The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (32 page)

US diplomats passed advance copies of Roh’s announcement to the Soviets and Chinese as requested, and publicly praised the South Korean initiative as “positive and constructive.” (In private, the State Department was more effusive, calling the move in an internal document “a major—indeed historic—reversal of traditional ROKG policy.”) At the same time, however, Washington announced that no immediate US action toward North Korea was required, though it would keep the issue under review. The United States passed word to Pyongyang that it would consider taking positive steps if North Korea did not attempt to disrupt the Olympic Games and if North-South dialogue were resumed.

The principal leverage for Washington and the main issue under review was the touchy question of direct talks between the United States and North Korea. Kim Il Sung’s regime had been appealing for such discussions since 1974, in hopes of persuading the Americans to withdraw from the divided peninsula. Washington consistently refused even to talk without South Korean participation.

For many years, the “contact guidance” for American diplomats permitted them to speak to North Korean officials only about “nonsubstantive” matters if they happened to meet in social situations; even then discussions were to be terminated as quickly as common courtesy allowed. Twice before, in September 1983 and March 1987, the State Department had issued new guidance permitting substantive discussions with North Koreans in neutral settings. Nothing much came of this except for a few “getting to know you” chats at foreign embassies because both times, the more flexible rules were soon canceled due to North Korean acts of terrorism: the Rangoon bombing in October 1983 and the bombing of Korean Air Lines flight 858 in November 1987. Following Roh’s declaration, Assistant Secretary of State Gaston Sigur and his senior deputy, William Clark, who had served earlier as political counselor in Seoul, became convinced it was time to move again with Pyongyang—this time more seriously.

“We came to the conclusion that if you’re really going to achieve some sort of a semblance of peace on the Korea peninsula, the only way to do that is to take some steps to try to open the place,” recalled Sigur. The Soviets and Chinese, he pointed out, had forever been pushing Washington to deal with Pyongyang. A central barrier had been Seoul’s objections, and now those seemed to have lessened. The main issue at hand, therefore, was one of tactics. Here Clark suggested a “modest initiative” that would be unilateral rather than conditional on North Korea’s response.

In October 1988, following the successful completion of the Seoul Olympics, the State Department drew up and won White House approval for its plan, consisting of four points:

       
•
   
Encouraging unofficial, nongovernmental visits by North Koreans to the United States. Since the beginning of 1988, only eight visas had been requested by North Koreans, of which four—to attend a speed-skating event in St. Louis—had been denied.

       
•
   
Easing stringent financial regulations that impeded travel to North Korea by American citizens.

       
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Permission for limited commercial export of humanitarian goods to North Korea.

       
•
   
Renewed permission for substantive discussions with North Koreans in neutral settings, with the expectation that this time serious communication might take place.

Although no North Korean steps would be required to trigger these limited US moves, Pyongyang would be asked for a “positive, constructive response.” In private and public statements, Washington listed five items that could be considered encouraging symbols of a more constructive policy. These were progress in the North-South dialogue, return of the remains of Americans missing in action from the Korean War, elimination of anti-American propaganda, implementation of confidence-building measures along the DMZ, and credible assurances that North Korea had abandoned terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

The American steps were discussed with Roh at the White House on October 20, when he met Reagan and Shultz during a four-day US visit to address the UN General Assembly. Roh, who had been publicly appealing for a summit with Kim Il Sung and whose UN address was unusually conciliatory, approved the American initiative but asked that it not be made public until a few days after he returned to Seoul, which was done. In the meantime, US diplomats briefed foreign governments on the initiative. In an October 25 cable to its embassies, the State Department emphasized that “these proposed measures are being taken both to stay in step with (but not in advance of) the ROKG in this matter, but also because we have substantial interests of our own in seeking to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula and in promoting dialogue between the North and the South.”

On October 28, three days before the public announcement, the State Department sent out instructions for special presentations of the new policies to the Soviet and Chinese governments, with the Chinese explicitly asked to pass the briefing to Pyongyang. “The door is open for the DPRK to pursue an improvement of relations with the United States, if the DPRK abandons belligerence, confrontation and terrorism in favor of dialogue,” Moscow and Beijing were told. The American briefers added that Washington hoped for a “constructive response.”

It did not take long for North Korea to ask for a bilateral meeting with US diplomats in Beijing. Although Washington did not consider this a truly “neutral setting,” it approved the meeting between a North Korean diplomat and the political counselor of the US Embassy in Beijing, Raymond Burkhardt, to take place at the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s International Club. There in a small second-floor room, which Americans assumed was bugged by the Chinese, the US–North Korean talks began on December 5, 1988. Burkhardt, who had never dealt with North Koreans before, was surprised that they turned out to be serious and businesslike diplomats who wasted no time with bluster or the usual obligatory praise of Kim Il Sung. The discussions were centered squarely on the main issues of the day as seen in the two capitals.

Thus, in late 1988 for the first time, North Korea achieved the mutually authorized, direct channel for diplomatic business with the United States that it had long been seeking. This, however, was fundamentally the result of Seoul’s policy reversal rather than a reflection of new thinking in Washington. US diplomats made it clear from the beginning that the Beijing talks were for communications but not for negotiations. The United States continued to insist that any deal making regarding the divided peninsula would have to involve Seoul.

