A History of Korea (97 page)

To solve its growing economic difficulties, the North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly approved a policy for organizing joint ventures with foreign governments or corporations by enacting the Joint Venture Law in September 1984. North Korea proceeded to promote trade with Western countries and to stand ready to receive foreign capital. In 1987 it signed a joint-venture agreement with the Soviet Union, and thereafter North Korea attracted foreign investment to the extent that, by 1991, it had more than 100 joint ventures worth approximately $96.5 million, mostly financed by pro–North Korean residents in Japan.
²⁰
But the investment policy trajectory was not followed faithfully and ended in failure. In 1989 North Korea announced that it would develop light industry, long given lower priority, but even this plan stumbled over the lack of technological innovation and structural reform.

For three decades between the late 1950s and the late 1980s North Korea dealt with the Soviet Union and China by playing off one against the other and skillfully exploiting the Sino-Soviet rivalry and conflict. North Korea’s signing of friendship treaties with both the Soviet Union and China in July 1961 marked the beginning of its balancing act between the two powers.

In the early 1960s North Korea sided with China on a number of foreign policy issues and antagonized the Soviet Union, leading to the point where, by the end of the Khrushchev era in October 1964, a virtual break occurred in their bilateral ties. The Soviet Union withdrew most of its military and economic assistance, seriously damaging North Korea’s capabilities, but Kim Il-sung restored relations with Khrushchev’s successors and, on the other hand, loosened ties with China which was then experiencing the so-called Cultural Revolution. In the first half of the 1970s, following Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai’s visit to North Korea in 1970, North Korea again tilted toward China, and North Korean–Soviet relations were relatively chill.

After China normalized relations with the United States and signed a friendship treaty with Japan in 1978, a new cycle began in North Korean–Soviet relations. The two nations proceeded to warm their ties. The Soviet downing of a South Korean airliner on 1 September 1983 accelerated North Korean–Soviet rapprochement, as it interrupted South Korea’s early nordpolitik efforts. Kim Il-sung’s visits to the Soviet Union in 1984 and 1986, his first in more than 20 years, further improved North Korean–Soviet ties. Though eroding North Korean–Chinese relations, the visits brought closer security ties with the Soviet Union as well as large shipments of Soviet weapons and various other goods to North Korea.

After coming into power, Mikhail Gorbachev adopted a foreign policy line quite different from that of his predecessors, as he sought a more balanced Soviet posture regarding both North and South Korea, retaining a foothold in North Korea while improving relations with the South. In 1988 the Soviet Union participated in the Seoul Olympics despite North Korea’s strong protests, and on 1 October 1990 the Soviet Union normalized relations with South Korea. Gorbachev continued Soviet military assistance to North Korea, but he pressured North Korea to permit inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (
IAEA
) of its nuclear facilities at Y
ŏ
ngby
ŏ
n. But the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, the fall of Gorbachev, and the rise of Boris Yeltsin cost North Korea its most important strategic patron and most generous and important economic partner. Having lost its patron, North Korea began a steady decline that would increasingly sap the strength of the Kim Il-sung regime.

Until the outbreak of the Korean War, North Korea had been no more than a satellite of the Soviet Union. As summarized above, by 1958, North Korea succeeded in balancing Soviet and Chinese influence on the country, courting one power or the other for its own gains. From 1958 to 1961 North Korea continued to steer a neutral course in the worsening Sino-Soviet relations, but in 1962 it began leaning toward China. By the fall of Nikita Khrushchev in October 1964, North Korea had become China’s strongest Asian ally following the Sino-Soviet split. After Khrushchev fell, North Korea moved toward mending the badly deteriorated relations with the Soviet Union and found Khrushchev’s successors responding favorably. The internal crisis in China caused by the Cultural Revolution contributed to North Korea’s decision to pursue a closer alignment
with the Soviet Union, but North Korea’s rapprochement with the Soviet Union cooled its relations with China.

