HONOLULU -- "U.S.-North Korean military meet to reduce tensions."
"North Korea threatens to withdraw from nuclear agreement with U.S."
The frustrating thing about these two headlines, which recently ran on international wire services on the same day, is that they are both accurate. The Chinese may have invented "sweet and sour" as a way of cooking, but North Korea has perfected it as a foreign-policy approach. As a veteran of negotiations with Pyongyang once noted, "I look forward to their most vitriolic outbursts . . . they normally come just before actual progress is going to be made."
In recent days, North Korean threats and propaganda blasts notwithstanding, some progress seems to have been made, not only in North-South relations, but in Pyongyang's relations with Washington as well. But while no one questions Seoul's eagerness to move the process forward, serious questions continue to be raised about Pyongyang's sincerity . . . and about Washington's as well.