The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (69 page)

On March 17, Park Jie-won flew to Shanghai. He told reporters and staff members that he was taking a leave of absence to be hospitalized for
a checkup. Actually, he began four rounds of talks with Song Ho Gyong, a veteran North Korean diplomat who was vice chairman of the DPRK’s Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, an influential Workers Party unit in charge of policy toward the South. According to a high-ranking ROK official, the North sought to explore details of the economic assistance mentioned in the Berlin speech. There was also a question of where to meet and when to announce a meeting. No agreement was reached in the first two days of secret talks, nor in a second round the following week in Beijing. But when Park was summoned back to the Chinese capital by his negotiating partner on April 8, he and Song, “under instruction from the highest authority” of each side, signed an agreement on a North-South summit meeting to take place in Pyongyang on June 12–14. The agreement was announced on April 10, just three days before nationwide parliamentary elections in South Korea, generating skepticism and charges of “obvious politicking” from the political opposition. As it turned out, the announcement had little effect on the elections, in which the president’s party failed in its bid to become the number-one party in the National Assembly.

SUMMIT IN PYONGYANG

Following the announcement that the leaders of the two Koreas would meet, midlevel officials of the two governments met at Panmunjom in five sessions of preliminary talks from April 22 to May 18 to hammer out summit details: the agenda, participants, press attendees, travel arrangements, security. The central issue and the greatest unknown, however—the intentions and even the character of the North Korean leader—remained a mystery.

On the afternoon of May 27, Lim Dong Won, the South Korean president’s closest adviser on North-South affairs, drove to Panmunjom and from there helicoptered to Pyongyang. The diminutive former general, who had been born in the North but who became an army major general, a professor, and a military and diplomatic strategist in the South, was the most trusted and most powerful foreign-policy official in Kim Dae Jung’s presidency. Lim had been deeply involved for many years in policy toward and negotiations with the North, but he had played little role in domestic politics until he joined Kim Dae Jung in 1995 as director general of Kim’s Asia-Pacific Peace Foundation. Kim had been outspokenly determined for decades to pursue engagement with the North rather than confrontation; Lim, who agreed, brought expertise and enterprise in making it happen. After serving in two earlier senior posts, Lim in December 1999 became director general of the NIS. In that post, he had a hand on all intelligence concerning the North and could direct and even participate in secret activities.

In Pyongyang Lim held talks with Lim Dong-ok, first vice director of the Workers Party United Front Department, which is in charge of handling inter-Korean relations. In those talks, the North Korean official raised what would become a major sticking point in the summit arrangements—the issue of whether President Kim would visit Kim Il Sung’s preserved body at the Kumsusan Palace. Lim said no, the North Korean insisted, and the atmosphere deteriorated. The NIS chief was then informed it would be impossible for him to meet with Kim Jong Il, which was the purpose of his visit in the first place.

On June 3, Kim Dae Jung sent Lim back for a second try. Lim did not know what kind of man he would meet at the top of the North Korean hierarchy. He had collected ten books that had been written about Kim Jong Il, all from the negative side. Most of the intelligence that had been gathered and promulgated by the NIS was also harshly negative. Yet some other people and materials, including the accounts of Russian and Chinese officials who had met Kim Jong Il, were much more positive about his ability, his interests, and his inclinations.

After arriving in Pyongyang, Lim met with party secretary Kim Yong Sun, the most senior party official in charge of inter-Korean matters. Again the question of the ROK president’s visit to Kumsusan came up, and again Lim said no, explaining that the negative political ramifications in the South from such a visit would cancel out anything the summit might accomplish. This time the North Koreans did not push back, but said they would report Lim’s views. Lim was then flown to Sinuiju to meet with Kim Jong Il, who had recently returned from his trip to China. The conversation covered a wide range of issues, including the question of US troops in South Korea. Lim explained Kim Dae Jung’s position that they should remain, even after reunification. The North Korean leader essentially agreed, noting that he had sent Kim Yong Sun to the United States in 1992 to convey their views on the issue, and adding that “if we become too anti-American, it could hurt the interest of our nation.” The issue of a visit to Kumsusan came up again, with no change in positions, though Kim did not seem adamant on the point. In four hours of talks, Lim found a North Korean leader very different from most of the advance accounts. On returning to Seoul, he made a six-point report to Kim Dae Jung about his summit partner:

       
1.
  
