The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (38 page)

On a guided tour of the city, we encountered several hundred fourth-grade boys, led by an adult instructor, doing mass exercises with wooden swords or, lacking these, pieces of flat wood cut to the length of swords. The boys slashed, jumped, and shouted with enthusiasm and on cue. This was only one of many manifestations of the collective activities that were being emphasized. On the other hand, there were signs that behind the public facade, North Koreans had not lost their individuality and humanity. During a performance at the Pyongyang Circus, a spectacular display of acrobatic talent, children squealed with laughter and uninhibited delight at an act featuring trained dogs. Another evening at the apartment of the sister of one of our guides, we experienced the warmth of Korean family life as a seven-year-old in pigtails played a small piano and her reluctant five-year-old sister was coaxed into doing a little dance. The apartment, while modest by Western standards, was doubtless better than most, and a special allocation of food had apparently been granted to provide the guests with an abundant home-cooked dinner. Although hardly typical, it was the closest to everyday life that we were permitted to come.

Outside the capital and away from the country’s few highways, the landscape reminded me of what I had seen in the South in the 1950s and 1960s. An overnight train to Kaesong, just north of the demilitarized zone, took six hours to go about 120 miles, with antiquated equipment over a rough roadbed. Along the way, I saw a steam locomotive still in use, no doubt burning coal from North Korean mines. I awoke early in the morning to look out at hills and rice paddies shrouded with the familiar heavy morning mist and small houses with chimney pipes on the side arising from traditional under-the-floor heating. Here and there, the landscape was broken by dreary gray buildings that had been thrown up to house members of collective farms.

All this was in startling contrast to the traffic-choked, neon-lit modernity of Seoul and the dramatically improved living conditions of the South Korean countryside I had seen in recent years. Although poverty had not been abolished, the wealth and health of most South Korean citizens had undergone revolutionary change for the better since I first observed them in the immediate aftermath of the Korean War and immense change from the early 1970s when I spent so much time in South Korea as a correspondent. In the 1970s, the South had the look and feel of a rawboned, gutsy frontier country with garlic on its breath, where its cities gave rise to a hundred pungent odors and even the newsprint had a peculiar musky smell. By 1991 South Korea had arrived, with high-rise buildings crowding out most of the slanting roofs of traditional houses in Seoul and other cities and good roads and modern conveniences in the countryside. Nearly 10 million people, close to one in four of South Korea’s 43 million citizens, were licensed drivers of the country’s 4.2 million motor vehicles, making it increasingly difficult to get from here to there, at least in Seoul. More than 3 million foreign tourists visited the South, and close to 2 million ROK citizens traveled abroad during the year. From rock music to high fashion, South Korea was connected to the world.

The nexus between North and South was the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom, the principal destination on our trip from Pyongyang. Approaching from the North through the DPRK’s hilltop pavilion, the JSA appeared benign and ordinary. Compared with the heavily manned southern side, we saw remarkably few troops. As our small party of myself, fellow correspondent Tom Reid, and North Korean escorts approached the military demarcation line, an American sailor and two American MPs stood just across the line, assiduously taking our pictures. I felt little of the atmosphere of menace that I recall from visits to Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin before the wall came down, or even from my earlier visits to Panmunjom from the southern side. Perhaps it was because I was inside the enemy tent, having just been briefed by a North Korean major who was
accompanying us, and for once I was not concerned about an imminent breach of the peace from the North, or from the South either.

Earlier in Pyongyang, Foreign Minister Kim Yong Nam had emphasized the high priority his government placed on negotiations to reduce tension at the DMZ and on the peninsula generally, because “we still have heavy danger of war.” Kim painstakingly recounted North Korea’s efforts to begin direct talks with the United States or three-way talks that would also include South Korea. “We have the intention and willingness to improve relations with the United States, but we cannot accept all the unjust demands of the U.S. side,” he said. Recognizing that the issues are deeply rooted in history, he said, “the two countries must first of all officially make public their will to improve bilateral relations and start negotiations.” Knowing the apprehension about North Korea in Washington and the deep reluctance to engage its diplomats, I had great doubt this would happen anytime soon.

