Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir (36 page)

On June 21, I arrived in Pyongyang in a driving rainstorm, accompanied by a very small team that included Sung Kim, Tom Gibbons, Henry Haggard from our embassy in Seoul, and Jeesoo Jung, a Korean-American interpreter also from our embassy in Seoul. We had started the day checking out from our hotel in downtown Tokyo, slipping out the hotel entrance past the journalist stakeout, and then heading in a minivan over to an air base. From there we flew a U.S. military plane to Osan Air Base in Korea, an hour south of Seoul. There we picked up another U.S. military plane for the forty-five-minute journey up the North Korean coast and on to Pyongyang. Green, wooded hills in South Korea gave way to the brown and barren landscape of North Korea, and like a movie that goes from color to black-and-white we knew we would soon be landing in North Korea.

After our small jet came to a halt on the bumpy cement runway, a vehicle came to guide us closer in to the cinder-block airport building. When we got to the arrival area several camera crews greeted us, along with officials from the Foreign Ministry, including Li Gun and Choi Sun Ai. I knew that shaking hands was inevitable but also recalled the effort that Holbrooke and I would always make in meetings with Milosevic never to smile when cameras were present. On the other hand, I also remembered the advice of our science attaché in martial law Poland: don’t look angry, because it could be mistaken for fear. I allowed a smile.

We stayed at the presidential guesthouse, the lap of luxury for North Korea and the most honored place we could have been housed. The rooms were enormous, as if size of rooms was that year’s central plan indicator. The decorator seemed to favor pinks, reds, and lime green, and
my bed’s headboard, made of white enameled wood, had motifs featuring naked cupids and other sparsely clothed figures. My television, an older Japanese model, had a remote that could not be operated from the bed, the distance being too far. From about ten feet I was able to make it work, only to find out that there was but one channel anyway. As head of delegation I had an adjoining library, whose shelves were completely filled with Kim Il Sung’s life works, as well as various books about communist worker movements in such places as Romania. I looked at such titles as the life of (East Germany’s last leader) Erich Honecker and reflected on the sense the North Koreans must have of being the last communist country still standing, like someone who has outlived all contemporaries.

The food was traditional Korean and featured a small, unfilleted fish, a delicacy in Korea that at lunch was served longitudinally on the plate, and at dinner, for no apparent reason, latitudinally, the only difference in the evening menu from that of lunch. Kim Gye Gwan accompanied us everywhere, including a nighttime drive through Pyongyang presumably for the purpose of showing us that many buildings did in fact have electricity in the form of single, naked lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling of apartments, most of which seemed to be without curtains.

The discussions at the Foreign Ministry, a 1970s decorated building, no worse than many I have sat in throughout the world, was unremarkable, other than the conference room’s attractive dark wood paneling. It was clear that Kim Gye Gwan was interested in making sure his bosses saw that he had been able to summon the Americans. I politely declined offers to see tourist sights, especially as nothing had yet been actually accomplished in the talks, and I did not want to be seen visiting such places as the Self-Reliance (Juche, more or less translated) Tower, or worse yet, Kim Il Sung’s plasticized remains under glass.

On June 25, three days after I left Pyongyang, the well-traveled $22 million came into the North Korean bank accounts and the North Koreans announced that they would begin shutting down the nuclear facilities.
The international inspectors began boarding the flights into North Korea, to arrive the next day, June 26, 2007. It was the first time since 2001 that the reactor had been shut down for anything other than maintenance, and therefore the first day that North Korea hadn’t, in effect, been making more bomb material.

W
hen I wasn’t working in North Korea and the surrounding countries in Northeast Asia, I was in Southeast Asia. It is a very different feel from the countries of Northeast Asia. First of all, the weather is hot and humid, and unlike the Koreans or the Japanese or the Chinese, nobody is in any particular hurry. That is not to say there are no problems there, the political turmoil in Indonesia or Thailand over the years being notable examples, but compared to the issue of North Korea’s nuclear aspirations, Southeast Asia was a bit of a respite.

