The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (94 page)

__________

*
From Pyongyang’s viewpoint, it had warned of this course in July 2012, when several Foreign Ministry officials met a delegation of Americans in Singapore. In a formal presentation, the North Koreans said Pyongyang had conducted a policy review and had concluded that if there was no change in Washington’s approach, the North would no longer deal with it on the question of denuclearization. Soon after that meeting, in an unconnected move, the US government sent a secret mission to Pyongyang. According to South Korean reports, this was the second such US mission of the year. What the purpose of these missions was, who took part, whom they met, and what was accomplished are still not known. For a review of the information and speculation about the missions, see the
Los Angeles Times
,
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/23/world/la-fg-us-north-korea-20130224
.

**
North Korean reports rarely mention the date of an appearance by the Supreme Leader, much less the time.

*
About the same time,
DailyNK
, a Seoul-based online “newspaper” utilizing sources inside the North, reported that the internal mobilization of the North Korean population was easing.

**
Foreign commentators suggested that this two-line strategy was a copy of the (failed) strategy adopted by Kim Il Sung in 1962, of building the economy and the defense sector simultaneously. As if in anticipation of such comparisons, the younger Kim in his plenum speech noted the earlier approach, but called his own “a succession to and in-depth development of” the earlier line.

*
In November 2010, technicians at Yongbyon had told the Stanford delegation that the 5-megawatt reactor was “in stand-by status with regular maintenance.” See Siegfried S. Hecker,
A Return Trip to North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Complex
(Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, November 20, 2010),
http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/23035/HeckerYongbyon.pdf
, 5.

PRINCIPAL KOREAN FIGURES IN THE TEXT

D
EMOCRATIC
P
EOPLE’S
R
EPUBLIC OF
K
OREA
(N
ORTH
K
OREA
)

Han Se Hae, Workers Party official and secret emissary to the ROK

Ho Dam, foreign minister and secret emissary to the ROK

Hwang Jang Yop, Workers Party secretary for international affairs and juche theoretician; defected to the ROK in 1997

Jo Myong Rok, vice marshal and first vice chairman of the National Defense Commission

Kang Sok Ju, deputy foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator with the United States

Kim Gye Gwan, vice foreign minister and deputy negotiator with the United States

Kim Hyon Hui, DPRK agent; bomber of Korean Air Lines flight 858; incarcerated and pardoned in the ROK

Kim Il Sung, leader of the Workers Party; prime minister, later president of the DPRK

Kim Jong Il, eldest son of Kim Il Sung; leader of the DPRK following his father’s death

Kim Jong Un, third son of Kim Jong Il; became leader of the DPRK after his father’s death

Kim Yong Nam, deputy prime minister and foreign minister of the DPRK, later chairman of Supreme People’s Assembly and nominal head of state

Kim Yong Sun, Workers Party secretary and head of the DPRK delegation in 1992 talks with the United States

Yun Ki Bok, Workers Party official; political adviser to the DPRK delegation to the Red Cross talks; secret emissary to the ROK

R
EPUBLIC OF
K
OREA
(S
OUTH
K
OREA
)

Choi Kyu Ha, prime minister of the ROK; briefly president after death of Park Chung Hee

Chun Doo Hwan, leader of the 1979 military takeover; president of the ROK

Chung Ju Yung, chairman of the Hyundai conglomerate; chairman of the campaign committee to win the Seoul Olympic Games; presidential candidate in 1992

Gong Ro Myung, foreign minister of the ROK

Han Sung Joo, foreign minister of the ROK

Kim Chong Whi, national security assistant to President Roh Tae Woo

Kim Dae Jung, opposition political leader and presidential candidate in 1971, 1987, 1992, 1997; popularly elected president, 1997

Kim Jae Kyu, director of KCIA; assassin of President Park Chung Hee

Kim Jong Pil, prime minister of the ROK; presidential candidate in 1987

Kim Woo Choong, chairman of the Daewoo conglomerate; unofficial envoy abroad and to the DPRK

