The four activists sitting on the panel declared they would “speak from a pro-North Korean position” on the North Korean nuclear dispute. “If you can convince us, you’ll be able to make progress in your negotiations with North Korea," they told the ambassador, who is also Washington's point man in six-party nuclear disarmament talks. “For Ambassador Hill, the debate was like a mock exam," CNPK chairman Chung Wook-sik said.

Outgoing U.S. ambassador to Korea Christopher Hill reviews an honor guard along with commander of the U.S. Forces in Korea General Leon J. LaPorte at a farewell ceremony in Yongsan garrison on Wednesday. Hill has been named assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

Hill settled for rapid-fire responses to the questions thrown at him, and provided much frank commentary devoid of diplomatic circumlocution.

As soon as Hill said he did not understand why North Korea was refusing to rejoin the six-party talks, the panel shot back, “You really don’t know?” They brought up such matters as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s labeling North Korea an “outpost of tyranny” and the U.S.' North Korean Human Rights Act -- all evidence, they said, of hostile U.S. policy. Hill countered the U.S. was a country with a lot of things to correct but encouraged the panelists to take a look at the statements North Korea regularly directs at America. He said that when it came to "hostile policy," North Korea was "gold medal material." “Can you really say that North Korea isn’t an outpost of tyranny?," he added. "Look at how many planes fly in and out of North Korea a day. Is there another nation in the world as closed as North Korea?”

Hill rejected bilateral talks with Pyongyang as they would exclude Seoul, saying the time when South Korean diplomats received briefings at the airport from foreign diplomats concerning matters affecting their country had passed.

Panelists wondered whether Washington's discussion of human rights in North Korea was a means of putting pressure on Pyongyang. “Doesn’t the level of tension increase when North Korean human rights are discussed?” asked Kim Nak-jung, who once spent time in prison on charges of being a North Korean spy. Hill responded by pointing out that in the U.S. neither the right nor left saw human rights as a political choice. He expressed hope South Korea would see it the same way, and said that being afraid to discuss human rights in North Korea did not help relieve tensions on the peninsula.

When People’s Solidarity policy committee chairman Chung Dae-yeon said, “Negotiations are impossible as long as the U.S. sticks to a Libyan-style solution,” Hill responded that the North Koreans seemed to be asking for guarantees that would keep their regime in place "for several centuries", but the only ones who could offer the regime such guarantees were the North Korean people.

The panel raised the uncomfortable matter of U.S. reports that North Korea sold nuclear materials to Libya when in fact it was Pakistan that made the sale. People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) Center for Peace and Disarmament executive Park Jung-eun asked, “The U.S. said the material was from North Korea, but didn’t the U.S. pick and choose the intelligence or simply fabricate it?” Hill said the U.S. had evidence that North Korea relayed the material "through a Pakistani broker" knowing full well it was going to Libya.

The activists also disputed evidence that North Korea had plans to develop nuclear weapons using enriched uranium. The ambassador said if North Korea said it bought high-priced aluminum equipment to build a children’s playground, wouldn’t it suffice for it to show the world the playground? He asked what a nation "that cannot even afford tractors" would buy such equipment for.

After an hour and a half it was over, and Hill let out a big breath. Later he said that since this was his last engagement as ambassador, he felt rather nostalgic about the proceedings.

(englishnews@chosun.com )