The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (34 page)

In Beijing Gorbachev spoke of his fast-developing friendship with South Korea in terms that would have been impossible during the Sino-Soviet split. Briefing materials prepared for him in Moscow noted that “Beijing energetically promotes unofficial ties with Seoul. The PRC’s volume of trade with South Korea is $3 billion, ours is less than $200 million. This connection with Seoul does not harm China’s relations with Pyongyang and at the same time helps the peace process on the Korean peninsula.” Gorbachev told Chinese premier Li Peng, “We think that the USSR is behind China in developing ties with South Korea. Very far behind.” Li responded, “If you mean trade volume, you are right.”

On the political side, Moscow was reaching out to Seoul through its party-dominated think tanks. In February 1989, the Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada, headed by the influential Georgi Arbatov, hosted Kim Dae Jung, the most internationally prominent opposition leader. The Institute of World Economic and International Relations, headed by the redoubtable Yevgeni Primakov, invited Kim Young Sam, his political rival.

Kim Young Sam’s visit in June 1989 coincided with a trip to Moscow by North Korean Politburo member Ho Dam. Soviet authorities arranged for the two to meet. Acting on the basis of an understanding reached
with the Blue House before his trip, Kim declined Ho’s invitation to visit Pyongyang, insisting that a North-South summit meeting come first. Had Kim accepted and traveled to Pyongyang, the contacts and understandings with the North that resulted might have changed Korean history. As it turned out, Kim’s careful handling of the Moscow visit and the invitation from Pyongyang won acclaim from the government in Seoul and paved the way for his political alliance with Roh Tae Woo in January 1990—an alliance that eventually resulted in Kim becoming Roh’s successor as president.

Throughout this period, a struggle over Korea policy was taking place in Moscow. On one side were most Foreign Ministry officials, the Soviet military, and the Korea experts in the Central Committee, who favored caution because of the long-standing ties to North Korea; on the other side were members of the Soviet political and economic leadership, who considered the North Korean tie an anachronism and were eager to move ahead quickly with the South to obtain economic assistance. The central issues concerned pace and procedure rather than direction. “We understood the inevitability of future recognition of South Korea, but we were calling for going to this aim step by step,” said a senior Foreign Ministry official. However, he said, some departments in the Central Committee and some personal aides to Gorbachev insisted on taking dramatic steps at once, due to their urgent desire for financial aid. Vadim Tkachenko, the veteran Korea expert on the Central Committee staff, who favored a measured approach, said the top decision makers “from the beginning converted the issue into trade [where] the most important thing was money. . . . [They were] doing everything on the spot, without thinking.”

The moment of truth arrived in May 1990, when Gorbachev met privately in his office with former Soviet ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin, who had returned to Moscow to become a senior foreign policy adviser to the Soviet leader. Dobrynin had been invited to visit Seoul for a conference of the InterAction Council, an unofficial group of former heads of state and senior diplomats organized by former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt. In view of the sensitivity of this trip to Seoul by a high-ranking Soviet official, Dobrynin was required to obtain Gorbachev’s permission.

The day they met, Gorbachev had just received a report from his finance minister on the dire state of the Soviet Union’s coffers. Foreign goods were urgently needed in an effort to keep living standards from sinking while reforms were under way, but financial markets were refusing to supply further credit because of Moscow’s inability to pay its debts. Searching for money wherever he could, Gorbachev was in the process of authorizing a series of secret financial appeals to the West German government as part of the intense negotiations on the future of Germany.

Dobrynin recalled that Gorbachev’s words to him were “we need some money.” With that practical preamble, Gorbachev proposed that Dobrynin use the trip to Seoul to explore the possibility of a major loan from the South Korean government. At this stage, Gorbachev was not ready to go to Seoul himself, but he told Dobrynin that he would be willing to meet Roh somewhere else, perhaps in the United States, where he was scheduled to have a summit meeting with Bush in late May or early June.

