The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [110]
A second round of secret talks in Seoul, August 8-12, produced a tentative agreement to establish consular-level missions before the Olympics and full diplomatic relations within six months. Having the announcement of a breakthrough with at least one communist country before the Olympics was important to Seoul, which believed this would improve the political atmosphere for the games and lead to a series of steps by other nations afterward.
A third round of secret diplomacy in Budapest, August 22-27, sometimes eight or nine hours a day lasting until long past midnight, was required to make the deal. In the end, Hungary settled for $625 million in loans, mostly on a commercial basis, to take the first dramatic step. The exchange of ambassadorial-level missions was an nounced by the two nations on September 13, just four days before the opening ceremonies for the Seoul Olympics. Full diplomatic relations were established less than five months later, on February 1, 1989.
The reaction from North Korea was vehement and bitter, especially because Pyongyang recognized that Hungary's act would have important significance for other East bloc countries. Natalia Bazhanova, a Russian researcher who has studied the record of secret policy making in Moscow regarding Korea, reported that as North Korea suspected at the time, Hungary did consult the Soviet Union before establishing relations with Seoul and obtained approval. After the September announcement, an authoritative "commentator" article in Nodong Sinmun accused Hungary of committing "a treacherous grave act against the principles of Marxism-Leninism and the revolutionary cause of the working class." The lengthy denunciation asked, "Is Hungary so strapped that it has no choice but to beg for a few dollars even from the South Korean puppets, breaching faith with a friend to survive?"
Pyongyang was particularly embarrassed because Kim Pyong 11, Kim Il Sung's eldest son by his second wife and the younger halfbrother of Kim Jong II, had arrived in Budapest as North Korean ambassador only two weeks before the announcement of ties with the South. Afterward, he was quickly reassigned. North Korea downgraded its relations after the establishment of full Seoul-Budapest diplomatic relations but did not break them off. Moreover, barter trade between the two countries continued to flourish. "North Korea is very pragmatic" when its economic interests are concerned, commented a Soviet bloc diplomat who observed the Hungarian developments from Pyongyang.
Not surprisingly, as athletes of 160 nations marched into Olympic Stadium in Seoul for the opening ceremonies of the games on September 17, Hungary's Olympic team was deliriously cheered by the predominantly Korean audience. Cheers were also notably enthusiastic for the ground breaking appearance by athletes of the Soviet Union, which in the past had been South Korea's greatest extrapenin- sular nemesis. Korean spectators cheered wildly for the Soviet basketball team as it vanquished the American team, to the shock and dismay of many American viewers.
In the new era of Soviet public diplomacy under Gorbachev, Moscow's athletes had been preceded in Seoul by an impressive procession of cultural and political emissaries, including the Bolshoi Ballet, the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Moscow State Radio and TV Choir, the latter group including two Soviet-Korean vocalists.
Korean Air Lines, the national flag carrier whose Boeing 747 airliner had been shot down by a Soviet fighter plane five years earlier, was given special permission to fly over Soviet territory in connection with the Olympics. The Seoul government, in return, played host in Inchon harbor to the 12,800-ton Mikhail Sholokov, a floating hotel for nearly two hundred Soviet athletes and officials. In a deal that was made initially with Kim Woo Choong, the Daewoo conglomerate chairman, the Russians took home with them the computers they were given in Seoul to record the games and the cars and buses that were used to transport the Soviet delegation.
Of the 160 nations