Symbolism of the ceramic cup

We have the Korean ceramic cup to thank. And the keen knowledge of the psyche of the other side.

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Fri, Feb 15, 2007 (Straits Times)
How agreement was clinched: Secret overtures and lesson from a teacup

ON A Friday night in late December, the tortuous three-year diplomatic effort to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programme finally appeared to be dead.
Two months earlier, North Korea had conducted its first nuclear weapons test, and five days of talks in Beijing had just ended in failure and acrimony.
But that evening, two nights before Christmas, the American team sent a messenger to the gated North Korean Embassy in Beijing.
Would Pyongyang be interested in a private, bilateral meeting outside Beijing?
A few days later, the North agreed and chose a location - Berlin.
Over three days last month in the German capital, the two envoys - the United States' Christopher Hill and North Korea's Kim Kye Gwan - held their first private discussions outside the framework of the six-nation negotiations in Beijing.
It was the sort of bilateral setting once forbidden by the Bush administration.
In Berlin, the two negotiators used it to hash out differences between the two sides.
'We basically teed up an agreement - what you saw today,' a senior US official familiar with the American negotiating team said on Tuesday.
Or so they thought.
The American official said the envoys agreed that the precise amount of energy aid to the North would be left undetermined until working groups were established.
The Americans left Berlin, and Mr Hill briefed South Korea, Japan and China, the host of the nuclear talks.
On Jan 30, China announced that the talks would resume this month.
'Beijing should have been a fairly straightforward exercise,' the American official said.
But once the talks opened last Thursday, North Korea made clear its unhappiness about allowing the amount of oil to be determined by a working group.
'The problem was the North Koreans wanted an overall number, and they wanted the overall number public,' the official said.
When the talks again teetered near collapse on Monday, Mr Hill reached for a homespun symbol to convince North Korea not to be too greedy.
The former US ambassador to Seoul told Mr Kim that he kept a traditional Korean ceramic cup on his desk.
'The way it works is if you pour it a little too much, if you try to put too much liquid into the cup, it all drains out and you get nothing,' Mr Hill told Mr Kim, warning that Pyongyang risked the same fate.

The message was not lost on North Korea.

NEW YORK TIMES, REUTERS