SEOUL ---- The U.S. government has been a fickle advocate for political prisoners detained and eventually killed at labor camps that have existed inside North Korea for 50 years. In the Clinton years, high-level diplomatic contacts between Washington and Pyongyang focused almost exclusively on preventing the North from developing nuclear weapons and expanding its ballistic missile capability. President George W. Bush's administration took a radically different approach. It famously labeled North Korea as part of an 'axis of evil,' along with Iran and Iraq. Bush met with camp survivors. For five years, U.S. diplomats refused to have direct negotiations with North Korea. After North Korea detonated a nuclear device in 2006, the Bush administration decided to talk. The negotiations, however, focused exclusively on dismantling Pyongyang's expanded nuclear program. In recent months, North Korea has reneged on its promise to abandon nuclear weapons, kicked out U.N. weapons inspectors, exploded a second nuclear device and created a major security crisis in Northeast Asia. Containing that crisis has monopolized the Obama administration's dealings with North Korea. The camps, for the time being, are a non-issue. 'Unfortunately, until we get a handle on the security threat, we can't afford to deal with human rights,' said Peter Beck, a former executive director of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. 