He is a strong dictator, stronger than his father, whom Lim had met on two occasions in the early 1990s.

       
2.
  
He is the only person who is open-minded and pragmatic in the North Korean system.

       
3.
  
He is a good listener. He took notes on the meeting with Lim, like a student with a professor.

       
4.
  
When he is persuaded to another’s point of view, he is decisive.

       
5.
  
He is gentle and polite to older people around him, as he was to Hyundai founder Chung Ju Yung.

       
6.
  
He has a sense of humor.

Lim sought to negotiate a joint statement to be issued at the end of the summit by the two leaders, but Kim Jong Il refused. He said he wished to work out such a statement in person with Kim Dae Jung during their meetings.

After a last-minute one-day postponement, probably due to the concerns of Kim Jong Il’s security officials about having their leader appear according to a preannounced schedule, the North-South summit began on the morning of June 13. When the plane from Seoul bearing the ROK president, his wife, ministers, and aides and an accompanying press corps landed at Pyongyang airport, meeting them on a red carpet laid on the tarmac was Kim Jong Il, clad in his characteristic khaki trousers and zippered khaki jacket. The North Korean leader greeted Kim Dae Jung with a warm two-handed handshake and words of welcome. As millions of South Koreans watched with high emotion via a television hookup, their president was accorded full honors, including a military band, an honor guard of North Korean soldiers with rifles and bayonets in salute position, and hundreds of women in traditional billowing gowns waving colorful flowers. The two leaders got in the backseat of Kim Jong Il’s limousine for a forty-minute ride through the streets, which were lined with an estimated six hundred thousand cheering people waving pink and red paper flowers. En route to a state guesthouse, the two leaders occasionally held hands in a gesture of friendship as they chatted. To Lim Dong Won’s immense relief, there was no surprise stop at the Kumsusan Palace. Later, at the banquet the first night, Kim Jong Il told Lim that no visit to Kumsusan would be necessary.

In three days of talks, accompanied by only a few aides during serious discussions, the leaders covered the many issues between the two Koreas. They discussed the possibilities of South Korean assistance and of North Korean concessions on such issues as reunions of divided families, exchanges of cultural and sporting groups, and meetings of the military and civilian government officials that had long been desired by the South.

After much bargaining, the two Kims worked out, signed, and promulgated a joint declaration:

       
1.
  
The South and the North have agreed to resolve the question of reunification on their own initiative and through the joint efforts of the Korean people, who are the masters of the country.

       
2.
  
Acknowledging that there are common elements in the South’s proposal for a confederation and the North’s proposal for a federation of lower stage as the formulae for achieving reunification, the South and the North agreed to promote reunification in that direction.

       
3.
  
The South and the North have agreed to promptly resolve humanitarian issues such as exchange visits by separated family members and relatives on the occasion of the August 15 National Liberation Day and the question of former long-term prisoners who had refused to renounce communism.

       
4.
  
The South and the North have agreed to consolidate mutual trust by promoting balanced development of the national economy through economic cooperation and by stimulating cooperation and exchanges in civic, cultural, sports, public health, environmental and all other fields.

       
5.
  
The South and the North have agreed to hold a dialogue between relevant authorities in the near future to implement the above agreement expeditiously.

       
6.
  
President Kim Dae Jung cordially invited National Defense Commission chairman Kim Jong Il to visit Seoul, and Chairman Kim Jong Il decided to visit Seoul at an appropriate time.

