The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [100]
Carter's secret memorandum to Zbigniew Brzezinski and Cyrus Vance six weeks after becoming president illustrates his iron determination on Korean issues. (Jimmy Carter Library)
South Korean CIA chief Lee Hu Rak secretly meets North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in May 1972 to begin the high-level dialogue between the two Korean states. (Joong-ang Photo)
Justifying his action on the need for national unity to confront the North in talks, South Korean president Park Chung Hee declares martial law in October 1972 to crush all domestic opposition. (Photo by Kim In Kon / Joong-ang Photo)
President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George Bush, and their wives welcome President Chun Doo Hwan and his wife to the White House in 1981, despite previous U.S. opposition to Chun's assumption of power by a "a coup in all but name:' (Ronald Reagan Library)
South Korea's cabinet and senior aides line up for a ceremony in Rangoon during Chun's state visit in 1983. Moments later, most of them were killed by a powerful North Korean bomb planted in the ceiling above them. (Joong-ang Photo)
President Kim Il Sung (center) meets Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko (on Kim's right) and other leaders in his 1984 visit to Moscow. Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev, later to be the Soviet leader, is third from right.
Kim is on outwardly cordial terms with Gorbachev in his 1986 visit to Moscow. Privately, however, they distrusted each other.
Two clandestine envoys from the North, Ho Dam (left) and Han Se Hae are greeted by President Chun in a mansion near Seoul in 1985. Such secret North-South meetings were numerous. (Joong-ang Photo)
In the mid-1980s thaw, two brothers of a divided family say goodbye after an emotional reunion in Seoul. (Photo by Kim Joo Man I Joong-ang Photo)
Bold protesters battle riot police in 1987 demonstrations demanding direct presidential elections in the South. Faced with widespread protests, the government gave in. (Photo by Kim Hyung Soo /Joong-ang Photo)
North Korean agent Kim Hyon Hui, trained from age 18 for espionage, planted a bomb that blew up a South Korean airliner with 115 aboard. She later was pardoned in Seoul and received many marriage proposals. (Photo by Choi Jae Young/ Joong-ang Photo)
The 1988 Olympic games in Seoul generate South Korean diplomatic breakthroughs in the communist world. Here Soviet athletes march in the opening ceremony. (Photo by Chae Heung Mo /Joong-ang Photo)
An exhilarated President Roh Tae Woo meets a reserved President Mikhail Gorbachev in San Francisco in 1990, ending the historical enmity in South KoreaSoviet relations. (Joong-ang Photo)
Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen and party (foreground) are welcomed in 1991 to Pyongyang by DPRK Foreign Minister Kim Young Nam. Only eight commercial flights a week entered the country of 21 million people. (Photo by author)
Fourth graders in a sword drill in Pyongyang display childhood vigor and regimentation in 1991. In the background, the Pyongyang skyline and the Arch of Triumph, larger than the one in Paris, a tribute to Kim 11 Sung. (Photo by author)
The United States feared that North Korea's indigenous 5-megawatt nuclear reactor, photographed surreptitiously by a Western visitor, would be the first element of a massive nuclear weapons program.
President Clinton, alarmed by the North Korean nuclear program and the confrontation of armies, visits the DMZ in 1993 and calls it "the scariest place on earth." (AFP Photo)
Former president Carter meets President Kim Il Sung in June 1994 to head off a military crisis over nuclear issues on the peninsula. (The Carter Center)
As Carter appears on live CNN television from Pyongyang at the height of White House policymaking on Korea, Vice President Gore and other top U.S. officials are reduced to being amused but powerless onlookers. (The White House)
A limousine bearing a giant picture of Kim Il Sung leads his funeral procession in July 1994 through the broad avenues of the monumental capital