The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [128]
Suh told me in an interview for this book that these meetings came close to agreement on a North-South summit conference, to be held in North Korea early in 1991, but failed due to disagreement on a proposed joint declaration dealing with unification. Another senior ROK official familiar with the meetings, however, scoffed at this idea, saying that the two sides were never close to bridging fundamental disagreements.
The Pyongyang meeting with Suh was the first and only time that Kim Jong Il met with senior representatives of the South during his father's lifetime. While his father did most of the talking, the younger Kim occasionally interjected an opinion in a seemingly insecure way that did not impress the Seoul officials. When asked at the meeting, Kim Jong Il readily agreed to a separate meeting with Suh, but later the visitors were told he was unable to keep this promise because he was "too busy." Kim II Sung pointedly told the South Koreans, "As long as I'm alive, I will rule the country."
Leaving no stone unturned, Kim Il Sung also made efforts to achieve a breakthrough in ties with the United States, which he had always regarded as the real power in the opposition camp. On May 24, 1990, the day after Dobrynin's secret meeting with Roh in Seoul, Kim delivered an important policy speech to a formal meeting of the North Korean legislature, the Supreme People's Assembly. Departing from his unyielding stand against the acceptance of U.S. military forces in the peninsula, Kim declared, "If the United States cannot withdraw all her troops from South Korea at once, she will be able to do so by stages." In case Washington was not paying attention, Pyongyang used the tenth meeting of American and North Korean political counselors in Beijing on May 30 to pass along the text of Kim's policy speech. In the meantime, on May 28, North Korea made its first positive response to U.S. requests for the return of Korean War remains, handing over five sets of remains it said were American. On May 31, the day that the Gorbachev-Roh meeting was publicly announced, North Korea made public a new disarmament proposal that was notably free of anti-U.S. or anti-South Korean rhetoric and that appeared to be more realistic than earlier proposals.
At this point the United States, which had become increasingly alarmed at the progress of North Korea's nuclear program, was in no mood for conciliatory responses. State Department talking points drafted for Bush's June 6 meeting with Roh, following the San Francisco meeting with Gorbachev, did not reflect any of Pyongyang's moves except for a brief mention of the return of the U.S. remains. Nevertheless, White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater, in an effort to mitigate a deepening North Korean sense of isolation, made an unusual unsolicited announcement following the Bush-Roh meeting: "The United States reaffirms that it is not a threat to North Korean security, and we seek to improve relations with that country." He added that "the pace and scope of any improvement will depend importantly on North Korea's actions," mentioning specifically North Korea's willingness to permit international nuclear inspections. Beyond the press secretary's remarks, however, Washington made no effort to engage the unpopular-and stricken-North Koreans.
In retrospect, Washington's failure to explore improvement in relations with Pyongyang in the last half of 1990, when North Korea was still reeling from the blow inflicted by the Soviet Union, was an opportunity missed. The chances seem strong that Kim Il Sung would have responded eagerly to a U.S. initiative at a time when his traditional alliance with Moscow was in shambles and his alliance with Beijing was under growing stress. But while the United States continued to pressure North Korea on the nuclear issue in public and private, it offered no incentives to Pyongyang to take