The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History

by Oberdorfer, Don

  Two weeks after the announcement, Han traveled to Washington with the sketchy outlines of what he called a “stick and carrot” approach to persuading Pyongyang to change its mind during the ninety-day waiting period before its withdrawal would become effective. As Han saw it, the stick would be supplied by potential UN Security Council sanctions. Under chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which had been invoked after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, these sanctions could range from downgrading or severance of diplomatic relations to economic embargoes or military action. The carrots could include cancellation of the Team Spirit military exercise, security guarantees, trade, and other inducements to cooperate with the international community. “Pressure alone will not work,” Han declared.

  Han’s approach was in line with the thinking of most officials in the State Department, whose business and tradition is to negotiate, but it was controversial among the more hawkish elements in Seoul and many sectors of the US government. “The [US] Joint Chiefs of Staff said, ‘Under no circumstances should you engage [the North Koreans] in negotiations. You should not reward them. You should punish them,’” recalled a State Department official. But the official added, “As soon as you said, ‘How do you mean, punish them?’ of course the JCS would back away from any military options.”

  The absence of acceptable military options was also evident in Seoul. A few weeks after the North Korean announcement, when US defense secretary Les Aspin made his first official visit to the ROK capital, Defense Minister Kwon Yong Hae warned that even a “surgical strike” against the Yongbyon reactor would lead to a major escalation of hostilities on the peninsula. The result, Kwon said, could be a general war that would wreak death and destruction on South Korea and immediately involve US military forces. Such an attack, even if completely successful, would probably not destroy any plutonium that might already be hidden away in North Korea.

  Negotiations quickly emerged as the consensus solution in Washington, not because they appeared to be promising but because nobody could come up with another feasible plan to head off a crisis in Northeast Asia. However, talks with the North Koreans were highly controversial. With no strong signals coming from Clinton, the administration seemed unable to make a clear-cut decision to offer negotiations.

  China, which was widely recognized as a crucial participant in the international maneuvering, was urging direct negotiations between the United States and North Korea, which were ardently desired by Pyongyang. South Korean foreign minister Han, in a meeting with Chinese foreign minister Qian Qichen in Bangkok on April 22, said Seoul would drop its long-standing opposition to Washington-Pyongyang talks if China, in return, would agree not to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling on the North to comply with international nuclear inspections rather than withdraw from the NPT. Qian did not immediately accept the deal, but in fact China did not veto the resolution.

  With the precedent of the carefully limited 1992 New York meeting of Arnold Kanter and Kim Yong Sun before them, American officials were moving toward a decision to undertake direct negotiations with the North without the participation of the South, which was a reversal of often-declared US policy. The Washington-Pyongyang talks were “the South Koreans’ idea. . . . [T]hey actually came to us and suggested it,” according to Raymond Burkhardt, who was acting US ambassador in Seoul at the time. Burkhardt added, however, that it was initially understood on both sides that the talks would be limited to nuclear issues, which were peculiarly the province of the United States as a nuclear power.

  With Washington still unable to decide what approach to take, Pyongyang forced the issue. In early May, with about a month to go before the June 12 deadline, a diplomat at North Korea’s UN Mission in New York telephoned C. Kenneth Quinones, the DPRK country officer in the State Department, to ask if the Americans wanted to meet and, if so, the sooner the better. Some of Quinones’s colleagues were amazed that he had spoken on the telephone to North Koreans, but he pointed out that the North Koreans had placed the call. On further consideration, the State Department took North Korea’s initiative as a hopeful sign of eagerness to avoid a confrontation over the nuclear issue. The administration decided to move ahead to talks.

  The US official chosen to negotiate with North Korea was Robert L. Gallucci, the breezy, Brooklyn-born assistant secretary of state for politico-military affairs. A man of abundant self-confidence and a good sense of humor, he was an expert on nuclear issues and a veteran of the postwar UN effort to dismantle Iraq’s nuclear and chemical weapons programs. As Gallucci said later, he was “blissfully ignorant of profound regional contact,” having previously spent only five days in South Korea and none in the North. Gallucci was picked largely because the negotiations were conceived as being narrowly focused on the proliferation question, and Washington did not wish to name a more politically oriented official whose outlook and responsibilities might alarm Seoul. Once he began the negotiations, however, Gallucci’s perspective widened rapidly.

  On the North Korean side, the negotiator was Kang Sok Ju, the deputy foreign minister whom I had met several times in New York and Pyongyang. Kang had attended the International Relations College in Pyongyang and had served in the international department of the Workers Party, the North Korean Mission in Paris, and as a deputy foreign minister for European affairs. A self-assured and evidently well-connected man (his older brother was head of the Workers Party History Research Institute), he was more direct and willing to engage than other senior North Korean diplomats I had met and less openly ideological. Kang was a personal rival to Kim Yong Sun, and his Foreign Ministry colleagues would later gently inquire why the Americans had signaled a preference for meeting with Kim in the January 1992 talks instead of, in their view, the more capable Kang. He had more experience in the West than most North Korean diplomats, and he told American negotiators at one point that one of his favorite books was Gone with the Wind. To their amazement, he quoted from it to prove the point—though not the passage (“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”) that many had expected.

