The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (36 page)

North Korea’s relations with Japan had been more tenuous. Kim Il Sung had made overtures in the early 1970s, at the time of the US-China opening, and then-Japanese prime minister Tanaka had been interested, but such a Pyongyang-Tokyo rapprochement was vehemently opposed by Seoul and given no encouragement from Washington. Unofficial contacts between the Japanese government and North Korea were carried on mainly through parliamentarians of the Japan Socialist Party. The relationship between the two countries was dramatically illustrated by the legend printed on Japanese passports, “This passport is valid for all countries and areas except North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea).”

Late in 1988, Pyongyang began making cautious overtures to Tokyo. Shevardnadze carried a message from Tokyo expressing interest, and the following month, in January 1989, a Japanese Foreign Ministry statement declared that “Japan does not maintain a hostile policy toward North Korea” and that it would be appropriate “to move positively toward improved
relations” if Pyongyang so desired. The statement also expressed hope for the release of two Japanese fishermen held on espionage charges by North Korea since 1983 for permitting a stowaway to leave aboard their ship.

The Diet delegation that flew into Pyongyang was unique in containing leaders of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party as well as those of the Socialist Party, and especially because it was headed by the most powerful figure in Japanese politics, Shin Kanemaru. The gruff seventy-five-year-old LDP kingmaker held no formal government post but was widely considered the power behind several prime ministers.
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Kanemaru, who had no foreign policy experience, overrode objections from the Foreign Ministry in accepting the North Korean invitation at the time he did.

On the second day of the visit, the Japanese delegation was taken to the Myohyang Mountains (literally, Mountains of Delicate Fragrance), one of North Korea’s great scenic spots and the site of Kim Il Sung’s favorite villa. That afternoon, the delegation returned to Pyongyang—minus Kanemaru and a few aides, who remained behind at Kim’s insistence. In the evening and the following morning, Kim and Kanemaru had two lengthy, intimate meetings in which Kim won Kanemaru’s confidence and trust. There were no Japanese witnesses and no notes taken, but a Japanese official who spoke to Kanemaru soon after the meetings said Kim was furious at the Soviet Union and spoke of the necessity for “yellow skins” to stick together against “white skins.” The official said it was clear to him that Kim was worried about the Russians most of all, even more than the Americans. Kanemaru came out of his talks with Kim with tears in his eyes and praise for the sincerity of the Great Leader.

During these and parallel meetings among the officials who had returned to Pyongyang, North Korea proposed immediate normalization of relations with Japan, surprising not least because it implied Japanese acceptance of two Koreas, which North Korea had always opposed. The payoff would be a large sum of Japanese reparations, in keeping with the precedent of the 1965 Japan–South Korea accord. Taking a page from the Hungarian and Soviet playbooks with the ROK, Pyongyang proposed that some of the money, which it reckoned in the billions of dollars, be paid even before diplomatic relations were established.

After a marathon negotiating session from which the accompanying Foreign Ministry representatives were excluded, the Japanese delegation issued a joint statement with the North Korean Workers Party. Among other things, the statement declared that Japan should “fully and formally apologize and compensate the DPRK” for the thirty-six years of Japanese
occupation of Korea and also for the forty-five years of abnormal relations after World War II. This created a furor in Tokyo and Seoul because it was issued without coordination with South Korea, because its went well beyond the 1965 Tokyo-Seoul accord, and because of fear that some of Japan’s funds could be used to support North Korea’s military and nuclear weapons program.

After the delegation returned home, negotiations with North Korea for the normalization of relations were turned over to the Foreign Ministry, which stiffened the Japanese position on the nuclear question and other issues. Not surprisingly, the talks got nowhere. The only tangible and lasting result of Kim Il Sung’s initiative with Kanemaru was release of the two Japanese fishermen.

Perhaps the most significant North Korean initiative in this period was to move ahead with high-level public—and also secret—talks with South Korea. On May 31, just days before the Gorbachev-Roh meeting, the Supreme People’s Assembly, the North’s legislature, called for the North-South dialogue to resume immediately across the board.