As the Cultural Revolution drew to a close at the end of 1969, China moved to improve its relations with North Korea, and in the first half of the 1970s North Korean–Chinese relations were once again cordial. Bilateral ties between the two countries were strengthened when, on 18–26 April 1975, Kim Il-sung visited China, the first visit since 1961, to gain support for invading South Korea. China and the Soviet Union, however, discouraged Kim from any attempt to take advantage of the debacle then unfolding in Indochina.

From 1978 on, relations between North Korea and China were somewhat strained, whereas North Korean–Soviet ties improved. North Korea was unhappy with China’s new foreign policy orientation, especially the normalization of Sino–U.S. relations and the signing of the Sino–Japanese peace and friendship treaty, both of which would seriously impact North Korea. The Soviet Union tried to take advantage of this strain in North Korean–Chinese relations.

Amid improving ties between North Korea and the Soviet Union in the early 1980s, North Korea and China also sought to improve their tense relations. China needed North Korea as a political and strategic ally to check Soviet influence, and North Korea needed China to resolve its own growing economic difficulties and problems arising in the leadership succession. In September 1982 Kim Il-sung’s trip to China carried significant political implications, as the most important items on the agenda included China’s support for a dynastic succession of power, China’s economic and military assistance, and North Korea’s concern about the increasing South Korean–Chinese contacts.

Kim Il-sung won important concessions from China. The Chinese informally endorsed Kim’s son, Kim Jong-il, as his successor and also promised to increase economic and military assistance. China became North Korea’s principal source of crude oil, as the trade agreements that concluded in 1982 and 1986 assured that China would ship an average of one million tons of crude oil annually as a “friendship price.” On the other hand, North Korea strongly protested China’s first official contact with South Korea over the hijacking of a Chinese airliner in May 1983. Chinese officials responded that this was a special case and renewed its pledge that China would not depart from its firm stance against ties with South Korea.

Despite its pledge, as noted earlier, China participated in the Asian Games in Seoul in 1986 and the 1988 Seoul Olympics, as it moved toward improved relations with South Korea. When it normalized its ties with South Korea on
24 August 1992, China promised North Korea that it would establish bilateral relations with South Korea without alienating its communist ally.

Although in the Cold War period China and the Soviet Union were North Korea’s most important political, strategic, and economic patrons, China was also a political rival of the Soviet Union in their competition to lead the international communist movement. By the late 1980s, however, the Soviet system was on the verge of collapse, and China no longer faced competition from the Soviet Union as an aid donor. But China remained a reliable patron that North Korea depended on unconditionally for survival.

The evolution of North Korean–Japanese relations was determined by three major factors. First, the international Cold War had a deleterious effect on North Korea’s relations with Japan. Particularly in the 1950s, Japan gave foreign policy priority to the maintenance of close ties with the United States, North Korea’s enemy of long standing. Second, in this context Japan wished to normalize relations with South Korea. Finally, Japan perceived North Korea as a possible threat to its own security.

Immediately after the end of the Korean War, North Korea sought to improve its ties with Japan and thus score a diplomatic triumph over its southern neighbor. But Japan had no intention of promoting its relations with North Korea for fear that this would adversely affect its diplomatic ties with South Korea. Despite Japan’s official refusal, however, North Korea continued to seek certain contacts with Japan.

In the 1950s the most remarkable development in bilateral relations between North Korea and Japan was the conclusion of an agreement on the repatriation of Korean residents in Japan. The repatriation of Koreans was a chronic, thorny problem among North Korea, South Korea, and Japan. The signing of the “Calcutta agreement” between the Red Cross Societies of North Korea and Japan in 1959 settled the repatriation problem in North Korea’s favor. The Calcutta agreement served Japan’s efforts to alleviate the social and economic agony deriving from the Korean minority that was considered a potential threat to the stability of Japanese society and an economic burden on the vanquished Japan. North Korea also profited from the agreement by improving its relations with Japan and solving the manpower shortage necessary for postwar reconstruction.

