The US Embassy in London classified the transcript of one interview from June 15, 2005 as "confidential/noforn" -- not for the eyes of non-US citizens. Diplomats interviewed Efthimios Mitropoulos, secretary general of the UN's International Maritime Organization, soon after he returned home from a visit to North Korea. His report was doubly interesting. He said his flight to North Korea was half-filled with Iranians, prompting him to ask rhetorically how North Korea can reasonably expect "the West to believe their nuclear program is not a threat."
Secondly, Mitropoulos was even required to take an active and open role in the leadership cult surrounding Kim. During a welcoming ceremony, party cadres handed flowers to Mitropoulos that he "'might want to dedicate' to the Great Leader" and, with cameras rolling, he placed the bouquet before a statue of Kim Il Sung. What's more, when he later turned the TV on in his guest room, he discovered that, although there were 114 channels available on the cable box, "only one ... worked -- the government's channel."The North Koreans, though, didn't seem to have much further use for Mitropoulos than serving this propaganda function. "When he visited port facilities," the report indicates, "the Port Security Manager was unavailable to escort him on the tour of the port's security system."
The embassy memos also paint a picture of how North Korean diplomats behave on the international stage. One US diplomat stationed in Ulan Bator, for example, reported on a visit by Kim Yong Il, North Korea's deputy foreign minister, to Mongolia to meet with presidential adviser Damdin Tsogtbaatar. "The North Korean delegation did not read from a prepared script, they were not aggressive and made no criticism of the United States," the diplomat recounted. They did, however, criticize "China and Russia 'three or four times' for supporting recent UN resolutions aimed at North Korea." The report went on to say that North Korea wanted "to come up with a 'common language,' a 'non-aggression agreement,' and establishment of diplomatic relations." Kim Yong Il added that "there are no eternal enemies in this world."