Three weeks later, the North sent a telephone message to the South denouncing its “flunkyist and divisive antinational acts” with the Soviet Union but, more important, proposing to restart preparations for high-level North-South talks. Preliminary meetings continued over the summer, resulting in an agreement that a delegation headed by the North Korean prime minister would visit Seoul on September 4–7, and that the South Korean prime minister would then lead a delegation to Pyongyang on October 16–19. These meetings, at the level of heads of government from each side, marked a significant step, at least symbolically, in the long and winding road of inter-Korean relations.

In early October, between the first and second rounds of the prime ministerial talks, a three-man delegation headed by NSP (formerly KCIA) director Suh Dong Kwon met secretly in a Pyongyang villa with Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. A month later, the North sent Yun Ki Bok, a Workers Party secretary who had been the political commissar for the 1972 Red Cross talks, and two other officials to meet Roh secretly in Seoul.

Suh told me in an interview for this book that these meetings came close to agreement on a North-South summit conference, to be held in North Korea early in 1991, but failed due to disagreement on a proposed joint declaration dealing with unification. Another senior ROK official familiar with the meetings, however, scoffed at this idea, saying that the two sides were never close to bridging fundamental disagreements.

The Pyongyang meeting with Suh was the only time during his father’s lifetime that Kim Jong Il met with senior representatives of the South. While his father did most of the talking, the younger Kim occasionally interjected an opinion in a seemingly insecure way that did not
impress the Seoul officials. When asked at the meeting, Kim Jong Il readily agreed to a separate meeting with Suh, but later the visitors were told he was unable to keep this promise because he was “too busy.” Kim Il Sung pointedly told the South Koreans, “As long as I’m alive, I will rule the country.”

Leaving no stone unturned, Kim Il Sung also made efforts to achieve a breakthrough in ties with the United States. On May 24, 1990, the day after Dobrynin’s secret meeting with Roh in Seoul, Kim delivered an important policy speech to a formal meeting of the North’s legislature. Departing from his unyielding stand against the acceptance of US military forces on the peninsula, Kim declared, “If the United States cannot withdraw all her troops from South Korea at once, she will be able to do so by stages.” In case Washington was not paying attention, Pyongyang used the tenth meeting of American and North Korean political counselors in Beijing on May 30 to pass along the text of Kim’s speech. In the meantime, on May 28, North Korea made its first positive response to US requests for the return of Korean War remains, transferring five sets of remains. On May 31, the day that the Gorbachev-Roh meeting was publicly announced, North Korea made public a new disarmament proposal that was notably free of anti-US or anti–South Korean rhetoric and that appeared to be more realistic than earlier proposals.

At this point, the United States, increasingly alarmed at the progress of North Korea’s nuclear program, was in no mood for conciliatory responses. State Department talking points drafted for Bush’s June 6 meeting with Roh, following the San Francisco meeting with Gorbachev, did not reflect any of Pyongyang’s moves except for a brief mention of the return of the US remains. Nevertheless, White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater made an unusual unsolicited announcement following the Bush-Roh meeting: “The United States reaffirms that it is not a threat to North Korean security, and we seek to improve relations with that country.” He added that “the pace and scope of any improvement will depend importantly on North Korea’s actions,” mentioning specifically North Korea’s willingness to permit international nuclear inspections. Beyond the press secretary’s remarks, however, Washington made no effort to engage the unpopular—and stricken—North Koreans.

In retrospect, Washington’s failure to explore improvement in relations with Pyongyang in the last half of 1990, when North Korea was still reeling from the blow inflicted by the Soviet Union, was an opportunity missed. The chances seem strong that Kim Il Sung would have responded eagerly to a US initiative at a time when his traditional alliance with Moscow was in shambles and his alliance with Beijing was under growing stress. But while the United States continued to pressure North Korea on the nuclear issue in public and private, it offered no incentives to Pyongyang to take the
actions it sought, even “modest initiatives” of the kind that had been taken near the end of the Reagan administration. This was due in part to the Bush administration’s preoccupation with the Persian Gulf following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, but it was also due to the inability of Washington policy makers to agree on any actions regarding North Korea. The gridlock would continue until Bush’s nuclear initiatives in September 1991, which were prompted by developments in the Soviet Union rather than Korea-related considerations.

