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By Root 1938 0

who had remained behind at Kim's insistence. That evening and the following morning, Kim and Kanemaru had two lengthy and intimate meetings, joined only by Kim's Japanese-language interpreter, in which Kim won Kanemaru's confidence and trust. There were no Japanese witnesses and no notes taken, but a Japanese official who spoke to Kanemaru soon after the meetings said Kim was furious at the Soviet Union and spoke of the necessity for "yellow skins" to stick together against "white skins." The official said it was clear to him that Kim was worried about the Russians most of all, even more than the Americans. Kanemaru came out of his conferences with Kim with tears in his eyes and praise for the sincerity of the Great Leader.

During these and parallel meetings among the officials who had returned to Pyongyang, North Korea made a surprise proposal for immediate normalization of relations with Japan. Reversing Pyongyang's previous position, this proposal implied forthright Japanese acceptance of two Koreas, which North Korea had always opposed. The payoff for North Korea would be a large sum of Japanese reparations, in keeping with the precedent of the 1965 Japan-South Korea accord. In hopes of getting quick cash, Pyongyang proposed that some of the reparations money, which it reckoned in the billions of dollars, be paid even before diplomatic relations were established.

After a marathon negotiating session from which the accompanying Foreign Ministry representatives were excluded, the Japanese delegation, composed of the ruling LDP and the Socialist parties, issued a three-party declaration with the North Korean Workers Party. Among other things, the joint statement declared that Japan should "fully and formally apologize and compensate the DPRK" for the thirty-six years of Japanese occupation of Korea and also for the forty-five years of abnormal relations after World War II. This created a furor in Tokyo and Seoul because it was issued without coordination with South Korea, because its went well beyond the 1965 Tokyo-Seoul accord, and because of fear that some of Japan's funds could be used to support North Korea's military and nuclear weapons program.

As a result of the uproar, Kanemaru flew to Seoul to express regrets to President Roh, and apologized to U.S. Ambassador to Japan Michael Armacost for not consulting the United States. The negotiations with North Korea for the normalization of relations were turned over to the Foreign Ministry, which stiffened the Japanese position on the nuclear question and other issues. Not surprisingly, under Foreign Ministry leadership the talks got nowhere. The only tangible and lasting result of Kim Il Sung's initiative with Kanemaru was release of the two Japanese fishermen shortly after Kanemaru went home.

Another impos North Korean initiative in this period was to restart high-level public talks-and high-level secret talks as wellwith South Korea. On May 31, just days before the Gorbachev-Roh meeting, the Supreme People's Assembly called for the North-South dialogue to resume immediately across the board after months of inactivity. The North had frozen the talks early in the year after the United States and South Korea announced their annual Team Spirit military exercise.

Three weeks later, the North sent a telephone message to the South denouncing its "flunkyist and divisive antinational acts" with the Soviet Union but, more importantly, proposing to restart preparations for high-level North-South talks. Preliminary meetings continued over the summer, resulting in an agreement that a delegation headed by the North Korean prime minister would visit Seoul September 4-7 and that the South Korean prime minister would lead a high-level delegation to Pyongyang October 16-19. These meetings were at a higher level than previous North-South exchanges.

In early October, between the first and second round of the prime ministerial talks, a three-man delegation headed by NSP (formerly KCIA) director Suh Dong Kwon met secretly in a Pyongyang villa with Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong 11. A