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U.S. officials speaking on North Korea policy showed consistent patience this week despite a lack of progress in denuclearization efforts, while a former White House aide on Friday joined the criticism of the George W. Bush administration's approach to Pyongyang.

Sung Kim, director of Korean affairs at the State Department, is in North Korea to discuss the country's disclosure of its nuclear programs, which is past due since the end of last year.

"We remain focused," department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters. "We remain engaged in the diplomatic process and fully supportive of the six-party process in our assessment that it will continue to yield positive results."

Kim has been sent to help push the six-party process, a multilateral forum established for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. South and North Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan are members of the talks, which, through a series of deals since 2005, agreed on phased steps to dismantle Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and programs and in return provide political and economic benefits.

The process has been snagged by delays in North Korea's disablement of its key atomic installations and its declaration of its nuclear stockpile, activities and proliferation, both of which were supposed to be completed by the end of last year.

The disablement has been slow in part due to technical and safety reasons, but the declaration as explained to the U.S. fell far short of expectations, leading to the current standstill in the six-party process.

The message being sent this week was that the U.S. will be adamant but patient.

"We are not lowering the bar here," McCormack said about wanting a full and complete declaration from Pyongyang.

On Thursday, U.S. ambassador to Seoul Alexander Vershbow had the same message. While the delay is "unfortunate," the U.S. "will persevere," he said, more than once, in remarks at the Korea Economic Institute in Washington. He also repeated that the U.S.

"will take as long as necessary" while not settling for anything less than Korea's full denuclearization.

Michael Gerson, a former assistant and speechwriter for President Bush, became the latest critic to join hardliners who have been speaking up more in the wake of stalled six-party process.

In an opinion column in the Washington Post, Gerson defended Jay Lefkowitz, the U.S. envoy on North Korean human rights issues, who was publicly rebuked for denouncing the denuclearization talks.

Lefkowitz, also a former presidential assistant, said last month North Korea is not likely to give up its atomic weapons and that the U.S. should review it policy and press Pyongyang on human rights issues instead of focusing solely on denuclearization.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice responded by saying he was "out of his lane" and does not know what was going on in the six-party talks, nor does he have a say in it.

Gerson, remembered for writing the State of the Union address in which President Bush lumped North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an "axis of evil," said he knows at least five high-level former Bush administration officials who share Lefkowitz' views, the result of years of frustration.

"This is the problem of State Department's realism," Gerson wrote. "Negotiations that begin as a means become the end itself -- a kind of blind and dreamy faith in the magic of the process."

"The alternative is not to end the talks or impose a blockade," he said.

"It is, as Lefkowitz pointed out, to pursue a more sophisticated diplomacy familiar from the Cold War. Tie the improvement of relations (with North Korea) to both security and human rights."



WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 (Yonhap)