Moon's Dance

What role is Reverend Sun Myung Moon -- major media mogul and motivating force behind the Washington Times daily newspaper, the United Press International news service, and many other journalistic properties - playing in the ongoing nuclear negotiations between North Korea's leaders and the Bush Administration?

Although the evidence is circumstantial, it appears as if Moon -- a self-styled "Messiah" who has called America "Satan's Harvest," and who has given speeches titled "The Last Days are Coming to America" -- may also be functioning as a middleman between George W. Bush and Korean dictator and junior Axis of Evil member Kim Jong Il.

Moon's idiosyncratic politics and theology have long identified six countries -- the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and North and South Korea -- at the center of an anticipated apocalyptic confrontation, a final Armageddon-like battle, in which Moon and his Unification Church would play a key role.

Those same six countries, of course, are at the center of the ongoing multi-lateral negotiations over North Korea's nuclear capabilities.

The Bush Administration has loudly resisted North Korea's repeated efforts to abandon the six-country negotiations and engage in direct, bilateral talks. But a channel for direct communications between the two countries already exists. The so-called "New York channel" is the U.S. State Department's back door conduit for one-on-one, face-to face bilateral meetings with North Korea, and both governments acknowledge its existence.

During a March 15, 2002 press briefing, for example, a U.S. State Department spokesman acknowledged the existence of the "New York Channel" in response to a question about meetings between U.S. and North Korean Ambassadors:

"Our discussions through the New York channel have continued at the working level since the outset of the administration, with occasional face-to-face meetings ... "

And North Korea's government acknowledged the New York channel at least as far back as March 31, 1999, when a Foreign Ministry spokesman, speaking of missile negotiations with the U.S held in Pyongyang the day before, told the official news agency KCNA:

"It was agreed that the venue and date for next negotiations would be confirmed through a contact channel in New York."

Three years later, in June 2002, KCNA reported that the US had informed the North Koreans "through the New York contact channel that it would send a special envoy of the State Department to Pyongyang to explain its stand toward the restart of the dialogue." By July 2003, the North Koreans were saying that they would "recognize the 'New York channel' as the only official route to dialogue between the North and the United States."

South Korean press accounts are also plentiful. The English language Korea Times reported on Nov. 29, 2002 that the "channel" had been closed since North Korea announced its weapons program had restarted, but the administration was trying to reopen it:

"U.S.-North Korea dialogue through the so-called 'New York channel' has remained idle since the North's alleged confession to running a nuclear weapons program and is showing no signs of recovering in the near future, government sources said yesterday. The New York channel served as a behind-the-scenes communication line between the two countries in the absence of diplomatic ties, involving U.S. officials in charge of Korean affairs and North Koreans working with the United Nations. ... This conflicts with the earlier pledge by the U.S. that it would 'press ahead with contacts with North Korea via the New York channel' despite the tension caused by the North's surprise nuclear confession."