SOVIET–SOUTH KOREAN ECONOMIC NEGOTIATIONS

The months following the Gorbachev-Roh meeting in San Francisco were busy ones for Soviet–South Korean negotiations, most of which centered on the Soviet requests for aid. Two weeks after meeting Roh, Gorbachev wrote to him inviting a Korean economic delegation to Moscow to work on the issue. Headed by Roh’s senior economic and foreign policy advisers at the Blue House, the delegation went to the Soviet capital in early August. It discussed forty potential projects in the Soviet Union but insisted that no economic aid programs could be made final until after the establishment of official diplomatic relations. Shevardnadze’s impromptu action at the United Nations on September 30, recognizing South Korea, took care of that problem and cleared the way for further economic negotiations.

After correspondence in October between the two heads of state, in which Roh expressed his desire to meet Gorbachev in Moscow, Gorbachev aide Vadim Medvedev, a member of the newly empowered Presidential Council, traveled to Seoul in November with an invitation to Roh to make a state visit before the end of the year. Medvedev also brought a request from Gorbachev for $4 billion in credits, some to finance purchases of Korean goods and some in untied loans. The visitor suggested that this be announced by Roh during his forthcoming meetings in Moscow.

In the Kremlin on December 13–16, Roh met Gorbachev and with him issued a Declaration of General Principles of Relations. In deference to North Korea, the declaration was careful to state that “the development of links and contacts between the ROK and the USSR must not in any way affect their relations with third countries or undermine obligations they assume under multilateral or bilateral treaties and agreements.” Even though by that time he already had his own secret channels to the North, Roh asked Gorbachev to “exert an appropriate influence” on North Korea to develop a more cooperative relationship. The Soviet leader said he was doing what he could—which wasn’t much, in view of Pyongyang’s angry reaction to his new friendship with Seoul.

Roh brought with him to Moscow twenty Korean business leaders as a sign of interest in the Soviet economy, but he declined to discuss aid projects or figures in detail. According to a former Soviet official, Roh told Gorbachev, “Don’t worry about the aid; just take my word for it.”

The two sides did agree that an aid program would be negotiated in Seoul in mid-January by Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Maslyukov, who had handled the Soviet side of the preliminary discussions. Before this could happen, however, Gorbachev on December 31 suddenly decided to send Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Rogachev to Seoul as a special envoy, seeking a major infusion of cash to help see the Soviet Union through the winter. This was dismaying to Gorbachev’s professional Korea watchers and much of his economic team, who feared that cash aid from Seoul would be wasted on short-term spending rather than applied to productive long-term projects. But Gorbachev was desperate. That fall he had even made a private and personal appeal for immediate financial help to Secretary of State James Baker, who then solicited a $4 billion line of credit for Moscow from traditionally anticommunist Saudi Arabia.

On January 6, Rogachev flew into Seoul with a team of economic and diplomatic officials, carrying a letter from Gorbachev asking for $5 billion in aid, including $2 billion in an immediate untied bank loan—in effect, ready cash. The Koreans were shocked by the size and nature of the request. Roh had said publicly on his trip to Moscow that cash grants were “out of the question” because such a big country as the Soviet Union “would not accept grants from a small country like ours even if we offered them.”

To Rogachev’s unexpected request, the Koreans initially offered $350 million in ready cash. Rogachev declared the offer “unacceptable” in view of his long journey and the many statements of support that had been made by Koreans during earlier discussions. After intense bargaining and a threat to break off the talks and return home preemptorily, Rogachev managed to raise the offer to $500 million. Suddenly, the tables had been turned on the Moscow-Seoul relationship; the supposed superpower was the supplicant, and the Korean side was deciding what it could provide. On the third day of negotiations, the Koreans agreed to supply $1 billion in cash and to negotiate later with Maslyukov on the rest of the aid program.