Dobrynin arrived in Seoul on May 22 and the following day was taken to a secluded Korean-style building on the grounds of the Blue House. There he met secretly with Roh and his security adviser, Kim Chong Whi, the architect of the
Nordpolitik
maneuvers. Dobrynin relayed the news that Gorbachev was willing to meet the South Korean leader, a powerful symbolic step tantamount to official recognition and certain to lead rapidly to full diplomatic relations. “You are the third to know,” Dobrynin told the Korean president, “and you are the fourth,” he said to Roh’s aide. Emphasizing the need for secrecy, the Soviet emissary obtained a commitment that the Korean Foreign Ministry would not be informed until the last minute, because the Soviet Foreign Ministry had also been kept in the dark. It was agreed that the meeting would take place two weeks later in San Francisco, which Gorbachev planned to visit after the completion of his Washington summit. Dobrynin did not inform Foreign Minister Shevardnadze of the meeting until shortly before it was publicly announced, and the Soviet Foreign Ministry took no part in the session—extraordinary given the event’s importance.

According to Dobrynin, he discussed with Roh a loan of some billions of dollars, though without being specific on figures. In a 1993 interview for this book, Roh quoted Dobrynin as telling him that Soviet leaders “were in a desperate situation for their economic development.” Having seen what Korea had done economically, Roh recalled, “they expected that South Korea could somehow play a role in the success of
perestroika
. As a model, they were attracted by the Korean economic development. That was their top priority at the time, and they naturally expected that South Korea could contribute to this.” Roh told Dobrynin that Korea would make a major contribution to the Soviet Union, but only if and when full diplomatic relations were established.

From the Korean perspective, a full breakthrough with the Soviet Union would be of immense importance. It would deprive North Korea of the undivided support of its original sponsor, its most important source of economic and military assistance, and an important military guarantor against American power. Moreover, the spectacle of the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union meeting with the president of South Korea meant the legitimization of the Seoul government virtually everywhere and the final collapse of North Korea’s long-standing
effort to wall off the southern regime from communist nations. There was little doubt that eventually China would follow Moscow’s example.

Although the meeting of Gorbachev and Roh took place on American soil, the United States played only a minimal role in bringing it about. Secretary of State James Baker had discussed Korea with Shevardnadze in several meetings early that year, but these talks centered on the North Korean nuclear problem, and, in any case, Shevardnadze was not involved in setting up the breakthrough with South Korea. The subject of a possible South Korean connection with the Soviet Union had been discussed in the spring by Roh’s foreign policy aide, Kim Chong Whi, with Assistant Secretary of State Richard Solomon and US ambassador to Korea Donald Gregg. Solomon agreed to help but felt that a breakthrough was unlikely during 1990.

Once the Gorbachev-Roh meeting was arranged, the United States worked to facilitate it. At the urging of the Blue House, which considered a signal of continued US alliance to be vital, President Bush agreed to receive Roh at the White House following the California event. The visible show of American support for the breakthrough, Gregg reported to Washington, “may finally drive a stake through the heart” of a widespread South Korean belief that the United States was opposed to direct contacts between Seoul and Moscow.

Selecting the site for the meeting in San Francisco turned out to be tricky. For security, convenience, and possibly symbolic reasons, the Soviet side proposed the Soviet Consulate General in the Northern California city, but the Koreans adamantly resisted this because of historical overtones they considered shameful. In 1896 King Kojong had taken refuge in the Russian legation in Seoul for a year to escape assassination by the Japanese, with the result that Russia won special rights and benefits in a weakened Korea. This humiliation had never been forgotten in Korea, where historians coined a special word,
akwanpachon
, for “kings taking refuge in the Russian legation.” After much discussion, the Soviets agreed to hold the meeting in Gorbachev’s suite at the Fairmont Hotel.