  After three lower-level exchanges to set it up, the first meeting between Gallucci and Kang took place at the US Mission to the United Nations on Wednesday, June 2, only ten days before North Korea’s withdrawal from the NPT was to become effective. Except for one or two career officials who had been present at the one-day Kanter-Kim meeting the previous year, the American negotiators had never even met a North Korean before, and Kang and most of his team had never had a serious conversation with a ranking American official. Each side was nervous and uncertain about what to expect from the other. The members of the Korean delegation wanted to know, “Who is this Gallucci?” and were somewhat distressed that the Americans did not seem to understand how important Kang Sok Ju was. If nothing else, in protocol terms, the first vice minister far outranked a US assistant secretary. Besides, they noted, Kang spoke directly to Kim Jong Il. Did Gallucci see the US president?

  Kang’s remarks opened with a lengthy paean to the glories of Kim Il Sung and the juche system, which depressed the Americans, but they soon learned this was obligatory for most North Korean presentations, at least until the two sides got down to serious business. The exchanges that followed did not get far, with North Koreans adamantly refusing to stay in the NPT and the Americans demanding that they do so. As the talks seemed to be getting nowhere, the US team returned to Washington at the weekend and told the North Koreans essentially, “If you want to meet again, call us and tell us what you have in mind.” What the Americans did not yet understand was that after observing international reaction in March to the North’s withdrawal announcement, the Foreign Ministry had persuaded Kim Jong Il that the announcement had opened an unexpected opportunity, that the world wanted the North come back to the NPT and that the North could use this response to advance its goals, most of all improving ties with the United States. Kang had come to begin that process, and the first session had been largely shadow boxing.

  On Monday morning, responding to a
North Korean call, Quinones returned to New York and met three Pyongyang officials in a Forty-Second Street coffee shop. There for the next three days, the American diplomat carried on a Socratic dialogue with the DPRK diplomats, drinking orange juice and coffee for hours at a time at a table by the front window of the coffee shop, where nobody paid any attention to them except (Quinones learned later) the FBI, which photographed the rendezvous. Quinones explained to the visitors how the US government and State Department were organized, what was or was not possible in the American system, and what types of security assurances might be provided to them in return for a decision to remain in the NPT.

  After another round of seemingly sterile talks between the full delegations, the Americans had a gloomy dinner, not sure what would salvage the situation. Somebody recalled that a Rodong Sinmun editorial had contained language suggesting there were circumstances in which a solution was possible. It was decided to replay the words back to the North Koreans at the session the next morning. Gallucci recited the passage, with his interpreter reading directly—and ostentatiously—from a copy of the newspaper. The reaction was immediate and electric on the part of the North Korean delegation. After that, Kang no longer spoke of withdrawal and the mood became more positive.

  During an afternoon break, several members of the US delegation crafted prospective assurances against “the threat and use of force, including nuclear weapons,” and against “interference in each other’s internal affairs.” To defend themselves against potential intra-administration criticism that they had given in to Pyongyang, they took the phrases directly from the UN Charter and previous official US statements in other circumstances.

  Meeting in lengthy sessions on June 10 and 11—the very eve of the June 12 withdrawal date—Gallucci and Kang hammered out a six-paragraph joint statement. The key points were the American security assurances, an agreement by the two sides to continue their official dialogue, and, in return, a North Korean decision to “suspend” its withdrawal from the NPT for “as long as it considered necessary.”

  The joint statement removed the immediate threat of North Korean withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and defused the sense of crisis, though it did not actually resolve the central issues. The Americans who had participated in the negotiations were elated, especially because Pyongyang’s negotiators proved to be open to argument and logic rather than the extraterrestrials some had expected. “I would make a point to Kang and he would make a point,” said Gallucci, which would have been unremarkable in most negotiations but had by no means seemed ensured in the case of North Koreans. After the opening lecture, Gallucci found Kang more open to reason than the Iraqis he had dealt with. Above all, Kang handled the nuclear questions in ways that suggested agreements could be made on many issues, if the two sides could agree on the price.

  For the North Koreans, a joint statement with the United States was an achievement of immense importance. A year earlier, at the end of the Kanter–Kim Yong Sun talk, the Bush administration had refused to issue such a document. That Kang came back with a joint statement where Kim could not must have seemed especially delicious to the Foreign Ministry.

  More important, the joint statement was of great symbolic value to the Foreign Ministry and to others in Pyongyang arguing for a serious effort to bargain with the Americans on the nuclear program. Even if it had only described the weather in New York, the statement would have been tangible evidence that the United States had recognized the legitimacy of North Korea and was willing to negotiate. By raising the stakes with its nuclear program, North Korea suddenly had become important to the United States. For the same reasons that Pyongyang was satisfied, the joint statement raised hackles in conservative circles in Seoul, where American relations with North Korea were anathema. This zero-sum pattern was to persist throughout the nuclear crisis.

