The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (65 page)

Following the death of Kim Il Sung in July 1994, Hwang helped to establish a trading company in Beijing under the aegis of the International Peace Foundation, to collect foreign currency in support of
juche
teachings and other activities in Pyongyang. The company was headed by Kim Duk Hong, who had been Hwang’s senior aide at Kim Il Sung University and later in the Workers Party. Hwang and Kim had many contacts with South Korean businessmen, clergy, and others in appealing for funds or other material support in exchange for access and appreciation in Pyongyang. These activities were authorized and encouraged, at least in general terms, by North Korean authorities and probably, as well, by the South’s intelligence service.

In late 1995 and early 1996, in meetings in China with South Koreans, Hwang expressed grave concern about a dangerous shift of power in Pyongyang to the military. Hwang’s views, made known to the US Embassy in Seoul, were reported to Washington via intelligence channels. His heightened apprehensions roughly coincided with the notable rise of military influence in the North under Kim Jong Il and the emergence in January 1996 of “Red Banner philosophy,” emphasizing revolutionary and martial spirit, which quickly became more prominent than
juche
.

Hwang’s first overt move of opposition, according to sources in Japan, had come in early-February 1996, during an international seminar held in Moscow on “the
juche
idea.” In this setting, the high priest of
juche
expressed his determined opposition to war, calling it inhuman and comparing military combatants to animals, and he declared his support for Chinese-style market reforms, which were still anathema in Pyongyang.

On March 10, Hwang’s world began to change when an article in
Rodong Sinmun
attacked “careerists and conspirators [who] outwardly pretend to uphold the leader and be faithful to the revolutionary cause while dreaming another dream inwardly and making conspiracies behind the scenes.” It warned that “socialism will go to ruin if there are careerists and conspirators seated in the leadership.” Although the article was one of a continuing series of such warnings and mentioned no names, Hwang was certain it was aimed at him. Surveillance of his activities was increased, and lectures were organized that criticized his views and weakened his authority, again without specific mention of his name. He noticed that government officials began avoiding him, a timeworn signal of trouble ahead. A few days after the
Rodong Sinmun
article appeared, Hwang’s aide dropped hints to a South Korean contact in Beijing that Hwang might defect because of his opposition to military dominance and the growing possibility of war.

On July 3, while transiting Beijing on his way home from leading the official DPRK delegation to a congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party, Hwang met Lee Yon Kil, a sixty-nine-year-old South Korean businessman, born in the North, who had been leading a personal crusade to induce and assist defectors from the communist regime since serving as a commando under US and ROK direction in the Korean War. “War must be prevented at any cost,” Hwang told him, and to do so South Korea should provide food to the people of the North, which is “50 years behind the South.” Hwang emphasized the need for absolute secrecy, telling Lee that a North Korean agent was situated deep in the “power core” of the Seoul regime.

In the late spring, in an attempt to stabilize his position at home, Hwang had taken the advice of high-ranking party figures to compose a self-criticism, admitting to mistakes. Toward the end of July, however, a speech by Kim Jong Il, published in the Workers Party theoretical journal
Kulloja
, returned to the attack against “social scientists” who erroneously interpreted
juche
. Hwang knew then that his self-criticism had been rejected and that his ouster from the seat of power was inevitable. In Beijing in late July, Hwang’s aide spoke explicitly of defection for the first time and reported that Hwang requested cyanide ampules in case suicide was his only option. He also asked for money to approach younger people in Pyongyang who he believed were less sympathetic to the regime.

Hwang now began to move decisively to the dissident camp. On August 21, he penned a lengthy treatise summing up his view that North Korea had become “neither a nationalist nor socialist state, but a full-fledged dictatorship” that “has nothing in common with the genuine
juche
idea.” As for Kim Jong Il, Hwang wrote that he

possesses vigorous energy, as well as unswerving will to protect his own interest. His political and artistic sense is very sharp, and his brain functions fast. Since he has only been worshipped by the people without being controlled by anyone, he has never experienced any hardships. As a result, he got to be impatient and has a violent character. He worshipped Germany’s Hitler. . . . He never consults with anyone else. No one can make a direct telephone call to him, no matter how high his or her position is. He considers the party and military as his own and does not care about the national economy.

Regarding the possibility of war, Hwang wrote that “the North is developing nuclear, rocket and chemical weapons” and “believes it will win in a war.” Therefore, he wrote, “the South should set up a social atmosphere of respecting the military; beef up military forces in all directions; and
make impregnable readiness with proper preparations for war” in order to prevent armed conflict from breaking out. Reversing his previous stand, he wrote that to weaken the North, the South should discourage reforms in the DPRK. He advocated continuation of the economic blockade to isolate the North, with the exception of providing food and medicine for the North Korean people.

On January 28, Hwang left Pyongyang to deliver the main address at a symposium in Japan sponsored by the Cho Chongryon, the pro-Pyongyang residents’ association. He was closely guarded in visits to Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nagano, during which he extolled
juche
and paid tribute to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. He flew to Beijing on February 11 for an overnight stop before his scheduled train trip to Pyongyang the following afternoon. Instead, he left the North Korean Embassy on the morning of February 12, pleading that he needed to go shopping for gifts. A short time later, he took refuge in the South Korean Consulate.