Although the meeting itself was an unremarkable exchange of generalities, the event marked “a radical change” in Soviet policy from exclusive alliance with North Korea, as Gorbachev acknowledged later in an internal Kremlin report. There was no explicit decision to move to full diplomatic relations, though this was clearly implied and rapidly accomplished after Gorbachev and Roh shook hands. According to Kim Jong In, who was then Roh’s senior economic aide, Roh stated near the end of the meeting that the Korean government was prepared to offer “several billion dollars” in economic support. Soviet notes of the meeting said Roh “announced a readiness to grant considerable credit” for the purchase of South Korean consumer goods and also pledged cooperation in creation of joint enter
prises and in the opening of Soviet Asia. Others who were interviewed for this book insisted that money was not discussed, though everyone knew the issue was an important one.

When Gorbachev asked if Roh had a message for Kim Il Sung, Roh replied that he would welcome Soviet efforts to bring about a North-South rapprochement. Specifically, he asked Gorbachev to do three things: tell Pyongyang that Seoul was ready to meet officially for the discussion of any outstanding question, use Soviet influence to place the North on the path of external opening and internal reform, and convey ROK willingness to discuss and take steps to reduce military confrontation on the peninsula. When Soviet diplomats tried to pass on Roh’s message, Pyongyang refused to accept it, calling it “an unbelievable concentration of lies and slander.”

At the end of the brief meeting, Roh eagerly asked for a photograph of the two men together, knowing its political impact on both sides of the thirty-eighth parallel. Gorbachev was reluctant but was finally persuaded by Dobrynin, who argued that “it won’t get published in Russia.” The official Korean photographer recorded a broadly beaming Roh with his left arm in friendly fashion on the elbow of Gorbachev, who managed only a wisp of a smile.

Roh’s press conference immediately afterward was broadcast live to South Korea. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the prospect of German unification, Roh noted, Korea remained in June 1990 the only nation still divided by Cold War politics. “As a result of today’s meeting, the cold war ice on the Korean peninsula has now begun to crack. We expect that this will be the first major step toward a peaceful and unified Korea,” he declared. Roh repeated that Seoul did not wish to isolate the North Korean regime but that the ultimate objective of his
Nordpolitik
policy was to induce North Korea to open up. “The road between Seoul and Pyongyang is now totally blocked,” he said. “Accordingly, we have to choose an alternative route to the North Korean capital by way of Moscow and Beijing. This may not be the most direct route but we certainly hope it will be an effective one.”

THE SHEVARDNADZE MISSION

In September 1990, three months after the Gorbachev-Roh meeting and less than two years after swearing “on my word as a party member” that the Soviet Union would not grant diplomatic recognition to South Korea, Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze returned to Pyongyang to break the news that Moscow had decided to do just that. Shevardnadze’s special Aeroflot plane arrived in a gusty wind so strong there was doubt whether it could land, and his awkward mission met turbulence throughout. When
he flew out of Pyongyang two days later, an angry Shevardnadze was smarting from accusations and threats, including a threat of accelerated nuclear weapons development, hurled at him by his North Korean counterpart, Kim Yong Nam. The Soviet foreign minister told his party, as his plane took off, that the experience had been “the most difficult, most unpleasant talk of my life.”

Eduard Shevardnadze, a white-maned politician who had succeeded the long-serving Andrei Gromyko as foreign minister in 1985, was a remarkable figure. A native of the southern republic of Georgia, Shevardnadze had no diplomatic experience before being chosen by Gorbachev, an old friend. Perhaps because of his minority-group status as a Georgian in the Russian-dominated Soviet Union, Shevardnadze proved to be sensitive to the concerns of smaller nations and troubled peoples. Among the strongest advocates of democratic policies in domestic affairs and of the New Thinking in relations with the West, Shevardnadze was notably cautious about a rapid policy change on Korea. Alexander Bessmertnykh, who was a senior deputy to Shevardnadze, said that “he reasoned we have an ally, not an attractive one but a powerful one. He didn’t want to give this up by forcing the pace.” Another senior Foreign Ministry official, who worked closely with him on Asian matters, called Shevardnadze a very wise man. “He said it is very easy to worsen our relations with North Korea, but it would be extremely difficult to restore them.”