Interview with Christopher Hill

SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- Washington's man in Asia, Christopher Hill, helped broker a breakthrough deal with North Korea. As pressure mounts on Pyongyang to deliver a complete nuclear declaration amid the election of a new president in Seoul, Hill discusses the landmark six-party talks, his thoughts on North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and concerns over China's growing military power. Once the U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Hill walks CNN's Sohn Jie-Ae through his old haunts in Seoul and sits down for a meal with her at his favorite Korean restaurant, now something of a local landmark thanks to his patronage.

BLOCK A

SJ: What are North Koreans like as negotiators?

CH: Well, I think they have some pretty strict talking points that they come into. They have some very specific things that they're looking for, I think they pretty much stay on task, they don't allow themselves to wander, they go right at the issues that are important to them, and they're pretty well-prepared too. So if you're going to negotiate with them, you better be prepared yourself.

SJ: Pretty tough?

CH: I would say, pretty tough, yeah.

SJ: What part of all this process do you find the most challenging in dealing with North Korea?

CH: Well, it's challenging to get a sense of what they're really looking for, what's really important to them. They often talk about the U.S. hostile policy, which I find kind of strange, because we don't have a hostile policy in North Korea, we have a hostile policy to nuclear weapons in North Korea. I've kind of explained that over and over again, so just identifying what it is they really want is important, because sometimes they tell you what they want, you work very hard on it, you get people back in Washington to redo it, and then lo and behold, it doesn't look like something they want anymore. So having them identify their interest, for me, is very crucial.

SJ: Under these circumstances, it seems like it'd be crucial to give you the leeway to negotiate.

CH: Well, you know, every negotiator wants total leeway, and I'm certainly one of those. But you know at the same time, as I mentioned, at some point you have to take what you've gotten and take it back to Washington, and people need to be pretty convinced that you got all you could get. So while you want flexibility, you don't want a situation. The worst situation is to take something back and have it rejected back there, because as a negotiator, you really can't put yourself in the position of coming back to you interlocutor and say, "Sorry I couldn't sell it back there." So you have to have a pretty good sense of what you can sell once you go back to Washington, and that was true in the last agreement we reached in October. There're some really good points in it, but I was a little concerned whether we could actually sell it, and so I asked for a couple of days and I went back to Washington and I met with Secretary Rice, in fact, in New York. And in fact I met with the president the next day, and then we phoned back to China and said we accept the proposals.

SJ: You've never met Kim Jong Il?

CH: No, I've not.

SJ: But do you feel him in the room? Is he there?

CH: My impression is that my counterpart had direct access to Kim Jong Il, and that when he proposes something, he does it with the full knowledge of Chairman Kim Jong Il. So in that sense, I quote, "feel him in the room", but certainly I've not had the opportunity to meet him.

SJ: What was your first trip like? What was the feeling like as you entered Pyongyang?

CH: Well, I mean, it's--first of all it's a very big airport, not a lot of traffic though, not a lot of things happening there. And then as you drive into the town, it's a very nice tree-lined road, but again, not a lot of automobile or vehicular traffic. So it's a big place, but I would say there's not as much activities as one would expect for such a big place.

SJ: Did you get a chance to get an impression of North Korean society, besides just the lack of cars?

CH: Well, you know, as a career diplomat, I've visited a lot of countries, I've lived in a lot of countries, and you gotta be a little careful, not to draw too many generalizations based on driving at the back of a car and looking out the window. That said, certainly, anyone who's familiar with Korean people -- who's, in my case, lived in Seoul, and known Koreans all over the world -- there's a sense of sadness at seeing Koreans living in this kind of, state of poverty, really. Again it was not an unpleasant looking city, but there should be more cars, there should be more shops, there should be more restaurants, there should be more life. So you had a real sense of sadness at the isolation of this place. And certainly we would like to help them overcome the isolation, but they need to understand that the price of that is getting rid of nuclear weapons.

SJ: About the detonation of the nuclear device -- once you knew it was coming, but you never really knew for sure that someone would actually push the button. Do you remember where you were when you heard that they've actually pushed the button and detonated it? What was going through your mind?