Hwang’s defection posed a difficult issue for the Chinese government, which sought to maintain good relations with both Pyongyang and Seoul, until North Korea dropped its initial claim that Hwang had been kidnapped and announced that “a coward may leave” if he really wanted to defect. Still, in order to ease the embarrassment to Pyongyang, China did not permit Hwang to leave the ROK consulate in Beijing for five weeks and then only for a third country, rather than directly to South Korea. Under an arrangement worked out with Seoul, the Philippines provided a temporary refuge for Hwang before he was permitted to travel to Seoul on April 20. As he and Kim Duk Hong stepped out of a chartered Air Philippines jet at a military airport, the two defectors raised their arms in the air three times and shouted
Mansei!
—a Korean expression of triumph and good wishes. The South Korean public, watching raptly on live television, suspended its mixed feelings about Hwang, at least for the moment, and warmly welcomed his arrival.

THE TWO KOREAS IN TIME OF TROUBLE

By 1998, a half century after the creation of separate states following the division of the peninsula, the two Koreas were radically different, but both were facing serious difficulties.

South Korea, although far more advanced economically and politically and awash with riches when compared to the North, was beset by problems that would grow dramatically at the end of 1997. In November the financial and economic crisis that had begun in Southeast Asia spread without warning to Korea. By December 31, South Korea’s currency, the won, had lost 40 percent of its value against the US dollar as investors fled the country, and the value of securities on the Seoul stock market had
dropped by 42 percent. To avoid defaulting on the international debts of its banks and businesses, the country that in 1996 had joined the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), known as the club of the world’s richest nations, was forced to go hat in hand to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for $57 billion in loans—the largest international bailout on record, up to that point—in return for acceptance of stringent economic requirements. Bankruptcies and unemployment soared, with massive social and political consequences.

Amid this turmoil, Kim Dae Jung, the longtime opposition leader, was elected president in the December 18 national election. “We’re just entering a dark IMF tunnel,” he told the public in a televised “town hall” meeting. “The real ordeal will begin from now on.” As the Republic of Korea celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its founding on August 15, 1998, its economy was still struggling to find the path to recovery. The economy bounced back dramatically in 1999, but began to slip again in the second half of 2000, as it became clear that underlying problems in the banking and corporate structure were more serious and more damaging than had been anticipated.

Kim Dae Jung’s policies toward the North were very different from those of his predecessor and rival, Kim Young Sam. From his first years in national politics in the early 1970s, Kim Dae Jung had outspokenly advocated a policy of easing North-South tension and engaging the North. For many years, he was accused of procommunism by military-dominated governments, but he persisted in his views. Now as president, he set out three principles in his inaugural address: “First, we will never tolerate armed provocation of any kind. Second, we do not have any intention to undermine or absorb North Korea. Third, we will actively push reconciliation and cooperation between the South and North beginning with those areas which can be most easily agreed upon.” His administration established a program of engaging the North through positive gestures and lowered barriers to trade and other official and unofficial interactions. Early in his administration, Kim’s program, which became known as his “Sunshine Policy,” was sorely tested by the absence of progress in official relations with the DPRK and by public dismay over another failed North Korean submarine incursion and the discovery of the body of a North Korean commando off the South Korean coast three weeks later. Nevertheless, Kim persevered in his engagement policies.

When I first saw Kim as president in March 1998, a month after his inauguration, he told me, “We’re now waiting for the North Korean attitude. I think there is discussion among the North Korean leadership about how to change their policy toward South Korea.” The following month, at Pyongyang’s initiative, official bilateral talks were held in Beijing, but they broke up without results because the South insisted on reciprocity, in
the form of guarantees of reunions of divided families, in return for two hundred thousand tons of fertilizer it was willing to provide. The North, however, insisted on obtaining the aid without conditions.

An important element in Kim Dae Jung’s policy was the separation of politics from economics, which in practice meant permitting ROK businessmen to pursue deals with the North, even though there was little or no progress on intergovernmental relations. This proved to be a key in preparing the way to broader contacts.

North Korea, meanwhile, continued to suffer devastating problems. As a result of failed policies, its economy continued to shrink in 1997 for the eighth consecutive year since the collapse of its alliance with the Soviet Union. An International Monetary Fund mission that visited Pyongyang in September 1997 issued a confidential report, on the basis of data largely provided by DPRK officials, that the economy had suffered “a severe contraction,” with total national output in 1996 only half of what it had been five years earlier. Industrial output had fallen by two-thirds, according to the report, and food production by 40 percent. Estimates of starvation varied widely, but US Census Bureau estimates suggested that about 1 million North Koreans may have died as result of famine between 1994 and 1998. This “arduous march,” as it came to be called in the North, had long-term consequences for economic and social developments in the country and, most of all, the regime’s grip on the people.

Kim Jong Il, after the completion of a three-year mourning period for his father, was elected general secretary of the Workers Party in October 1997, placing him officially at the top of the political hierarchy he had headed since his father’s death. All signs, however, suggested that unlike his father, he was relying less on the party for control and governance than on the military from his posts as supreme military commander and chairman of the National Defense Commission.

16

TURN TOWARD ENGAGEMENT

F
OR MOST OF THE
half century since the creation of its regime, North Korea’s role on the world scene was that of menace to the peace. Its attack across the thirty-eighth parallel that started the Korean War, its massive and forward-deployed postwar military force, its practice of terrorism, and its bristling vocabulary of threats made it a pariah state to be dealt with disapprovingly and as little as possible by most of the nations of the world. Beginning with the death of Kim Il Sung and the evidence of its poverty and deprivation in the middle 1990s, North Korea was seen less as a threat and more as an economic basket case and the object of humanitarian assistance. As Kim Jong Il gathered confidence and came into his own, especially after his June 2000 summit meeting with Kim Dae Jung, North Korea and its leader began to be accepted for the first time in terms befitting a normal state. What had been shrouded in mystery began to be explored; what had been cause for either anxiety or pity began to be engaged diplomatically and examined at high levels by many of the world’s democratic governments.