Kim Yong Nam, born on February 24, 1928, had risen step by step, by diligence and loyalty, through the ranks of the Workers Party to become party secretary for international affairs and, two months after the Rangoon bombing of October 1983, vice premier and foreign minister. The disaster in Rangoon had touched off an extensive reorganization of the bureaucracy dealing with North-South and international affairs. As the new foreign minister, Kim had set about restructuring DPRK diplomacy along more professional lines, in the process becoming the sponsor of many of the country’s career diplomats.

A Chinese official who had known Kim for many years said that he has extremely good literary skills and that he drafted many speeches for Kim Il Sung. This may have been the source of his unusually close relationship to the Great Leader, who elevated him to full membership in the Politburo in 1980, while he was still party secretary for international affairs—a job that did not usually carry such weight. Kim’s younger brother, Kim Du Nam, was also close to Kim Il Sung, being a four-star general and military secretary to the Great Leader.

I had met Kim Yong Nam during his first trip to the United Nations as foreign minister in 1984—at the time, a rare visit to New York by a high-ranking North Korean. My persistent requests for an interview finally won out over the extreme caution of Pyongyang’s UN observer mission. A lengthy first meeting in a cavernous Manhattan hotel suite was notable for Kim’s prepared declaration, which he read from a cloth-covered notebook he took from his pocket, that North Korea was interested in talks with the United States on the “confidence building measures” mentioned by President Reagan in his UN address several weeks earlier. This was a reversal of the previous North Korean dismissal of confidence-building proposals and was clearly intended to be an important signal to Washington.

The Reagan administration, which at this point was contemptuous of North Korea and busily preparing for the US presidential election in November, did not respond. But when the
Washington Post
placed my account of the interview on page 1, the North Korean diplomatic hesitation about me vanished, at least temporarily. After that I saw Kim or his senior deputy, Kang Sok Ju, nearly every time they came for their annual UN visits, even though their interview pronouncements never made the front page again.

In my 1991 meeting in Pyongyang, as in other meetings with him over the years, I found Kim Yong Nam a puzzling figure. In greetings before business began, he was cordial and relaxed, but once at work, he relentlessly followed his script in a way that reminded me of former Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko. Koh Yong Hwan, a former North Korean diplomat and high-level interpreter who defected to the South, called Kim a “model” for North Korean officialdom: “If Kim Il Sung was pointing to a wall and said there is a door, Kim Yong Nam would believe that and try to go through it.” Yet by all accounts, he is highly intelligent and, due to his high position and prestige within the system, an important behind-the-scenes figure in Pyongyang.

The foreign minister’s polar opposite in demeanor was the colorful and flamboyant Kim Yong Sun, another important figure in Pyongyang’s diplomacy, whom I met for the first time on my 1991 trip. Born in 1934, his career path was notable for its craggy leaps and reverses. Originally a politically minded provincial official in the southeastern part of the country, he served in political posts in other areas before joining the International Department of the Workers Party. In the mid-1980s, he was demoted and reportedly sent to work in a coal mine as punishment for decadent behavior in organizing Western-style dancing at party headquarters. According to North Korean lore, he was rescued from oblivion by his friendship with Kim Kyong Hui, the younger sister of Kim Jong Il. In contrast to the austere foreign minister, Kim Yong Sun was reputed to be a hard-drinking, partying buddy of Kim Jong Il, a ladies’ man and devotee of high living.

Unlike all others whom I interviewed in Pyongyang in 1991, Kim Yong Sun did not wear a Western coat and tie but a zippered olive-drab short jacket similar to the US Army’s “Ike jacket.” Sitting across a conference table at Workers Party headquarters, he apologized for his casual dress, saying that he had come straight from a meeting with workers and peasants in the countryside, who had encouraged him to return quickly to the capital when he told them he had an appointment with
Washington Post
reporters. It was a somewhat flattering touch, until I learned from a delegation of American Quakers months later that he had told them the same story, wearing the same jacket, at the start of their meeting.