I visited China and Korea and Japan some thirty-five times, while visits to Southeast Asian countries amounted to a small fraction of that. Still, six trips to Thailand, five to Indonesia, two to far-off (and almost forgotten) East Timor, five to the Philippines, and several out to the Pacific Island states, all added up.

Once a year, the countries of Southeast Asia hold an annual summit meeting, after which a broader group is invited, including the United States. If a secretary of state has not visited Southeast Asia at all during
the year, she or he can clean the slate by showing up at the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), usually held in a resort hotel in a beautiful place. (ASEAN is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.)

Usually, nothing is decided at an ARF. There is a communiqué that member states argue about in the weeks leading to the event, but that gets taken care of at some point and is often quickly forgotten within days.

The secretary of state is expected to go to the forum to represent a “partner nation,” participate in various soporific meetings and conferences, and take part in one other event: a skit. Given what little secretaries of state have to do through the rest of the year in Southeast Asia, it is not a lot to expect them to attend. But if they don’t, they will never hear the end of it.

Condi Rice, one of the most peripatetic secretaries of state in history, failed to show up at the first ARF, and it was discussed for years. She sent her deputy secretary Bob Zoellick, a consequential official well known throughout the world. But Bob wasn’t the secretary. Condi’s point in not attending was that she had other, very consequential things to do—Middle East peace, Iraq, to name a couple of them. The ARF is not a place where people actually do things. It is a place where people simply show up. If, as the old aphorism goes, 80 percent of life is just showing up, at the ARF it is almost 100.

The Cambodia of 2006 bore little relationship to the country that Americans knew from the Vietnam War, and certainly from the Khmer Rouge period, which started in the mid-1970s and drenched the country in the blood of three million victims. The killing fields had long ago returned to rice cultivation and Cambodia had become a developing country, struggling to improve its economy, manage weak institutions that often produced more corruption than services, and endure a political system that concentrated power in the hands of one leader, a former guerrilla commander named Hun Sen.

I went there in January 2006 to take part in the opening of the brand-new American embassy in Phnom Penh, an extraordinary building
for Phnom Penh. It followed the basic architectural design of U.S. embassies around the world, featuring a large atrium in the center and balconies from the offices above. Newlyweds in the Cambodian capital began to pose in front of the embassy in the weeks before it opened. It was the best-looking building in the city.

But in addition to taking part in the embassy opening, my mission had another purpose. Hun Sen had just arrested several of the leading figures in the Cambodian human rights movement, including Kem Sokha, the director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. Our very courageous and energetic ambassador there, Joe Mussomeli, had taken on Hun Sen in the media and seemed destined to come out a distant second.

I asked the ambassador what kind of person Hun Sen was.

“He plays golf well,” Joe said helpfully.

“I don’t,” I replied less helpfully.

I looked carefully at the bio and noticed he was born in the same year and the same month as I.

“What is the Cambodian word for older brother?”

“Bong,” Joe answered.

Bong. I thought I could remember that.

I walked into Hun Sen’s office. Rather than the rows of chairs laid out Chinese-style in a semicircle, he preferred sitting across a narrow table from his visitor. He looked younger than his years, thin and hungry, and tough. He had seen a lot during his lifetime. I found myself looking directly at him, partly to see if I could figure out which eye was the glass eye that replaced one lost during the war. It was hard to tell. What I could clearly see, however, was that he didn’t seem to be looking forward to the meeting.

“Mr. Prime Minister. I am pleased to have this opportunity to meet you. With your permission I would like to raise something at the beginning—”

“If this is about the four persons recently arrested, there is nothing I can do about them. Our country has an independent judiciary. They
are in the judiciary process. There is nothing I or anyone else can do to change that process. Cambodia is very proud of our independent judiciary system.”

“Mr. Prime Minister, actually I wanted to ask you something quite different. I noticed you were born in August 1952 and I wanted to know what day.”

“Why?” he asked, beginning to show some traces of humanity.

