The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (68 page)

The Americans had decided ahead of time that this was not the occasion for a productive meeting with Kim Jong Il, and Perry made only pro forma requests to see him. On the final day of his visit, Perry summarized his proposals in a brief meeting with Kang. The United States had taken an important step in sending him to Pyongyang as the personal representative of President Clinton, and now it was up to North Korea to take the next step, he said. Not surprisingly, Kang was noncommittal. As their plane took off, Perry told his team that he believed his mission had failed. He doubted that the Foreign Ministry and the Workers Party could win a debate with the armed forces, although he conceded he did not know what the ultimate decision maker, Kim Jong Il, might be thinking. The
experienced Korean experts in his party read the tea leaves differently. They thought that Kang and some others were clearly intrigued with Perry’s ideas and that they might well succeed in moving in a positive direction. In Washington, State Department analysts saw the North’s public treatment of the visit as a very positive signal and sent an urgent message to the delegation to that effect. Perry was persuaded that things were not as glum as he first thought.

Before leaving Pyongyang, Perry suggested that if his proposals were too sweeping to digest all at once, North Korea might consider taking a smaller initial bite, such as placing a moratorium on further flight tests of its missiles. The United States could take its own small step by easing some US economic sanctions. On June 23, less than a month after the Perry visit, North Korea’s diplomats asked their US counterparts in a meeting in Beijing for more details of what Perry had in mind, a clear sign that Pyongyang was interested. Serious discussions began in August in Geneva, on the sidelines of four-party talks. A month later in Berlin, in mid-September 1999, North Korea agreed to a moratorium on further missile tests while talks continued. In return, President Clinton announced the lifting of sanctions that banned most US exports to and imports from the DPRK. Pyongyang had initially accepted only a first bite-size portion, but to a US negotiator, “They had bitten; they had taken the hook.” From the North’s standpoint, of course, it was the United States that was being hooked back into working toward a relationship Pyongyang had been pursuing since the early 1990s. Albright declared publicly that the United States was heading down a new and more hopeful road in its relations with North Korea—but that Washington could reverse course if it became necessary. The missile-test moratorium and the visit to the underground cavern took the edge off the anger in Congress that had erupted a year earlier. The future path of the US-DPRK relationship, however, remained uncertain.

TOWARD THE JUNE SUMMIT

For many summers, North Korean fishermen had ventured south into a rich crab-harvesting area across an invisible line on the map that had been utilized as a sea border between the two Koreas since right after the Korean War—a line the North said had been unilaterally established by the UN Command and that it did not recognize. Usually, the crabbers had scuttled back north when confronted with southern ships; in June 1999, they unaccountably did not do so, but stayed to fish under the protection of northern patrol craft. On June 10, a dozen North Korea crab-fishing boats, escorted by six North Korean patrol boats, were confronted by South Korean patrol boats, which began ramming the invading vessels to
force them back across the dividing line. After a few minutes, the North Korean boats, several of which had been damaged, fled north.

On June 13, a renewal of the confrontation escalated into a mini war. The southern side had strict orders not to fire first, but the initial shot—possibly a North Korean sailor firing a rifle—from a northern boat was answered by a hail of fire from more modern and better-armed southern vessels, initiating a fourteen-minute gun battle. A North Korean torpedo boat with an estimated twenty sailors on board was sunk before the rest of the flotilla fled.

The first serious naval clash between the two Koreas in the Yellow Sea since the Korean War put nerves on edge, prompted the dispatch of additional US naval forces to the area, and created grave questions about relations between Seoul and Pyongyang. Yet, somehow, it did not escalate. After the shoot-out, the incursions across a line the North had never officially recognized did not continue. Despite fierce rhetoric, North Korea did not put its forces on alert, build up its forces near the battle zone, or counterattack with its nearby shore battery of 100-mm guns or its Silkworm antiship missiles.

