Kim Jong-hoon, Korea's chief negotiator in the free trade talks with the U.S., made a personal confession after the agreement was signed in Washington, D.C. on Saturday. "I had no other choice during the talks," Kim told a meeting of Washington-based correspondents. "I wasn't up-front and open-hearted the whole year of the talks. In negotiations, you know, strategy and tactics come before everything else."

His disclosure was significant to this reporter -- I have been watching Kim since 1999 when I began covering the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. With his distinctive Gyeongsang provincial accent, Kim has long been regarded as one of the few straightforward diplomats. When he commented on someone he disliked, he would say, quite undiplomatically, "That guy is a charlatan." So I was intrigued last year when I heard that he had been chosen to head up the free trade talks.

What his confession reveals is that among diplomats, even straight talkers sometimes need to become devious Machiavellians when something as important as national interests are on the line. He revealed the dark side of negotiations, when shading the truth can be the best way forward.

Kim also confessed that he manipulated the press to bring the deal to a successful conclusion. "When the U.S. asked us for an additional round of talks, we decided, after consultations with the government agencies concerned, that there was no real problem in accepting the request. But if we admitted that the U.S. request was insignificant, we wouldn't be able to demand anything in return. So I told the press that we had some problems with doing those talks," he said.

I was also impressed by the speech Trade Minister Kim Hyun-chong delivered before Kim Jong-hoon spoke at the signing ceremony. Kim Hyun-chong said, "Beyond the Pacific, the U.S. will also profit enormously from the Korea-U.S. FTA. The bilateral free trade deal will present many new opportunities to America's industrial, service, and agricultural sectors. The deal will also create opportunities for us to continuously grow in areas where American enterprises are dynamically active."

Kim Hyun-chong's acknowledgment of America's gains in the deal may have been just a polite nod to the Americans at the ceremony. But what he said was 100 percent true. What he said, in essence, is that in bilateral talks between nations, neither side should win an overwhelming victory or suffer a full defeat.

Opinions are split over the results of the deal, but what is certain is that Korea surely didn't smash the U.S. by a score of 10 to 0, nor did it lose by 9-1. Both sides signed the deal in the belief that they had found the right balancing point of each other's interests.

According to a senior diplomat, normal talks between nations usually produce a result with a score of 5-5 or 5.5-4.5.

With the negotiations phase finally done, it's now up to lawmakers in Washington and Seoul to ratify the deal. But the deal has given us a few things to keep in mind as we contemplate future talks. For one, we now know we can't always take the Korean negotiators at their word. Another lesson is that extreme assessments of such deals, like suggesting that we won a "complete victory" or that we've become an "American colony", are foolish.

By looking back on the negotiating process, we hope that the government can hone its negotiating skills and that the public will gain a better understanding of how trade deals are made.

This column was contributed by Lee Ha-won, the Chosun Ilbo's correspondent in Washington.