Some difficult moments and disagreements took place that, according to the South Korean president, nearly caused the talks to break off, among them the question of whether Kim Jong Il should sign the joint statement rather than Kim Yong Nam, the protocol head of state, and whether Kim Jong Il would commit himself to a return summit in Seoul. In retrospect, the South Korean president said the success of the summit meeting “was due in large measure to [Kim Jong Il’s] ability to be receptive to new ideas and a willingness to change his own views. . . . He didn’t appear to be a cold-minded theoretician, but a very sensitive personality who had a sharp mind.”

Some of the discussions went far beyond bilateral questions to international issues. Kim Dae Jung handed his opposite a number of written statements, urging him to adhere strictly to the 1994 Agreed Framework with the United States on nuclear issues and to bring the negotiations with Washington on curbing North Korean missiles to a smooth and satisfactory conclusion. Without good North Korean relations with the United States, the South Korean president said, relations between North and South Korea could not continue to make progress.

In virtually a repeat of the exchange between Kim Jong Il and Lim Dong Won in late May, the two leaders expressed their views on the presence of American troops on the peninsula. When Kim Dae Jung asked
why, if Pyongyang was not opposed to their remaining, North Korean radio broadcasts continued to attack the presence of US troops, Kim Jong Il responded that this was for internal propaganda purposes—and would continue.

“A new age has dawned for our nation,” Kim Dae Jung declared when he returned home on the afternoon of June 15. “We have reached a turning point so that we can put an end to the history of territorial division.”

In the aftermath of the June summit, there was worldwide speculation about why Kim Jong Il suddenly emerged from the shadows and appeared to be opening his previously closed society. Was the change real or cosmetic? Had he changed strategy or only tactics? What were his main objectives?

Kim Dae Jung, in a dinner for Korea experts and friends in New York three months later, said he believed the most important reason for the opening was North Korea’s desperate economic travail, which made assistance from the outside essential to its survival. “Without improved relations with South Korea, others won’t help them,” he said. Other reasons he cited were the failure of North Korea to sideline the ROK while responding to the United States; global pressure for détente from China, Russia, and other nations; and Pyongyang’s growing trust that the South’s policy was actually aimed at assisting the North rather than undermining it. Scholars also noted that a summit with the South had long been under consideration in Pyongyang and that Kim Il Sung had been preparing for a full-scale summit meeting with Kim Young Sam on the very day he died.

After the June summit, South Korea and the world were treated to a rapid, almost dizzying series of developments on the divided peninsula. Before the end of the year, the two Koreas held four rounds of formal ministerial talks to authorize a wide range of cooperative activities, and aides agreed to four North-South pacts to encourage trade and investment. Kim Jong Il invited forty-six top executives of the South Korean media to Pyongyang and opened himself to a wide range of questions. Two sets of emotional meetings temporarily reuniting one hundred families on each side were held, and more were scheduled, along with the first exchanges of mail between separated families. The DPRK defense minister came south to meet his opposite number, authorizing lower-level military working groups from the two opposing armies. The two sides agreed on plans to repair and reconnect the severed North-South railroad that ran through the peninsula until the outbreak of the Korean War, and to build a highway alongside the tracks to facilitate commerce and other exchanges through the heavily fortified DMZ. Harsh propaganda broadcasts against each other were toned down or stopped. In one of the most memorable moments of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the athletes of North and South Korea marched together under a single peninsular flag, in sharp
contrast to their bitter disputes over the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Hyundai and North Korea agreed to begin construction of a massive industrial park and export-processing zone at Kaesong, close to the northern edge of the DMZ, initially to involve hundreds of South Korean companies employing tens of thousands, eventually hundreds of thousands, of North Korean workers. The Hyundai-sponsored tourism to Diamond Mountain continued, although the losses on the tours and the company’s overall economic difficulties cast a shadow over its continuing inter-Korean activities.