The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History

by Oberdorfer, Don

  In Seoul public opinion and the views of influential elite groups were extremely negative, even though the ROK government officially endorsed the agreement and pledged to cooperate to make it work. Arriving on one of my periodic visits a month after the signing of the accord, I was startled to run into so many objections expressed in such passionate terms, even by normally pro-American and pragmatic Koreans.

  The objections ran the gamut from the failure to consult Seoul adequately to the belief that the US negotiators could have obtained a better deal through tougher bargaining. Moreover, many South Koreans agreed with the sentiments expressed by President Kim Young Sam to the New York Times during the last days of the Geneva bargaining: any American deal would help shore up a Pyongyang regime on the verge of collapsing, thus postponing reunification.

  However, the most important objection to the Agreed Framework was less specific but much more serious: South Koreans were in anguish that the United States, their great ally and closest friend, would establish any relationship with North Korea, about which nearly everyone had complex feelings and which many regarded as a bitter enemy. All the more infuriating was the fact that the US-DPRK deal had been consummated without the direct involvement of the ROK. Suddenly, Washington was dealing with “the evil twin,” as one Seoulite put it to me. The consequences of this shift in relationships with North and South, which were little understood in Washington, made the ROK government and its people immensely more difficult to deal with.

  The agreement was greeted coolly by the American public, which had not been prepared for such a broad accord with a pariah nation. The New York Times headline was “Clinton Approves a Plan to Give Aid to North Korea.” The Washington Post announced, “North Korea Pact Contains U.S. Concessions; Agreement Would Allow Presence of Key Plutonium-Making Facilities for Years.”

  Seventeen days after the Agreed Framework was signed, its problems in Congress became more serious when Republicans in the 1994 elections unexpectedly won control of both houses for the first time in decades. Foreign policy had been only a minor issue in the political campaigns, but the new Republican Congress was much more conservative and more skeptical of any dealings with North Korea than the outgoing Democratic Congress had been.

  THE KIM JONG IL REGIME

  On December 17, less than two months after the signing of the Agreed Framework, the new relationship between Washington and Pyongyang was tested in an unexpected way. That morning two US Army warrant officers in an unarmed helicopter lost their way in snow-covered terrain and flew across the DMZ five miles into North Korean airspace before being shot down. Chief Warrant Officer David Hileman was killed, but the copilot, Chief Warrant Officer Bobby Hall, survived. He was immediately surrounded and captured by North Korean troops.

  As these events were taking place, Representative Bill Richardson, a New Mexico Democrat, was on his way to Pyongyang via Beijing. When he arrived in the North Korean capital, he tried unsuccessfully to arrange the release of Airman Hall. Foreign Ministry officials told him that the case was in the hands of the less sympathetic Korean People’s Army command. When Richardson left on December 22, he took with him the body of Airman Hileman but, despite pleas about the coming of Christmas, only a promise of best efforts to arrange the release of Hall “very soon.”

  On Christmas Day, Hall, still in captivity, wrote a “confession,” accurately setting out the facts of his flight and asking forgiveness for his “grave infringement upon the sovereignty of the DPRK.” In line with standard North Korean practice, Hall’s confession meant that the way was clear for negotiations over his release to begin. The following day, the North Korean Foreign Ministry asked the State Department to send a senior official to Pyongyang, saying that the release of Hall probably could not be arranged through the military channels at the DMZ that were being used to deal with the issue.

  Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Hubbard, who had participated in the framework negotiations and other exchanges, crossed the DMZ into North Korea on December 28. Immediately, the Foreign Ministry began probing to see what the United States might give up in return for Hall’s release. In two days of talks, Hubbard refused to grant the North Koreans any of the political concessions they sought, such as agreement to begin negotiating a US-DPRK peace treaty, but he did agree to a statement of “sincere regret” for the “legally unjustified intrusion into DPRK air space.”

  To Hubbard, an illuminating aspect of the negotiations was the difference between the Foreign Ministry, which was eager to protect the just-signed framework accord with the United States, and the military, which was primarily concerned with the defense of borders. Foreign Ministry officials spoke openly of their frictions with military officers; at the DMZ, KPA officers spoke disparagingly to their American military counterparts of the “neckties,” as they called the DPRK diplomats.

  Such differences, in a less personal vein, had emerged during the course of the Agreed Framework negotiation. To some extent, referring to conflicts with the harder-edged military was a useful bargaining ploy on the part of the North’s diplomats, but Gallucci, Hubbard, and other American negotiators became convinced that on another level, the differences were real. In Geneva the diplomats intimated they ultimately won most of the confrontations because, they said, their instructions had been personally signed by the new Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Il. At the climax of the Hall case, the Foreign Ministry’s position again won the day, probably because it fitted Kim’s own view that advancing relations with the United States was a paramount goal.

  On the evening of December 29, Hubbard received final approval from Washington for the public statement of US regret that he proposed to make to accomplish Hall’s release. At that point, North Korean deputy foreign minister Kang excused himself from an official dinner, taking a copy of the statement and saying he would submit it to “the Supreme Leader.” At 2:00 A.M., another Foreign Ministry official called on Hubbard at the State Guest House to announce that the statement and the release of Hall had been “approved by Kim Jong Il.” Hall was released the following morning at Panmunjom, where KPA officers made little effort to hide their displeasure.

