Clinton flew home with two jailed US journalists after securing a pardon from hardline communist leader Kim Jong-Il -- a sharp turnaround from recent icy relations sparked by Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests.

While Seoul analysts broadly welcomed the visit, newspapers cautioned that South Korea's conservative government should take care not to be frozen out if ties between Pyongyang and Washington warm up.

Cheong Seong-Chang of the Sejong Institute called the Clinton visit a "win-win game", noting that the United States secured freedom for its reporters while Kim proved he is still in control despite health problems.

The 67-year-old is widely believed to have suffered a stroke a year ago and now appears gaunt and aged.

"North Korea has no more cards left to play after its nuclear test and missile launches," Cheong told AFP. "It may think it's time to come out for dialogue, and Clinton's trip was timely.

"Both sides may have reached a consensus that tensions should not escalate further."

Dongguk University professor Koh Yu-Hwan called the outcome of the trip "generally positive" for both sides, even though North Korea gained more "by using it for political propaganda".

He said it gave Washington a rare opportunity to get an idea of what Kim and other North Korean leaders have in mind.

The North improved its image while Kim bolstered his legitimacy and proved his leadership is still firm, the analyst said.

"There will be no quick or dramatic turnaround in relations solely with Clinton's trip, but North Korea may start extending an olive branch without raining tensions further," Koh said.

"It will take more time but the trip will apparently help create a new mood for dialogue."

Daniel Pinkston, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, said the visit "if nothing else, reveals information about the North's intentions".

"It is a necessary but not sufficient step in resolving problems," he said, adding he is "cautiously optimistic".

Chosun Ilbo, South Korea's largest-circulation daily, said the visit heralds the start of a new era in US-North Korean relations.

"It is just a matter of time to see the onset of US-North Korean bilateral negotiations, although not right away," it said in an editorial.

But Chosun warned: "Nobody can deny South Korea is the biggest party involved in the Korean peninsula issue. Whatever decision is made about the peninsula with South Korea absent would inevitably be null and void."

North Korea has always favoured direct engagement with the United States, which for its part insists that Pyongyang must return to six-party nuclear disarmament talks that include South Korea.

Cross-border relations have worsened sharply since President Lee Myung-Bak took office in Seoul in February 2008. He linked major economic aid to nuclear disarmament, a policy that enrages the North.

The left-leaning Hankyoreh newspaper urged Lee to adjust what it called a hostile policy towards North Korea to catch up with events.

"The nominal purpose of Clinton's visit is to bring home the two female journalists, but the world looks beyond that and towards nuclear negotiations and improving US-North Korean relations," Hankyoreh said.

"It is crystal-clear that US-North Korean talks will be fully launched on the occasion of his visit to North Korea."

JoongAng Ilbo newspaper also said Seoul should seek a breakthrough in inter-Korean relations.

"Taking a cool-headed look at the current situation, the government should prepare to pave the way to overcome the inter-Korean impasse," it said.

There is widespread media speculation that Lee will announce a new North Korea policy in a speech on August 15, when both Koreas celebrate their 1945 liberation from Japanese rule.

earlier related report
Kim Jong-Il may have scored big with bully tactics: analysts
North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il may have emerged from his Tuesday meeting with former president Bill Clinton convinced that bullying tactics and "bad behavior" pay off, observers and analysts warn.

In return for pardoning and releasing American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, they say, the ailing leader of a pariah state brought a former US president to his door and shored up his legitimacy at home and abroad.

Yet, they add, Kim's Stalinist state had bolted from multinational nuclear disarmament talks, staged an underground nuclear weapons blast, test fired a volley of missiles, and jailed the two journalists for 12 years of hard labor.

If pictures are worth a thousand words, there is one with a beaming Kim and a stern Clinton. Kim had after all just received his highest-level visitor since Clinton's own secretary of state Madeleine Albright made the trip to Pyongyang in 2000.

Even though the White House claimed it was "solely a private mission," analysts agreed it was in fact both blessed by and coordinated with President Barack Obama's administration.

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations and an outspoken hardliner in the previous administration of George W. Bush, said the visit was a bad idea even if all the details about it were not immediately known.

"It comes perilously close to negotiating with terrorists," Bolton told AFP.

Clinton, Bolton argued, has undermined the public stand taken by his own wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who just last month likened North Korea to an unruly teenager who should be ignored.

"I think this is a very bad signal because it does exactly what we always try and avoid doing with terrorists, or with rogue states in general, and that's encouraging their bad behavior," Bolton said.

The visit, he said, also undermines Secretary Clinton's public remarks in which she separates the case of the two journalists from efforts to force North Korea to return to six-party nuclear disarmament talks.

"Hillary has said she wanted to delink the two but (Bill) Clinton was met at the airport by Kim Kye-Gwan who is the lead -- and has been for 15 years or more -- the lead North Korean nuclear negotiator," he added.

Bolton favors isolating North Korea over negotiating with it -- a state that he believes is bent on securing its status as a nuclear weapons state through negotiations.

For Nicholas Eberstadt, analyst at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute, the Clinton trip is another in an "unending series of miscalculations and blunders" by the United States concerning North Korea.

"They must think it's Christmas in August to get former president Clinton finally to come to their country," Eberstadt told BBC television.

Michael O'Hanlon, an analyst with the Brookings Institution, had mixed feelings.

On one hand, he told AFP, Clinton can deny he is an official envoy and the Obama administration can distance itself from any concessions the North Koreans may claim the former president makes.

"But I do worry about the overall trend, which is North Korea setting the pace and the agenda of our interactions," O'Hanlon said.

Though Clinton did not lift sanctions, deliver economic aid or undermine the military preparedness of regional allies, O'Hanlon was bothered by what he called the "symbolic effect of giving legitimacy to Kim Jong-Il."

Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear disarmament expert as head of the Ploughshares Fund, was emphatic about the trip's value.

"Wrong," he said when asked if it amounted to appeasement.

The Obama administration, he said, actually ignored the provocations for eight months and North Korea has been "rather quiet" since the United States, joined by North Korean ally China, helped pass tightened UN sanctions.

"The North Koreans will see this (visit) as a sign of respect and will understand there could be a high level of official talks should they take the right steps," Cirincione said.

Analysts like Cirincione hope the visit will pave the way for North Korea's return to the six-party nuclear disarmament talks with the United States as well as China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

They say such a return may happen first through direct talks with Washington, albeit under the six-party umbrella.

Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and an Obama supporter, hailed Clinton's mission.

"It cools down the atmospherics" following so much tension, he told CNN television. "Both sides get something. Maybe what we also get is a framework for (nuclear) talks."

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