The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [115]
Remarks by Soviet reporters illustrate the overnight change in attitudes toward South Korea. Vitaly Ignatenko, who served as leader of the Soviet press at the Seoul games and later became Gorbachev's press secretary and director general of Tass, the Soviet news agency, said his first visit to Seoul had been "a shock" to him. "Everything I had read before turned out to be outdated; I arrived into the 21st century." Correspondent Vitaly Umashev of the influential weekly Ogonyok said, "My vision of South Korea as a Third World country disappeared." He reported that "in South Korea, Xeroxes are sold everywhere ... but in our country they are still considered a tool of dissidents." The Communist Party newspaper Pravda, which had previously depicted South Korea mainly as a bastion of American militarism, summed up its impression after the close of the games: "The sports facilities in Seoul are the best in the world, and the values of the Korean traditional smile and etiquette have been greatly underestimated."
Even more powerful was the impact of television. Almost 200 million Soviet viewers watched the ceremonial opening of the games, with attention also directed outside the stadium to scenes of Seoul. Soviet television carried fourteen to sixteen hours daily from the ROK during the games. In an informal survey of 167 Muscovites, more than 70 percent had watched some of the Olympic telecasts. Many Russians had been stunned and delighted to see Korean spectators rooting for Soviet teams in the games, even against American competitors, and they were elated when the Soviet teams walked off with the highest national total of Olympic gold medals. An aide to Gorbachev told the Soviet leader, "There is definitely no other place on earth where people so heartily welcome Soviets."
Even before the games were held, South Korea took advantage of the change in the atmosphere with a persistent series of probes to Moscow. In the summer of 1988, Park Chul Un, the Blue House point man for northern politics, managed to travel to Moscow and deliver a letter to Foreign Ministry officials addressed to Gorbachev. The letter, signed by President Roh, praised the very perestroika policies that were being damned in Pyongyang and called for establishing Soviet-South Korean diplomatic relations as a step toward peace and stability in Asia. Park also handed over a Korean translation of Gorbachev's recently published book on his reformist policies. A few weeks later Gorbachev sent a return letter, which was delivered to Roh in Seoul via Georgi Kim, an ethnic Korean academician at the Soviet Institute of Oriental Studies.
As the Blue House emissary prepared to leave Moscow on September 9, he was informed that the Soviet Union intended to improve its unofficial ties. He was tipped off to look for important news in a speech to be delivered by Gorbachev in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia on September 16, the day before the opening of the Seoul Olympics. In the speech Gorbachev addressed himself for the first time in public to the potential thaw, declaring that "within the context of a general improvement in the situation on the Korean peninsula, opportunities can open up for forging economic ties with South Korea." He also proposed a multinational initiative to limit and reduce military forces and activities "in the areas where the coasts of the USSR, PRC, Japan, DPRK and South Korea merge close." In October, in a deliberate signal of approval, Roh in a speech to the UN General Assembly called for "a consultative conference for peace" involving the five powers mentioned by Gorbachev plus the United States. The Soviet ambassador to the United Nations and other officials noted the resemblance between the two proposals.
Quite apart from politics, the South's large and growing economic dominance on the peninsula