The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [129]
SOVIET-SOUTH KOREAN ECONOMIC NEGOTIATIONS
The months following the Gorbachev-Roh meeting in San Francisco were busy ones for Soviet-South Korean negotiations, most of which centered on the Soviet requests for aid. Two weeks after meeting Roh in June, Gorbachev wrote to him inviting a Korean economic delegation to Moscow to work on the issue. Headed by Roh's senior economic and foreign policy advisers at the Blue House, the delegation went to the Soviet capital in early August. It discussed forty potential projects in the Soviet Union but insisted that no economic aid programs could be made final until after the establishment of official diplomatic relations. Shevardnadze's impromptu action at the United Nations on September 30, recognizing South Korea, took care of that problem and cleared the way for further economic negotiations.
After correspondence in October between the two heads of state, in which Roh expressed his desire to meet Gorbachev in Moscow, Gorbachev aide Vadim Medvedev, a member of the newly empowered Presidential Council, traveled to Seoul in November with an invitation to Roh to make a state visit before the end of the year. Medvedev also brought a request from Gorbachev for $4 billion in credits, some to finance purchases of Korean goods and some in untied loans. The visitor suggested that this be announced by Roh during his forthcoming meetings in Moscow.
In the Kremlin on December 13-16, Roh met Gorbachev and with him issued a Declaration of General Principles of Relations. In deference to North Korea, the Declaration was careful to state that "the development of links and contacts between the ROK and the USSR must not in any way affect their relations with third countries or undermine obligations they assume under multilateral or bilateral treaties and agreements." In a private meeting, Roh asked Gorbachev to "exert an appropriate influence" on North Korea to develop a more cooperative relationship. The Soviet leader said he was doing what he could-which wasn't much, in view of Pyongyang's angry reaction to his new friendship with Seoul.
As an honored guest in the formerly forbidden capital, Roh also met Russian president Boris Yeltsin, spoke at Moscow State University, and laid a wreath with full Soviet military honors at the tomb of Moscow's Unknown Soldiers. Roh brought with him to Moscow twenty Korean business leaders as a sign of interest in the Soviet economy, but he declined to discuss aid projects or figures in detail. According to a former Soviet official, Roh told Gorbachev, "Don't worry about the aid; just take my word for it."
The two sides agreed that an aid program would be negotiated in Seoul in mid-January by Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Maslyukov, who had handled the Soviet side of the preliminary discussions. Before this could happen, however, Gorbachev on December 31 suddenly decided to send Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Rogachev to Seoul as a special envoy, seeking a major infusion of cash to help see the Soviet Union through the winter. This was dismaying to Gorbachev's professional Korea-watchers and much of his economic team, who feared that cash aid from Seoul would be wasted on shortterm spending rather than applied to productive long-term projects. But Gorbachev was desperate. That fall he had even made a private and personal appeal for immediate financial help to Secretary of State James Baker, who then solicited a $4 billion line of credit for Moscow from traditionally anticommunist Saudi Arabia.
On January 6, Rogachev