historyatstate:

Stephen W. Bosworth, former Special Representative for North Korea Policy and Ambassador to Tunisia, the Philippines, and South Korea, died on January 4.

Ambassador Bosworth gave an oral history interview to the Office of the Historian in 2012, in which he touched on his legacy and time in East Asia. When asked about what he felt were some of his successes as Special Representative, he said: “I think we were able to bring coherence to the policy process—a sort of a relentless pursuit of a dialogue with the North Koreans that might not have been present otherwise.  I think we did very importantly maintain very good communication and coordination with our partners in the Six-Party process, particularly the South Koreans.  And out of all of this, one of the signal accomplishments, I think—not just of the North Korea Special Representative, but of the Administration—has been a great strengthening of what was already a good relationship between the U.S. and South Korea.”

Bosworth spoke of his sole official visit to North Korea: “As special representative, I only went there once.  I had been there a couple of times in the preceding years.  I was there when I was doing KEDO (Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization) twice.  It’s a very depressing place—very bleak.  It’s profoundly gray in all its aspects.  There’s very little green.  There’s been substantial erosion of most of the land out in the countryside.  It reminds me of what I used to imagine it would’ve been like living in George Orwell’s 1984.  It really is indescribably oppressed.” 

On the question of how much of a direct threat he believed North Korea posed to the United States, Bosworth was very pointed: “As a direct threat, almost none.  But as an indirect threat, through the possibility of instability in this vital region through pressure on our important economic and security ally, South Korea, I think there is a threat.  Now at some point, one could argue that if they continue to develop their long-range missiles and they make progress on weaponizing their North—their nuclear capabilities, then they could become an actual threat.  That’s not something that keeps me up at night.” 

The tapes and transcript of Ambassador Bosworth’s oral history interview will be retired at the National Archives and Records Administration.