Kim Young Sam, opposition political leader, later government party leader; popularly elected president in 1992

Lee Hu Rak, director of the KCIA

Lee Myung-bak, president from 2008 to 2013

Lee Yon Kil, businessman and anticommunist activist who arranged the defection of Hwang Jang Yop from North Korea

Lim Dong Won, senior adviser to President Kim Dae Jong on North-South affairs; secret emissary to DPRK in May 2000

Park Chul Un, presidential staff and intelligence official; ROK secret emissary to the DPRK

Park Chung Hee, leader of the 1961 military coup; later president of the ROK

Park Geun-hye, daughter of Park Chung Hee; elected ROK president in 2012

Roh Moo-hyun, elected president of the ROK in 2002

Roh Tae Woo, division commander in 1979 military takeover; popularly elected president in 1987

Sohn Jang Nae, KCIA minister in the ROK embassy, Washington; deputy director of the KCIA in Seoul

Yoo Chong Ha, national security assistant to President Kim Young Sam; later ROK foreign minister

K
OREANS IN
J
APAN

Mun Se Kwang, attempted assassin of ROK president Park; killer of Yook Young Soo (Mrs. Park)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

D
ON
O
BERDORFER

A great many people and institutions of many nationalities and points of view contributed to the research and writing of this book. I conducted more than 450 interviews in South and North Korea, the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Germany, and Austria in the course of the four years I was working on it. I was also aided immeasurably by documentary material from American, Russian, and East German archives, as well as journalistic and scholarly articles and books. All those who contributed, in large ways and small, have my thanks.

I am particularly grateful to Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), which accorded me a convenient and prestigious scholarly perch after my retirement from the
Washington Post
and sponsored the book. I am also very grateful to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, New York, and the Korea Foundation, Seoul, for grants that supported my extensive travel and research. I wish to thank SAIS students Narushige Michishita and Choo Yong Shik, who were my research assistants.

It was my good fortune that Carter Eckert, director of the Korean studies program at Harvard University, was on a fellowship in Washington during the final stages of my writing. He gave generously of his time and suggestions. A number of present and former officials of the United States and the ROK governments and personal friends also offered valuable comments on various parts of the manuscript.

I wish to thank the National Security Archive, Washington, for assisting my Freedom of Information Act requests and providing materials obtained by other researchers; the FOIA staff of the Department of State for processing my requests; the Gerald Ford Presidential Library, particularly archivist Karen Holzhausen, and the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, particularly assistant director Martin Elzy and archivist James Yancey, for identifying and helping to declassify valuable documentation; the FOIA staff of the Eighth Army, Korea, for declassifying the intelligence portions of its command histories for 1972–1987; Jim Mann of the
Los Angeles Times
for providing materials on US-China diplomacy affecting Korea; and Tim Shorrock of the Journal of Commerce for sharing the extensive material he has obtained under FOIA.

Joong-ang Ilbo, one of South Korea’s leading newspapers and the publisher of the Korean edition of this book, graciously provided many of the photographs.

I am very grateful to Mark Â. M. Suh of the Free University of Berlin for obtaining important documents from the archives of the former East German Communist Party, the Socialist Unity Party, including transcripts of meetings of East German leader Erich Honecker with Kim Il Sung and diplomatic dispatches from the East German Embassy in Pyongyang.

In Seoul former ambassador to the United States Kim Kyung Won accepted me as a guest scholar at the Institute of Social Sciences, which greatly facilitated my interviews there. I am grateful to him and his efficient secretary, Mrs. Park Soon Rye. I also appreciate the
work of the Korean Overseas Information Service, Seoul, especially Suh Sang Myun, in arranging interviews with government officials.