Normalization of South Korean–Japanese ties in 1965 significantly strained North Korean–Japanese relations. Although North Korea zealously pursued
normalization of its diplomatic relations with Japan, Japan adhered to its non-recognition policy toward North Korea. In the late 1960s bilateral relations between the two countries seriously deteriorated, mainly because of the tense situation on the Korean peninsula, notably the attempted assassination of President Park Chung-hee by North Korean commandos, the illegal seizure of the USS
Pueblo,
and the downing of a U.S. EC-121 aircraft.

From the early 1970s, however, North Korea’s relations with Japan showed signs of progress. The emerging détente between the major East Asia powers propelled improving relations between the two countries. North Koreans were disappointed, however, when Japan did not seek normalization with their country.

In the 1980s North Korean terrorist activities, notably the Rangoon bombing in 1983 and the blowing up of a South Korean airliner in 1987, hardened Japanese attitudes toward North Korea. On the other hand, since 1988 South Korea’s nordpolitik afforded Japan an opportunity to take a more flexible posture toward North Korea. Thus, despite objections from South Korea and the United States, in 1989 Japan began to move toward normalization of its relations with North Korea. But normalization talks ended in failure, mainly over the issue of Japan’s reparations to North Korea. During the talks, after Japan expressed “deep regret and repentance” for its colonial rule in Korea, North Korea demanded $11 billion in reparations, but Japan was willing to offer only $5 billion.

In the Cold War period North Korea was generally unfriendly to Japan, which had always rejected North Korean overtures. In the late 1980s North Korea and Japan did engage in normalization talks but without success. Bilateral relations between the two countries remained icy.

Apart from the ax murders of two U.S. Army officers in the Joint Security Area of P’anmunj
ŏ
m in August 1976, relations between North Korea and the United States were uneventful during the 1970s and 1980s. Despite its hostile verbal and sometimes physical attacks on the United States, North Korea made various conciliatory gestures to establish friendly relations with the United States, but in dealing with the United States, North Korea basically pursued only two goals—the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea and the conclusion of a peace treaty between North Korea and the United States.

Because chances for official channels with the United States were slim, North Korea tried to promote friendly ties with American scholars, academic organizations,
journalists, and Congressmen. North Korea frequently invited certain American individuals to visit the country and dispatched some of its scholars to academic conferences in the United States, intending to create better impressions about North Korea there.

The relatively favorable environment in the first half of the 1970s was suddenly shattered by the P’anmunj
ŏ
m ax murders on 18 August 1976. The killings occurred when North Korean guards in the Joint Security Area attacked a party of U.S. and South Korean soldiers in a tree-trimming operation on the
U.N.
side of the area, killing two U.S. Army officers and injuring several other
U.N.
soldiers. Four hours after the incident, surprised at U.S. and South Korean readiness to punish North Korea, Kim Il-sung expressed his “regret” that the incident had occurred in the
DMZ
. The United States considered his message a passive acknowledgment that North Korea was wrong.

After the P’anmunj
ŏ
m incident, North Korea still sought direct communication with the United States, first resting its hopes on the Carter presidency, inaugurated in January 1977. Kim Il-sung was pleased when, on 9 March 1977, Carter announced his plan to withdraw 33,000 U.S. ground troops from South Korea. Other measures taken by the Carter administration further raised North Korean hopes for direct talks with the United States. On 17 March 1977, in a speech at the
U.N.
General Assembly, Carter declared that the United States would establish diplomatic relations with former enemy nations. The Carter administration actively sought recognition of North Korea by the United States and Japan, and of South Korea by the Soviet Union and China. But any chance of this was eliminated when the United States refused to have talks with North Korea without South Korea’s participation and North Korea insisted on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea. Meanwhile, North Korea continued making cultural and personal contacts with the United States.