  Within minutes of Hall’s return to South Korea, Clinton telephoned ROK president Kim Young Sam to reassure him that Hubbard’s negotiations had not opened a new US channel or line of policy toward North Korea. The telephone call was deemed necessary because South Korean news media and some officials were highly critical of the negotiations, worried that Hubbard had made new deals in the North and finding proof of that in the brief statement Hubbard had made on Washington’s authority. “Something strange is going on up there,” Kim told Clinton, still trying to keep the United States in check. “We should not move too fast.”

  VISIT TO PYONGYANG

  In mid-January 1995, I was able to take a weeklong look at North Korea in the Kim Jong Il era as part of a four-member academic delegation sponsored by George Washington University’s Sigur Center for East Asian Studies. As in my 1991 visit, the small Russian-built airliner that brought us from Beijing was the only one to land in the entire country that day, in stark contrast to Seoul’s busy Kimpo International Airport where forty thousand passengers a day were arriving or departing from overseas on an incessant stream of jumbo jets.

  Within an hour after landing, however, I was struck by notable changes from my previous trip three and a half years earlier. The first surprise was that our official Mercedes cars—and all other vehicles in sight—were stopped and their occupants examined at a military checkpoint. This had never happened on my previous trip. Moreover, army and internal security police, often armed with automatic weapons, were in much greater evidence in Pyongyang streets than they had been before, and a frequent European visitor said the military was more conspicuous in the countryside than previously. While there was no discernible challenge to the regime (nor would such a challenge have been tolerated), the notably greater military presence seemed intended to convey a message; whether that message wa
s increased vigilance against potential challenge or simply the increased importance of the military in the Kim Jong Il era, I did not know.

  As our cars entered the city, we paused en route to our hotel for a new obligatory rite of passage: paying homage to Kim Il Sung at his giant bronze statue on Mansu Hill, overlooking the capital he had built. Beginning with our stop at the statue and continuing throughout our stay, Kim Il Sung seemed as omnipresent in death as in life, dominating the television programs, publications, cultural programs, and even policy presentations of the regime he left behind. With rare exceptions, each official whom we met began his presentation with recognition of the grave historic misfortune suffered by the country and, they claimed, the entire world when the Great Leader died. While mention was made of his son and chosen successor, greater emphasis was placed on the fallen leader.

  In all political systems, the death of the leader is a traumatic experience, especially in the case of totalitarian leaders such as Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il Sung, who reigned over their countries for decades. With the choice of his son to be his political heir, Kim sought to avoid the years of confusion and the ultimate repudiation that followed the deaths of his Russian and Chinese contemporaries. Although Kim hoped for a tranquil political succession, he left his son an economy that was on the rocks and on the edge of a devastating famine. January 1995 marked the beginning of the sixth consecutive year of negative economic growth, as estimated by outside experts. Since 1990, the first year of decline, the North Korean GNP had contracted by about one-fourth, according to these estimates. Nonetheless, we saw little privation in our one-week visit that was limited to the capital city, whose specially chosen population obtains the best of whatever is available. Surprisingly, I noticed more cars, trucks, and buses on the streets, suggesting that the energy crisis had diminished since my visit in 1991. That turned out to be a misimpression. By early 1996, as the famine took hold and the economy plunged ever downward, the streets of Pyongyang were virtually empty of traffic.

  Everywhere we went, it was apparent the North was eager to confirm and advance its new relationship with the United States. The importance of the US relationship was explicit in the statements of officials whom we saw, including Foreign Minister Kim Yong Nam and the more freewheeling Kim Yong Sun, who after further ups and downs had become Workers Party secretary for North-South affairs. Our visit coincided with that of a team of experts from US government agencies working with the nuclear authorities to arrange safe and continuously inspected storage of the fuel rods that had been unloaded from the now-dormant 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon. The visit also coincided with the arrival of two ships at the port of Sonbong carrying fifty thousand tons of heavy fuel oil, the first of the US-supplied energy to be delivered under the Agreed Framework in compensation for the shutdown of the North Korean nuclear program. Later I saw the brief cable from the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington to US Commands in the Pacific notifying them that “the Secretary of Defense has directed the [merchant ships] Da Quing and Lark Lake to deliver 50,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil to the DPRK.” It was hard to believe that less than a year earlier, the United States and North Korea had been on the brink of war and that the Joint Chiefs had been contemplating very different orders to its Pacific commands.

  On January 20, the day before we left Pyongyang, the State Department announced the easing of several economic sanctions against North Korea, as anticipated in the Agreed Framework. However, these were less than the administration had previously planned because of opposition to concessions on the part of the Republicans who were now in control of Congress. For the same reason, the first fuel-oil shipments were paid for out of Pentagon contingency funds, which did not require new authorization from Capitol Hill. The Agreed Framework, while working as planned in North Korea, was on thin ice politically in the United States.

