Bill Clinton Snapped with Teenage North Korean Flower Girl.

Bill Clinton Snapped with Teenage North Korean Flower Girl.

For Pressenza, Tony Henderson, Hong Kong, 2009-08-05

There they were, Jong and Bill, in regular pose before the press in North Korea and the world gasped. The contradiction became a paradox of possibilities!

Springing a much needed surprise on the interested world August 4 2009, High Unofficial from the USA Bill Clinton suddenly plopped down in Pyong Yang, North Korea and met with Kim Jong Il.

He had come to bring home the distressed reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters who work for best-pal Al Gore’s Current TV, who were arrested March 17 near - possibly over - the China-North Korea border.

While any link with President Obama has yet to be mentioned there is no doubt that under Obama a more open relationship has been secured which in itself is a tremendous change since the Bush Era.

Discussions about normalizing ties went dead when George W. Bush took office in 2001 with a hard-line policy on Pyongyang. The Obama administration has expressed a willingness to hold bilateral talks though only within the framework of the six-nation disarmament talks in place since 2003.

North Korea announced earlier this year it was abandoning the talks involving the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, China and the US. The regime also launched a long-range rocket, conducted a nuclear test, test-fired a slew of ballistic missiles and restarted its atomic program in defiance of international criticism and the UN Security Council.

Last month, the US Navy tailed a North Korean cargo ship as it sailed south suspected of carrying cargo banned under a UN resolution on board until the vessel turned around and returned to port.

North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator greeted Clinton when he landed in Pyongyang. Clinton is the highest-profile North American to visit North Korea since his own secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, went there in 2000. The trip marks President Clinton’s first diplomatic mission abroad for the Obama administration - do we see another Jimmy Carter here?

The welcome mat was unrolled as a sign of North Korea's "humanitarian and peace-loving policy," the Korean Central News Agency reported.

Whatever comes of this surprise package, even if nothing substantive on other issues is gained, the hand shakes and photo opportunity of Bill & Jong are giving Peacenicks the world over a real buzz. Anything is possible it appears when people with the power decide to give it a whirl.