Speculation was intense about why North Korea had sought to contest the sea border at that time. Some declared that the incident reflected an effort by hard-liners among the North Korean military to sabotage moves toward rapprochement with the South. Others suggested it was intended to improve Pyongyang’s bargaining position in forthcoming talks with Seoul. Others saw the incident as a grave challenge to President Kim Dae Jung’s engagement, or Sunshine, policy toward the North. In retrospect, high-ranking South Korean officials became convinced that the confrontation had been unintentional on the part of Pyongyang and that it arose from a much more mundane cause: the fishing fleet’s quota for crabs, which are sold by the North for scarce hard currency, had been raised to double that of the previous year, a new quota almost impossible to meet without tapping the southern waters.

The impact of the sea clash was substantial in all directions. Domestically, it appeared to validate the lesser-noticed “hard” side of Kim Dae Jung’s Sunshine declaration, as expressed in his 1998 inaugural address: “We will never tolerate armed provocations of any kind.” The military action improved his standing, at least temporarily, with those in South Korea who felt his policies toward the North were too accommodating. In an interview months later, Kim told me that the naval clash had been “a decisive success” that taught North Korea a great lesson, while improving the morale of South Korean armed forces. The embarrassed North, although it avoided any military response, reacted politically. Two weeks after the battle, long-delayed meetings of North and South Korean vice ministerial officials in Beijing broke down in arguments over the sea battle and
without a widely anticipated agreement on meetings of divided families in return for ROK economic assistance. Senior South Korean officials who subsequently dealt extensively with the North believe the clash in the Yellow Sea may have delayed Pyongyang’s movement toward accommodation with the South by six months or more. If so, the delay proved to be a costly one in the developments on the divided peninsula.

In the summer and fall of 1999, North Korea was reaching out to a variety of key countries. In mid-May, Kim Jong Il summoned the Chinese ambassador, Wan Yongxiang, for the first meeting with a Chinese ambassador since his father’s death. Kim applauded China’s reform and open-door policies and asked that China receive a mission to reestablish the high-level relations that had been dormant for more than five years; a few weeks later, he dispatched the mission, headed by Kim Yong Nam, the former foreign minister who was now nominally the head of state for protocol purposes. In November Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov was received in Pyongyang to make preparations for a new bilateral treaty on trade and cooperation, replacing the old Soviet military alliance. In early December the North welcomed a Japanese parliamentary group headed by former prime minister Tomiichi Murayama and including Hiromu Nonaka of the Liberal Democratic Party, which paved the way for resumption of Japan–North Korean normalization talks. Japan then announced the lifting of some economic sanctions.

Relations with the United States, however, appeared to be drifting, if not stalled. In September 1999, North Korea proposed sending a high-level emissary to Washington to confirm officially the missile moratorium and move relations to the next level. Throughout the fall and winter, US diplomats urged their Pyongyang counterparts to send the emissary soon, lest North Korean policy become embroiled in the US presidential debate in 2000. From meeting to meeting, North Korean diplomats were unable to set a date, suggesting to some of the Americans disagreement in Pyongyang over what to do. Among other impediments, North Korean diplomats complained bitterly that the US economic sanctions that President Clinton had publicly promised to lift were still in force. Neither they nor the public was told that the White House had made a private commitment in writing to Republican leaders of the Senate not to lift the sanctions until the high-level visit began to discuss elimination of long-range missiles—and nobody could say when that would be.
*

I was in Seoul in early January 2000 and met privately with Kim Dae Jung to discuss North-South relations for the third time since he had become president two years earlier. The previous month, Kim had begun to receive signals from a variety of channels that Pyongyang wished to move again toward official cooperation and economic assistance, but he did not tip his hand. Asked about the lack of a clear-cut response to his overtures, Kim told me, “We told North Korea when they respond to our efforts for peace, we will respond.” He expressed the belief that the activities of former secretary of defense Perry and the growing solidarity of the United States, South Korea, and Japan would have a positive influence on North Korea. Citing Pyongyang’s efforts to reach out, he said, “They realized if they continue like this without cooperation with the outside, they cannot maintain their system.” The day before our meeting, Italy had become the first Western European country to establish diplomatic relations with North Korea. Kim said the Italians had spoken to him ahead of time, and “I told them to go ahead.” His objective, he said, was “to liquidate the Cold War structure on the Korean peninsula within three years”—the time remaining in his presidency. He did not predict what would happen next, but I sensed he was more confident than before.