CH: Well, it was fairly late at night on a holiday weekend as I recall, Columbus Day, it was Sunday night, and I recall being at home. And we had a flurry of phone calls as people were notified, and then we had to figure out what we're going to do, and one of the things we want to do is get even closer to our six-party partners, and work very hard on U.N. Security Council resolution. We made very clear what the international community thought of this, and we ended up with a unanimous Security Council resolution, unanimous included China. I'm not sure North Korea ever counted on China supporting that kind of tough resolution, which included some kind of economic sanctions in it. So I think it was a terrible event, as I said, this place is too small to be exploding nuclear weapons. It's a terrible event, but on the other hand, I think it brought us all closer together and made us more resolved to get this thing done.

SJ: Take us back to one of the breakthroughs in six-party talks, the February one, the big one. At what point in this process, do you remember at what point you're thinking "We got it," you know, a turning point that you feel?

CH: Well, these things, they'll go on for a few days, and you don't think that you really have an agreement. For example, we had a big disagreement on the amount of fuel oil that we would deliver to North Korea in respect of denuclearization actions, and so they were looking for a lot more fuel oil than we were prepared to have, just for the active shutting down of the facility, because that which can be shut down, can be turned back on. So it's frankly not worth paying a lot of fuel oil for that action. But they want to have considerably more fuel oil, and so what we were able to do is to agree to additional fuel oil, considerably more fuel oil, provided that they agree to additional denuclearization. And so the crucial moment in that February agreement was their agreement to move on to disabling, and we didn't have a full implementation plan of how the thing was to be disabled, but for the first time we had an agreement that they would take it to the next step of disablement. And that happened at about 2 in the morning, and one thing about negotiation, you got to be wide awake all day and all night, and so that happened around 2 in the morning, and that was a very good moment.

SJ: Is there room for both the United States and China being major powers in Asia?

CH: I think there is. You know, I read and hear a lot about the idea that China is somehow pushing the U.S. out, and out of Southeast Asia. During my many trips to Southeast Asia, when I go to Singapore, when I go to Indonesia, those countries, no one wants to see the U.S. leaving that area. The U.S. I think has been very important to those countries, continues to be important to those countries, not just from a military point of view, but also from the point of view of our economy. So I don't think more China in those countries means less U.S. I think China has been important, you know, for years and years the world looked for a second engine of growth. What is the other country besides the U.S. that can be big enough to cause growth in still other countries, and that country seems to be China.

And so as China's grown, it has really helped raise the growth rate in Southeast Asia, so this is very positive. And we can work with China in this region, I am not worried about any kind of looming conflict. We have different interest, but we have real interest, and I think everyone can respect that.

SJ: Any concerns about China's growing military power?

CH: To date, the Chinese military is a very small institution compared to the U.S., so I think the U.S. would be on pretty thin ice to be complaining about the size of China's military. What doesn't concern us, what definitely concerns us, is the fact that we don't have a lot of transparency on what China is doing in the military area.

Most countries, if you look at the growth of their militaries, you can look very specifically, the budgets, you can see why national assemblies or parliaments are passing those budgets, you can see what kind of capabilities they're developing, why are they developing those capabilities, etc. But in China's case, it's very opaque. You're left at trying to guess what is the growth rate of this thing, of this budget, and we're seeing it in double digits for many years. We're left to have imagination to figure out what are they really trying to invest in, what are they trying to accomplish with military force. And so this opaqueness, this lack of transparency is leading to some lack of trust.

BLOCK B

CH: This is where, if you work at the embassy, you'd come out here and have lunch, and there're just a million places to have lunch here. But the problem in Seoul is when you're having lunch, it's all at 12 o'clock.

SJ: Everyone goes to lunch at 12 o'clock.

CH: Everyone goes to lunch at 12. So if you're here at 12:02, no table. So you pretty much have to blast out at 12 o'clock. But you know, you can see some of these neighborhoods are really changing, because some of these lower buildings are being switched out and you got the high rises coming up all over the place. So it looks quite different from when I was here in the '80s, even different from when I was here just three years ago.

SJ: Are there things from your short and long stay in North Korea that help you in negotiating with North Korea? Does anything really help you get it in terms of talking to Koreans?

