We'll have to wait and see, but it could be an interesting summer and autumn.
There is debate in Washington now as to whether this quick shift in atmosphere reflects the Bush administration's tough talk or whether Seoul's sunshine policy is having its intended effect.
Temperamentally, I confess I prefer the latter theory, though it is likely that an indeterminate combination of both Seoul's carrot and Washington's stick has been at work.
Washington's stance, we ought to recognize, has not even been all stick. Pyongyang agreed to restart talks on its nuclear-power program only after Washington said it would respect the Agreed Framework of 1994, under which it is supposed to be building two safe reactors for the North in exchange for Pyongyang's agreement to drop a nuclear-power program that has worried proliferation experts. These reassurances are something Washington ought to have offered long, long ago.
Among the most interesting aspects of this new spate of diplomatic activity is that it seems to put Koreans in the lead -- a position this column has argued numerous times they ought to have occupied from the start of the sunshine era. No one in Washington will acknowledge this. But it looks as if, with their typical perspicacity, the Koreans have redeemed the Kim approach even as conservatives in both Washington and Seoul did all they could to bury it. Again, we'll have to see.
Personal contacts, commerce, family reunions, tours, and all the other unofficial ways estranged people connect have an important place in this exercise. They are a kind of basso ostinato for the diplomats who gather and gab.
I'm not much for group resorts in the Confucian style, especially as the tradition is interpreted north of the 38th parallel.
But those subsidies Seoul doles out for Hyundai Asan's resort are worth every won they cost South Korean taxpayers.
Patrick Smith is a former correspondent in Asia. The opinions expressed are his own.
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