“Because I was born on the tenth and I need to know whether I must call you my ‘Bong.’  ”

First Hun Sen started to laugh, and then his entourage did.

“The twenty-second,” he replied, still laughing. “You are the Bong here today.”

“Okay,” I said, enjoying my newfound status. “Let me turn to another subject. Mr. Prime Minister, I know very little about Cambodia, even less about your independent judicial system (and for good reason). But I do know something about Washington. And this situation here is not understood there. I am worried that if this continues, Cambodia is going to have a reputation like Burma’s. And what that will mean is that the relationship will become very complicated. Mr. Prime Minister, I like to keep things simple.”

Hun Sen leaned over for an animated talk with his advisors. I kept looking over to the embassy interpreter to see if he was able to pick up any of it. Finally, Hun Sen turned back to me.

“What if I release them by two o’clock today?”

“Two o’clock? Um, that will work. Kamala, is two o’clock okay?” I thought if Hun Sen was consulting with advisors, I should turn to the East Asia Pacific special assistant, Kamala Lakhdhir.

“Um sure,” Kamala replied, not sure what I wanted her to say.

“But you didn’t pressure me,” Hun Sen continued.

“No, never. I would never do that, Mr. Prime Minister.”

“It is my gift to you on the occasion of the opening of your new embassy.”

“Right, your gift to me and our embassy. A gift. A present. Thank you.”

“It will happen at two
P.M.
, but do not tell anyone.”

“Nobody,” I replied. “My lips are sealed.”

My next meeting was with several senior members of the human rights community. They wanted to know how my meeting with the prime minister had gone. I told them that he had asked that the judiciary system be given a chance to function (an answer that didn’t earn me any points), but I promised that I would remain active on the issue until they were released. I glanced at my watch and realized that was not much of a commitment. It was already noon.

After lunch with the ambassador and several of his team, followed by a tour of the new embassy, we went to the grand opening. The atrium was packed with foreign diplomats, Cambodian officials, and members of the business community. A hard monsoon rain was falling outside in the steamy city. I was chatting with the Polish military attaché when Kamala came up to me and whispered, “They are out.”

“Where are they now?” I asked, almost shaking with anticipation.

“You’ll meet them soon enough. They are coming here to join the party.”

Some forty-five minutes later, Kem Sokha, Pa Nguon Teang, Mam Sonando, and Rong Chhun, all sporting new beards, arrived at the embassy along with a large group of supporters who had greeted them at the prison and escorted them here. I greeted them, but tried to keep my role quiet since I didn’t know whether Hun Sen was the sort to change his mind.

“Kamala, what time is our flight tonight?”

“We’re leaving at eight
P.M.
”

“Good. I wouldn’t want it to be much later.”

• • •

When most people think about New Zealand, very pleasant images emerge—a far-off Pacific island country with snowcapped mountains and
green valleys and pastures dotted with healthy sheep ready to supply the world with wool. Its people seem warm and relaxed, moderately minded, and have a sense of humor that seems to have been issued at birth. When in 1942, British commander Lord Mountbatten reviewed Kiwi troops following the epic North African turning point in El Alamein, he is said to have commented to the New Zealand commander that his troops did not seem to know how to salute very expertly. The commander, General Bernard Freyberg, replied, “No, but if you wave at them, they will surely wave back in a very friendly manner.”

For the United States government, New Zealand had become a kind of pariah state over a decision taken in 1987 to make itself one of the world’s nuclear-free zones, in effect banning the U.S. nuclear navy.

New Zealand’s move began in 1984 and culminated with legislation in 1987 that reflected the worldwide debate on the subject (many U.S. college towns had symbolically done the same), but in New Zealand’s case there was a regional issue. France had used its French Polynesian atolls to test some two hundred nuclear explosions in the atmosphere before finally halting the program in 1974. These tests had helped build a large antinuclear movement in New Zealand that did not fade away with the ending of atmospheric tests. In 1987, the Labor Party government of David Lange succeeded in passing the Nuclear Free Act of 1987, which banned not only nuclear weapons, but also vehicles of nuclear propulsion.