there are "more pragmatic" than the state-run media portrays them.

In an interview with National Public Radio, Richardson said despite their volatile words, North Korean officials are "starting to move in the direction of toning down their actions."

Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, conceded that the recent military standoff with South Korea has made the situation on the Korean Peninsula as dangerous as it has been in decades. In March, 46 South Korean sailors died when a torpedo struck their warship. South Korea called it an unprovoked attack by North Korea, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned North Korea that it would face "consequences" for the action.

Richardson said that the heated rhetoric reported in the national media doesn't always match the actions of officials.

"You've got to differentiate between their news agency . . . that puts out these very heated, war-like comments almost all the time -- and their officials," Richardson said in the interview that aired on NPR Thursday. "When you meet with them, they're much more pragmatic."

Also Thursday, Richardson said that the White House OK'd his trip to the communist nation, contrary to claims by Obama administration officials that he did not seek their approval.

Politico reported that Richardson said he postponed his travels twice at the request of White House officials, and that they "signed off on this last trip."

An administration official disputed Richardson's claim. "No one signed off on the trip, and he didn't need or get our 'approval,' " the official said in an e-mail to Politico.

Richardson said he spoke to State Department officials while overseas and that he would brief the administration on his findings. But the trip was privately funded and Richardson did not carry a message from the State Department. The United States will not engage in direct diplomatic relations with North Korea until the communist nation takes steps to dismantle its nuclear program.

Richardson spent just over a week in North Korea, talking to officials about the recently escalated military standoff with South Korea.

He told Albuquerque's KRQE-TV that his goal was to "try and to get the North Koreans to calm down a bit [to] see if we can reduce tensions in the Korean Peninsula."

A Richardson spokesperson told The New Mexico Independent earlier this month the outgoing governor was personally invited by North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator.

"I am increasingly concerned with the recent actions by the North Koreans, which have raised tensions and are contributing to instability on the Korean Peninsula," Richardson said in a Dec. 8 statement obtained by the Independent.

Richardson, who served as U.N. ambassador under Bill Clinton, has traveled to North Korea on several times.

In the past seven years he made three separate trips to try to dissuade North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. In 1996, he helped secure the release of American Evan Hunziker, who was charged with espionage by Pyongyang. He has also worked to retrieve the remains of U.S. service members who were killed during the Korean War.

Last year, he welcomed North Korean diplomats to New Mexico.

Richardson's trip came three weeks after North Korea fired on a South Korean island in the Yellow Sea, killing two South Korean soldiers. South Korea returned fire.

The exchange led the South Korean military to issue its highest peacetime alert.

Tensions between the two nations rose after North Korea showed a visiting American scientist, Dr. Siegfried S. Hecker, a new uranium enrichment plant that it had built in secret.

In an interview with The New York Times, Hecker said he saw "hundreds and hundreds" of centrifuges operated from "an ultra-modern control room."