The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [108]
Roh's effort to establish relations with North Korea's allies followed a previously established path. Contacts with the Soviet Union and China had long been a goal of Seoul governments, in the belief that such relationships would enhance the South's security and potentially undercut the North. In June 1983, Foreign Minister Lee Bum Suk declared the effort to normalize relations with the Soviet Union and China to be a formal objective of South Korean diplomacy. Lee, who was killed in the Rangoon bombing four months later, called the policy Nordpolitik, after the West German Ostpolitik policy with East Germany. In early 1985 specialists from several ROK ministries systematically studying the issue concluded that for the Nordpolitik policy to succeed, it was necessary to synchronize it with a more positive effort to negotiate with North Korea, lest it merely alarm Pyongyang as well as its allies. The task of implementing a more assertive negotiating strategy toward both North Korea and its allies was placed in the hands of Park Chul Un, the ambitious relative-by-marriage of Roh Tae Woo, who was made a special assistant to the chief of the ROK intelligence agency.
During his campaign for the presidency in 1987, Roh pledged to pursue a northern policy vigorously, declaring in a speech at Inchon that "we will cross the Yellow Sea" to China in order to resume a historic relationship with Korea's giant neighbor and promising new prosperity to the country's west coast areas. While on the surface China was cool to Roh's entreaties, Deng Xiaoping's market-oriented reforms in China augured well for eventual success, as did Mikhail Gorbachev's reformist "new thinking" in foreign policy that was sweeping the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
To implement his policies, Roh recruited as his special assistant for foreign affairs Kim Chong Whi, a 52-year-old U.S.-educated defense intellectual who had strong ideas about both the conception and the execution of South Korea's external affairs. With Roh's consistent backing, Kim steadily increased the authority of his office to hold sway over diplomacy, defense issues, and eventually North-South relations as well. During his five years at Roh's side he outlasted five prime ministers, four defense ministers, three foreign ministers, four ministers in charge of national unification, and five directors of the NSP intelligence agency. Kim energized previously reactive South Korean policy, taking the initiative on a variety of issues regarding North Korea and its communist allies, taking advantage of Seoul's swiftly growing economic strength and the approaching end of the cold war.
The first high-profile public initiative was Roh's Nordpolitik speech on July 7, 1988, less than a week after his remarks to Hiatt and me. Addressing himself to "my sixty million compatriots," a figure that included the people of both North and South, Roh unveiled a six-point program, including promotion of trade, exchanges of visits at all levels, and humanitarian contacts between the two Koreas. He also announced that Seoul would no longer oppose nonmilitary trade with North Korea on the part of its allies, and that Seoul would cooperate with the North in its efforts to improve its relations with the United States and Japan. In parallel, he announced, "we will continue to seek improved relations with the Soviet Union, China and other socialist countries." Although he made no mention of the Olympics in his announcement, Roh's aides said at the time and later that the northern policy was explicitly designed, in part, to smooth the way politically for communist nations to participate in the Seoul games.
To nobody's surprise, North Korea reacted coolly to the new policy