  The central issue presented to us in nearly every meeting in Pyongyang was the desire to negotiate a US-DPRK “peace insuring system” at the DMZ to replace the 1953 Armistice Agreement, which North Korea insisted was obsolete. The demand for a US-DPRK peace treaty was more than twenty years old, but it had been given new impetus starting in April 1994, when North Korea reacted to the US military buildup in technical violation of the armistice. Weeks later, the North withdrew its delegates from the Military Armistice Commission, forced the withdrawal of the Polish participants from the long-standing Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission at the DMZ, and launched a successful diplomatic drive to persuade China to withdraw from the Military Armistice Commission. A senior DPRK foreign ministry official, Kim Byong Hong, told us ominously that if the United States did not respond to the new “peace insuring” proposal, the DPRK would take “unilateral steps.”

  Due to the opposition to the armistice by then-president Syngman Rhee, South Korea was not a signatory to the armistice; therefore, North Korea insisted that the South not be included in talks about its future. From the American standpoint, it was out of the question to negotiate a bilateral peace treaty or other “peace insuring system” on the divided peninsula without the South Koreans, as our delegation told our hosts in no uncertain terms. Despite this imposing roadblock, the discussion of more permanent arrangements at the heavily fortified DMZ seemed to me a positive development.

  The official attitude toward the South was the most troubling aspect of our talks in Pyongyang. DPRK officials adamantly refused to deal with the ROK government, insisting it had irrevocably insulted North Korea by its conduct at the death of Kim Il Sung. The foreign minister and others insisted that the South must formally apologize, which was highly unlikely, before talks could restart.

  How much of this was honest anger and how much a tactic to avoid North-South negotiations and bait the South while concentrating on Pyongyang’s relationship with the United States was impossible to tell. It was clear enough, though, that the absence of movement toward accommodation or detente between North and South was a serious problem for the United States in moving between a former enemy and a close ally.

  THE STRUGGLE OVER THE REACTORS

  The most important unresolved problem in implementing the Agreed Framework was the source and description of the light-water reactors to be furnished in exchange for North Korea’s existing nuclear facilities. Although the United States had negotiated the deal, Washington did not propose to furnish or pay for the reactors. South Korea had volunteered to provide them, and from the first Washington called on Seoul to underwrite most of their $4–$5 billion cost, with Japan putting up much of the rest. Pyongyang bridled at the idea of giving Seoul a chance to crow about how it was providing this high-tech export to the North, though Gallucci and others insisted there was no alternative to the South as a supplier.

  Three rounds of US-DPRK expert talks on the topic in Beijing and Berlin ended in deadlock. Pyongyang was determined to avoid an open acknowledgment that South Korea might be the source of the reactors, insisting that it was up to the United States to provide them under an American label—but also saying that where they actually came from was Washington’s business. Seoul was equally determined that North Korea accept its central role in providing the reactors, even more, that this role should be openly acknowledged in the final contract by a reference to “South Korean type reactors.”

  A face-saving intermediary was the international consortium envisaged in the Agreed Framework. It was established by the United States, South Korea, and Japan in March 1995 as the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), with an American executive director, former diplomat Stephen Bosworth, giving overall direction to the project.*

  In the Agreed Framework, the United States had pledged to make the “best efforts” to conclude a supply contract for the new reactors by April 21, 1995. As the date approached with negotiations deadlocked on the origin and description of the new reactors, North Korea threatened to abandon the Agreed Framework, ending the freeze on its existing nuclear program by reloading its 5-megawatt reactor. The situation was
made more complicated by Seoul’s adamant demand that the North clearly acknowledge the origin of its new reactors, on the grounds that this was necessary if the National Assembly was to furnish the billions of dollars required. At the Berlin talks in late March, when the United States proposed to offer the North face-saving language, South Korea refused to approve the talking points. Battered by criticism for ignoring the interests of the South, “we made a very conscious choice between pursuing what we thought was the most likely route to a solution and solidarity [with the South]. We opted for solidarity,” according to a White House policy maker. Predictably, the talks ended in failure.

  As tensions rose, talk in Seoul and Washington turned again to a show of force to pressure North Korea. This time the adoption of sanctions by the UN Security Council seemed unlikely because the issue boiled down to North Korean pride versus South Korean pride. Moreover, Chinese cooperation was less likely because the United States and China were embroiled in a dispute over a US visit by Taiwan’s president.

  To exert pressure on the North, ROK foreign minister Gong Ro Myung suggested bringing US aircraft-carrier battle groups into both the seas around the Korean peninsula. Gong’s idea was rejected, but officials in Washington began reconsidering the options for major augmentation of US forces in Korea, such as had been on the table at the White House when Jimmy Carter met Kim Il Sung during the June 1994 crisis. According to a military officer who was involved, some senior administration officials, frustrated by the lack of agreement in April 1995 and angered by Pyongyang’s threats, were saying, “Here we go again. There’s only one way to play with North Korea, and that’s very hard. Send in the troops.” One option under active consideration at the Pentagon and in interagency discussions would have dispatched seventy-five thousand additional US troops—roughly double the thirty-seven thousand already stationed in Korea.