  In what seemed only a minor piece of business at the end of the June 11 session, the American side suggested that follow-up communications take place through the North Korean UN Mission in New York. This move, which the DPRK officials immediately understood and accepted, gave the two countries a direct, authorized, and far more workable conduit for exchanges than the rigidly structured diplomatic talks in Beijing that had taken place periodically since 1988. If North Korea’s objective had been to seize the attention of Washington and force it to negotiate seriously on a bilateral basis, its strategy had succeeded brilliantly. Undoubtedly, it enhanced Kang’s standing with Kim Jong Il, no small achievement that would be important for the years of negotiations that were to follow.

  THE LIGHT-WATER-REACTOR PLAN

  On July 1, as Washington officials prepared for the next round of talks with Pyongyang on the nuclear issue, the new South Korean president, Kim Young Sam, voiced harsh criticisms of the negotiations in separate interviews with the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and the New York Times. In the Times interview, which drew the most attention in the US capital, Kim charged that the North Koreans were manipulating the negotiations “to buy time to finish their project,” and he expressed hope that the United States would “not continue to be led on by North Korea.” American officials, who had undertaken the negotiations at the suggestion of the South and had kept the South informed step by step, reacted with shock and anger.

  This was only the first in a series of surprises from Kim Young Sam. Like much of the Korean public, whose feelings about the North are a complicated mixture of kinship, disdain, and fear, Kim’s views on North Korea were replete with inconsistency.

  Kim had had little to do with North Korea issues during most of his career as an opposition political leader. Except for his strong prodemocracy stands, he was considered moderate to conservative on most political issues. As noted in Chapter 6, his mother had been murdered in 1960 by a North Korean agent who had invaded his parents’ home. In 1992 his successful campaign for president featured anticommunist attacks on his longtime adversary, Kim Dae Jung, whom he falsely accused of being endorsed by Pyongyang. On the other hand, in his February 1993 inaugural address, Kim Young Sam offered to meet his North Korean counterpart “at any time and any place,” and he declared that as members of the same Korean family, “no ally can be more valuable than national kinship.” The latter remark, implying a higher priority for reconciliation with the North than alliance with the United States, created something of a sensation on both sides of the DMZ.

  What drove Kim Young Sam’s northern policies above all were the tides of domestic public opinion. Unlike his military predecessors, Kim was a professional politician with a keen interest in the shifting views of the public. Known for relying more on his feel for the political aspects of issues than any overall strategy, he cited newspaper headlines or television broadcasts more often in internal discussions than official papers, which aides complained he did not read. According to a White House official, Kim constantly referred to polling data, public opinion, and political positioning in discussing his reactions to events, even in meetings and telephone calls with the US president.

  In mid-July, just prior to the second round of US–North Korean negotiations, Kim was personally reassured about American policy by President Clinton, who came to Korea for a brief visit following the Group of Seven summit conference in Tokyo. Traveling to the DMZ for the traditional meeting with American troops, the US president, clad in a fatigue jacket and “U.S. Forces Korea” cap, was taken to the very edge of the Bridge of No Return—close to where the two American officers had been beaten to death in 1976 and much closer to the border with North Korea than his predecessors had come during their visits to Korea. Turning to a press pool accompanying him, Clinton held forth on the issue of the day: due to US security commitments, he said, “it is pointless for [North Koreans] to try to develop nuclear weapons because if they ever use them it would be the end of their country.”

  Clinton’s remarks went over well in South Korea and at home, where he was considered suspect among many military-oriented people for evading the dra
ft during the Vietnam War, but they were unwelcome in Pyongyang, where Foreign Ministry officials were preparing for the talks with the Americans. When the negotiations convened on July 14 in Geneva, Kang protested that the United States had promised in June not to threaten the DPRK, yet Clinton had publicly threatened them with annihilation while standing in military garb on their very border. The Americans responded that when it came to bellicose language, Pyongyang had few peers. “The President of the United States went to South Korea. What did you expect him to say there?” Gallucci retorted. It soon became clear that Kang had been obliged to respond with tough rhetoric but had no intention of breaking off the negotiations.

  The second day of negotiations took place in the North Korean Mission in Geneva, the first time they had been on North Korea’s home turf; all the meetings in New York and the first one in Geneva had been in American buildings. The DPRK Mission had been polished up for the occasion, complete with gleaming silver trays on which were arrayed delicate Swiss pastries. This was in startling contrast to the minimal hospitality of the rich Americans, whose entertainment budget was limited to coffee and rolls served on paper plates.

  With appropriate fanfare, North Korea put forward an initiative that would change the nature of the negotiations. The DPRK had undertaken a peaceful nuclear program in good faith, Kang Sok Ju began, using natural uranium, of which the North had an abundance, and gas-graphite technology, which was widely available. Although it had no intention of producing nuclear weapons, he insisted, other nations were concerned that the facilities had a big potential for weapons production. The DPRK, he announced, was willing to shift its entire nuclear development program to more up-to-date, less proliferation-prone light-water reactors (LWRs) to fill its energy needs, if these could be supplied by the international community.