Kim Yong Sun had more self-confidence and flair than anyone else I met in North Korea. His authoritative yet freewheeling style appeared to be grounded in intimacy with the Dear Leader, as Kim Jong Il was then known. It was notable that of a half-dozen senior officials I saw, only Kim Yong Sun volunteered to discuss the role of the Dear Leader, whom he described as “giving guidance in all fields: politics, economics, national defense, and diplomacy.” The party secretary said he received frequent personal instructions, including telephone calls, from Kim Jong Il.

While Kim Yong Sun’s fundamental positions did not deviate from the policy line of the party he served, he managed to present them in more accessible and impressive ways. At the end of our long conversation, which contained a plea for dialogue and cooperation with the United States, Kim said to me, “I understand you know Baker,” referring to the US secretary of state. “Please tell him I want to meet him.” Although he and other officials were highly critical of American policy, the fact of my presence and the messages they gave me suggested eagerness for a direct relationship with the United States. North Korea, it seemed, was seeking in its “own style” to compensate for its losses in the communist world. What wasn’t known at the time was that Kim Il Sung had already decided that normalizing relations with the United States was a strategic imperative to counter potential threats to the DPRK from China and Russia and that this goal would be the engine of North Korean foreign policy for years to come.

CHINA CHANGES COURSE

The Chinese foreign minister left Pyongyang several days before the end of my own weeklong trip, but the change in the relationship of the two Koreas to its giant neighbor continued to be a subject of immense importance on both sides of the thirty-eighth parallel. And in the early 1990s, those relationships, like others involving the outside powers, were in flux. For China, the challenge was to adjust its relations from one-sided support of the North Korean ally to productive ties with both South and North. It was of great importance to Beijing to do so without suffering a precipitous loss of influence with Pyongyang, as had been the case with the Soviet Union.

As late as January 1979, senior leader Deng Xiaoping told President Carter that North Korea “trusts China” and that “we cannot have contact with the South, or it will weaken that trust.” Ironically, Deng’s own reformist policies of pragmatism and emphasis on market economic forces made it imperative for China to amend its one-sided policy of ignoring the South.

China and South Korea, situated across the Yellow Sea from one another and with complementary and increasingly vibrant economies, proved to be natural trading partners. Beginning with indirect commerce through
Hong Kong and other places, Sino-ROK trade leaped from $19 million in 1979 to $188 million in 1980, $462 million in 1984, $1.3 billion in 1986, and $3.1 billion in 1988. Chinese trade with North Korea was left far behind, stagnating at about $0.5 billion in the late 1980s, much of it heavily subsidized by China. Although other aspects played their roles, this natural economic affinity with South Korea was of fundamental importance in overcoming Beijing’s inhibitions about dealings with Seoul. Party elders and aged former generals could reminisce about their exploits with North Korea in bygone times, but South Korea loomed much larger for officials dealing with the economy.

In 1985 a small Chinese delegation visited Seoul, ostensibly for an academic exchange. On its return, it produced a report for Deng Xiaoping about South Korea and the possibilities for improving PRC-ROK relations. After reading the report, Deng reportedly wrote in the margin, “We need to expedite development of China–South Korea relations.” Quiet meetings between Chinese delegations led by China International Trust and Investment Company chairman Rong Yi-ren and South Korean business leaders followed in Seoul and Beijing. Anxious to move as quickly as possible, the next year the South Koreans offered China a five-year, $2.5 billion interest-free loan if Beijing would establish ties. Many on the Chinese side were in favor of accepting, but Foreign Minister Qian rejected the idea, arguing that China could not afford to alienate North Korea. Over the next several years, Qian vetoed a number of proposals for establishing relations, much to the annoyance of those Chinese officials who wanted to move ahead. Even Vice Premier Tian Ji-yun, the head of the special “South Korean Affairs Office” established for dealing with Seoul, fumed at Qian’s obduracy but was unable to overrule him. One member of the Chinese group went back and forth so often that at one point, the South Koreans went to a Seoul tailor to buy him a new suit, hoping to make him less conspicuous. “The American and the Taiwan embassies are watching you,” his Korean contacts told him.