The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (54 page)

President Kim Il Sung (center) meets Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko (on Kim’s right) and other leaders in his 1984 visit to Moscow. Politiburo member Mikhail Gorbachev, later to be the Soviet leader, is third from right.

Kim is on outwardly cordial terms with Gorbachev in his 1986 visit to Moscow. Privately, however, they distrust each other.

In the mid-1980s thaw, two brothers of a divided family say goodbye after an emotional reunion in Seoul.
PHOTO BY KIM JOO MAN /JOONG-ANG PHOTO

Bold protesters battle riot police in 1987 demonstrations demanding direct presidential elections in the South. Faced with widespread protests, the government gave in.
PHOTO BY KIM HYUNG SOO /JOONG-ANG PHOTO

Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen and party (foreground) are welcomed in 1991 to Pyongyang by DPRK Foreign Minister Kim Young Nam. Only eight commercial flights a week entered the country of 21 million people.
PHOTO BY AUTHOR

Fourth graders in a sword drill in Pyongyang display childhood vigor and regimentation in 1991. In the background, the Pyongyang skyline and the Arch of Triumph, larger than the one in Paris, a tribute to Kim Il Sung.
PHOTO BY AUTHOR

The United States feared that North Korea’s indigenous 5-megawatt reactor, photographed surreptitiously by a Western visitor, would be the first element of a massive nuclear weapons program.

President Clinton, alarmed by the North Korean nuclear program and the confrontation of armies, visits the DMZ in 1993 and calls it “the scariest place on earth.”
AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Former president Carter meets President Kim Il Sung in June 1994 to head off a military crisis over nuclear issues on the peninsula.
THE CARTER CENTER

As Carter appears on live CNN television from Pyongyang at the height of White House policymaking on Korea, Vice President Gore and other top US officials are reduced to being amused but powerless onlookers.
THE WHITE HOUSE

Kim Jong Il, who inherited power after his father’s death, waves to his people but remains mysteriously silent on public occasions.