CH: Well, I mean, what you understand from being in Korea is how quickly things have changed, and it's not just in Korea. In a lot of countries in Asia, things have moved very fast, and so you know, you walk around a neighborhood like this and you see stuff that you might have seen in the 1930s, and then you see stuff that's definitely from a whole modern era. So you realize that literally, things are being transformed out from other people's feet. Things are moving, and so change is kind of frightening in certain respects, but in another respect, people are kind of used to it.

SJ: Now here's something that actually hasn't changed much, really.

CH: Oh, they're having a demonstration.

SJ: It's a farmer's day demonstration. They're unhappy about opening the market to U.S. imports.

CH: Well, I think it's a demonstration probably against the Free Trade Agreement, which I think majority Koreans would agree with me, is a pretty good thing for Korea. But you know, in any trade deal, it's always tough, you got some people who are unhappy about it. And they have a right to go out on the street and make their views known.

SJ: And when they're unhappy about it, that's what people do here, go out on the street.

CH: That's right.

SJ: I think we're going to have to go around them ... [They arrive at the restaurant.] They're all waiting for you, they love that you're back. This is supposedly the restaurant that you made famous.

CH: Oh really? My soon du boo.

SJ: Yes, your soon du boo comment. See, they have the newspaper article of your saying that you miss the soon du boo stew and they have it.

CH: Hasn't changed a bit.

BLOCK C

SJ: Mr. Hill, you've been a career diplomat and you've had a great success in the Balkans. Is there something from your experience there that you bring with you?

CH: When you come to a place, you do bring some of what you've learned elsewhere. And I would say in terms of my Balkan experiences brought to this area in the world, the first thing to do is respect history, you know, understand what went on, because people's attitudes didn't just get formed that morning. They have long-term attitudes, attitudes that may be kind of ingrained in them, if not in their DNA, then certainly in their elementary school classroom.

Probably more true in the Balkans than in Asia, you deal with attitudes that, you know, if you just looked at the face of them, you would say, "Why would anyone believe this?" But you have to stop yourself and realize that whether you believe it or not, or think they have a right to believe it or not, they do. So respect history and respect people's attitudes and then try to deal with it. You know, changing people by sort of yelling at them or wagging your finger at them, rarely you get a moment where they hit the side of their head with the palm of their hand and say, "Oh, I get it. Thank you very much, Mr. Hill. My life will be different as a result of what you just told me."

You're often dealing with some people that you probably wouldn't want to spend your Sunday afternoon with, and for example, one of those people, Slobodan Milosevic, I spent a lot of time with this guy, not easy to deal with a guy like that. But frankly, you gotta deal with a guy like that because if you're gonna be successful, if you're gonna get the job done, you have to deal with a lot of different people and, uh, that man was different.

SJ: You've spent most of your, as you've said, a lot of your time as Assistant Secretary of State for Northeast Asia, concentrating on North Korea. Do you feel like there are areas that you miss?

CH: Well, you know it's funny. There are some places in Southeast Asia whose success is vital to the region. Indonesia is an example of that -- huge country, I mean we're talking 230, 240 million people -- it's enormous. It's the largest Muslim-majority country in the world. In fact, the number of Muslims in Indonesia is greater than the number of Muslims in the Middle East -- enormous. And I've been there four times, and that's not enough. I should go there more often. I should understand the country better than I do, although I do try. It's very important. So if I didn't have this North Korea issue, I think you'd find [me] in that part of the world.

Another area that I think is very important to get right, and I am spending time on it, is Burma. Burma, historically, is a country where, you know, one could have expected a lot of good things from Burma. In fact, if you look back to the 1950s, Burma was supposed to be one of the great success stories. So here it is, 50, 60 million people, bigger than the Republic of Korea, and yet it has had such a sad history in recent decades. So that's a country that I would like to spend more time on.

SJ: So once you see the North Korean relationship going back on track, we'll probably be seeing a lot less of you here, in Seoul?

CH: Oh, I don't know. I love coming to Seoul, having a bowl of soon du boo, walking around, it's really one of my favorite cities in the world, frankly. And as I'm sitting here with you looking out at this ice-skating rink, I'd love to spend more time here.

SJ: Thank you for talking to us today, Mr Hill. That's it for this week's edition of Talk Asia. I'm Sohn Jie-Ae in Seoul, South Korea. See you next week.

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