My South Korean journalist friends, especially Kim Yong Hie and Kim Kun Jin of Joong-ang Ilbo, Cho Kap Che and Kim Dae Joong of
Chosun Ilbo
, Shim Jae Hoon of the
Far Eastern Economic Review
, and Lee Keum Hyun, special correspondent of the
Washington Post
, were especially helpful. Sam Jameson, the longtime Tokyo correspondent of the
Los Angeles Times
, now an independent journalist and scholar in Japan, provided information and suggestions.

My 1991 visit to North Korea was as a
Washington Post
diplomatic correspondent. My return visit in 1995 was under the sponsorship of George Washington University’s Sigur Center for East Asian Studies, then headed by Young C. Kim, to whom I am grateful. I also wish to express appreciation to officials of the DPRK Mission to the United Nations for many courtesies, including providing me with copies of the works of President Kim Il Sung from 1965 to 1983.

In Beijing my 1993 research trip was sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which also provided introductions and translating assistance, for which I am grateful.

My research and interviewing in Moscow was facilitated by the Moscow Bureau of the
Washington Post
, which generously treated me as a colleague even though I had retired. Anatoly Chernyayev and Pavel Palazchenko, who continue as aides to Mikhail Gorbachev, helped in obtaining materials from the Gorbachev archive.

David Kyd, the public information officer of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, provided information and arranged interviews for me there.

I wish to thank former president Jimmy Carter for his written responses to my questions about Korea policy in his administration, and especially for assistance in dealing with his 1994 mission to Pyongyang. Marion Creekmore and Dick Christenson, who accompanied him to North Korea, also helped me.

In Japan, Izumi Hajime of Shizuoka University was particularly helpful in providing insights and materials about the DPRK, on which he is a leading expert.

Among the many persons who agreed to interviews, I wish especially to thank the following:

I
N THE
U
NITED
S
TATES

Former secretaries of state Cyrus Vance and George Shultz; former undersecretaries of state Michael Armacost, Robert Zoellick, Arnold Kanter, and Frank Wisner; former assistant secretaries of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Marshall Green, Richard Holbrooke, Paul Wolfowitz, the late Gaston Sigur, Richard Solomon, and William Clark, as well as Winston Lord, who was assistant secretary during my research; former deputy assistant secretaries of state Robert Oakley and Thomas Hubbard and the current holder of the post, Charles Kartman; former chief US Korea coordinator and negotiator Robert Gallucci and his senior deputy, Gary Samore; and former Korea country directors Robert Rich, Harry Dunlop, Spence Richardson, David E. Brown, and David G. Brown, and the current country director, Mark Minton.

At the Pentagon, former secretaries of defense James Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld, and Harold Brown, as well as William Perry, who held the post during my research; Morton Abramowitz; Admiral William Pendley; Captain Thomas Flanigan; and Wally Knowles.

At the White House, former national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Allen, and Brent Scowcroft, as well as Anthony Lake, who held the post during my research; and former National Security Council staff members William Hyland, Nick
Piatt, Jim Kelly, Doug Paal, Torkel Patterson, Kent Wiedemann, Stanley Roth, and Daniel Poneman.

In the intelligence community, former CIA director Robert Gates; the expert North Korea watchers in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research Robert Carlin, Kenneth Quinones, and John Merrill, as well as nuclear expert Steve Fleischmann; former national intelligence officers Evelyn Colbert, John Despres, Nathanial Thayer, Carl Ford, and Ezra Vogel; Morgan Clippinger and other Korea experts of the Central Intelligence Agency; and former US intelligence officials John Armstrong and the late Jim Hausman.

Former congressman Stephen Solarz.

From the US Embassy, Seoul, former US ambassadors to the ROK William Gleysteen, Richard Walker, James Lilley, and Donald Gregg, as well as James Laney, who was US ambassador during the period of my research; former deputy chiefs of mission Francis Underhill, Richard Ericson, Raymond Burkhardt, and Dick Christenson; former US Embassy political counselors Paul Cleveland and Daniel Russel; and former military attaché Jim Young.