In the early months of 2000, in fact, decisions were jelling in the North. On March 5, in the first observable sign to the outside that something different was happening, Kim Jong Il made a well-publicized visit to the Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang. The nearly five-hour meeting was a farewell gesture to Ambassador Wan, who was soon to leave his post—but it had greater significance than that. Kim Jong Il normally did not receive ambassadors, and a visit by him to an embassy was astonishing in North Korean terms. It appears he used the evening to notify Chinese leaders what was coming and to set the stage to see them in Beijing two months later.

Kim Dae Jung had decided early in the year that his top priority would be a summit meeting with Kim Jong Il, as difficult is that might be to arrange, because he believed the only way to negotiate successfully with a dictatorial government was from the top down. On January 20, he publicly proposed a summit meeting to discuss issues of mutual cooperation, peaceful coexistence, and coprosperity.

At that point, the machinery of secret North-South contacts went into gear. Over the next three months, public comments and behind-the-scenes meetings fed into each other. The secret meetings started with low-level feelers and quickly grew to higher-level exchanges that nailed down an agreement and, always crucial in these matters, worked out the wording for a joint press announcement. It was a good example, once again, of the care and choreography necessary for making progress on the Korean issue. In the first stages, the contacts were conducted even without the knowledge of the head of the National Intelligence Service, the new name for
the South’s intelligence organ. Once that was remedied, the NIS chief, Lim Dong Won, became personally involved in conveying Kim Dae Jung’s views to key North Korean officials and, eventually, to Kim Jong Il himself.

On February 2, a longtime go-between, Yoshida Takeshi, met at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul with ROK minister of culture and tourism Park Ji-won—who had been designated by Kim Dae Jung to deal with the summit issue—to convey a message that Pyongyang was interested in a summit. In a public statement on February 6, Kim said he would not be bogged down by matters of location or format. His aim and flexibility were also made known in low-level channels that had been opened to the North. Perhaps more important, Kim began to speak publicly in startlingly positive terms about his potential opposite number at a North-South summit. A meeting of the top leaders is essential, the South Korean president said in February in an interview with the Tokyo Broadcasting System, and it is practical as well: “I believe [Kim Jong Il] is a man of good judgment, equipped with great knowledge.” This surprising statement about a man who had been routinely and roundly condemned as the ultimate enemy brought a storm of protests from conservatives in the South, including those among the United Liberal Democrats, Kim Dae Jung’s own coalition partner. No South Korean president had ever said such positive things about a North Korean leader.

At the end of February, the North sent a message that it wanted to meet with Park Ji-won in Singapore for preliminary talks. On March 2, Kim left Seoul for state visits to Italy, France, and Germany. On March 9, the secret meeting in Singapore took place. That same day, at the Free University in Berlin, Kim called for a government-to-government dialogue with the North without delay and announced extensive new proposals for ROK assistance. These included a government role in expanding the North’s “social infrastructure, including highways, harbors, railroads and electric and communications facilities.” He proposed business-related treaties on investment guarantees and prevention of double taxation. To deal with the underlying causes of the North’s famine, he proposed “comprehensive reforms in the delivery of quality fertilizers, agricultural equipment, irrigation systems and other elements of a structural nature,” with the assistance of the South. US officials, who were in the midst of negotiating with North Korean diplomats in New York, were taken aback by his ambitious offers, which they heard about only hours before the speech in Berlin. Secretary of State Albright protested the lack of advance notice to the ROK foreign minister, Lee Joung Binn, who apologetically said Kim had been working on the details of his speech right up until the time it was given.