As it turned out, the meeting between American and North Korean diplomats in the International Club in Beijing was the first in a series of thirty-four such sessions, in which messages were passed but little progress was made, between December 1988 and September 1993.

9

MOSCOW SWITCHES SIDES

A
MONTH AFTER THE
successful conclusion of the Seoul Olympics, the Soviet Union’s ruling Politburo took up for the first time the question of relations with South Korea. This unheralded Politburo meeting on November 10, 1988, whose decisions as usual were made in secret, marked the start of a historic Soviet drive toward friendly accommodation with a long-standing antagonist on the Korean peninsula. As was often the case in major power deliberations regarding Korea, the Politburo decisions that day were based almost entirely on considerations of Russian national interest, with their impact in the peninsula given secondary consideration. Nonetheless, the reversal that was set in motion reverberated powerfully on both sides of the thirty-eighth parallel. Prodded and induced by the ROK, the Soviet Union was transformed over the next two years from godfather, superpower guarantor, and economic benefactor of North Korea to partner and, in some respects, client of South Korea. This was of monumental importance.

By the time of the Politburo meeting, the Cold War ice was breaking up between the Soviet Union and the United States, and Mikhail Gorbachev was at the height of his powers. The previous month, Gorbachev had ousted from the Politburo Yegor Ligachev, the most influential critic of the shift away from the traditional Soviet foreign policy support for “class struggle” and ideological allies, and he had placed foreign affairs under the supervision of Alexander Yakovlev, a leading exponent of a foreign policy based on “new thinking” and accord with the West. Gorbachev had been to Washington to sign a nuclear-weapons reduction treaty with the United States, and Ronald Reagan had been to Moscow to celebrate their new relationship and walk in Red Square with Gorbachev. Just two days earlier, on November 8, Vice President George Bush had been elected US president to succeed Reagan, prompting Gorbachev to plan a De
cember visit to New York to meet the president-elect and proclaim from the rostrum of the United Nations a new Soviet foreign policy based on “universal human values.” In describing his new foreign policy, Gorbachev declared at the UN, “Today, the preservation of any kind of ‘closed’ society is hardly possible”—words that must have chilled Pyongyang. To confirm the seriousness of his policy, he took the occasion to announce a massive unilateral reduction of Soviet military forces and conventional armaments and a large-scale military pullout from Eastern Europe, Mongolia, and the Asian part of the Soviet Union.

In the case of Korea, the fundamental reason for the Soviet policy shift was economic. The Soviet treasury needed money, a lot of it. Among the documents considered in the Politburo meeting of November 10 was a glowing memorandum from Vladimir Kamentsev, deputy prime minister in charge of foreign economic ties, who shared the view earlier endorsed by the ministers of foreign trade, finance, and oil and gas industries that the dynamic economy of South Korea was “the most promising partner in the Far East.” Trade with Seoul, which was still being conducted in cumbersome fashion through unofficial contacts and third countries, was climbing steadily, and eager South Korean businessmen were knocking on Moscow’s doors with attractive offers of more lucrative trade and potentially even subsidies and outright aid, on condition that state-to-state relations be established. The conclusion of Kamentsev’s memorandum, according to the notes of a participant in the meeting, was that “unless we undertake to normalize our relations with South Korea, we may be late.”

Gorbachev announced that he agreed with Kamentsev’s recommendation to move toward South Korea. There was no dissent. At the same time, the Soviet leader expressed the need for caution in implementing the shift, saying that the Korean issue “should be approached in the context of our broad international interests, as well as our domestic interests.” In this respect, he said it was too early to establish political relations with the South before discussing the matter with other members of the Soviet bloc. In the meantime, he decided, cultural, sports, and other ties should be opened wider. “This will come as a signal to Kim Il Sung and to the United States,” Gorbachev commented.

Having decided to move in a decisive although evolutionary way, Gorbachev sought to rationalize the action by suggesting it could add to a strong wave of nationalism in South Korea and thereby provide impetus for the withdrawal of US military forces there. This proved to be wildly unrealistic.

Ruling out “shock methods” with respect to Moscow’s old dependency on the Korean peninsula, Gorbachev suggested that Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze stop in Pyongyang during the course of a forthcoming trip to Japan to explain to the North Koreans the evolution of Soviet relations with South Korea. When Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov
remarked that Kim Il Sung might refuse to see Shevardnadze to receive such a message, Gorbachev acknowledged this could happen—but in any case, “we will make this gesture, and give North Korea a notice.”

Nobody had any illusion that the explanation would be easily accepted. The Politburo had before it classified reports from the Soviet Embassy in Pyongyang reporting that Gorbachev’s perestroika reform was already coming under sharp criticism from Kim Il Sung’s regime, which increasingly considered Gorbachev a “revisionist” departing from the true faith of Marxism-Leninism. Gorbachev reacted calmly to these reports, noting that he had already experienced similar opposition in several other fraternal countries. Whatever the repercussions in North Korea, the Soviet leader was determined to change Moscow’s long-standing Korea policies. He summed up the discussion by announcing, “We will firmly proceed on the way to rapprochement and establishing relations with South Korea. We are now taking this necessary decision.”

THE ROOTS OF CHANGE

The ground had been prepared for Moscow’s shift in policy several months earlier, by Soviet participation in the Seoul Olympics, which had dramatically altered official, journalistic, and popular attitudes toward South Korea.