The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [135]
As our small party of myself, fellow correspondent Tom Reid, and North Korean escorts approached the military demarcation line between North and South, an American sailor and two American MPs stood just across the line assiduously taking our pictures, most likely for U.S. and ROK intelligence. I felt little of the atmosphere of menace that I recall from visits to Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin before the wall came down, or even from my earlier visits to Panmunjom from the southern side. Perhaps it was because I was inside the enemy tent, having just been briefed by a North Korean major who was accompanying us, and for once I was not concerned about an imminent breach of the peace from the North, or from the South either.
Earlier in Pyongyang, Foreign Minister Kim Yong Nam had emphasized the high priority his government placed on negotiations to reduce tension at the DMZ and on the peninsula generally, because "we still have heavy danger of war." Kim painstakingly recounted North Korea's efforts to begin direct talks with the United States or three-way talks that would also include South Korea. "We have the intention and willingness to improve relations with the United States, but we cannot accept all the unjust demands of the U.S. side," he said. Recognizing that the issues are deeply rooted in history, he said, "the two countries must first of all officially make public their will to improve bilateral relations and start negotiations." Knowing the apprehension about North Korea in Washington and the deep reluctance to engage its diplomats, I had great doubt this would happen anytime soon.
Minister Kim Yong Nam, born on February 24, 1928, had risen step by step, by diligence and loyalty, through the ranks of the Workers Party to become party secretary for international affairs and, two months after the Rangoon bombing of October 1983, vice premier and foreign minister. The disaster in Rangoon had touched off an extensive reorganization of the bureaucracy dealing with NorthSouth and international affairs. As the new foreign minister, Kim had set about restructuring DPRK diplomacy along more professional lines, in the process becoming the sponsor of many of the country's career diplomats.
A Chinese official who has known Kim for many years said that he has extremely good literary skills and that he drafted many speeches for Kim Il Sung. This may have been the source of his unusually close relationship to the Great Leader, who elevated him to full membership in the Politburo in 1980, while he was still party secretary for international affairs-a job that does not usually carry such weight or power. Kim's younger brother, Kim Du Nam, was also close to Kim Il Sung, being a four-star general and military secretary to the Great Leader.
I had met Kim Yong Nam during his first trip to the United Nations as foreign minister in 1984-at the time, a rare visit to New York by a high-ranking North Korean. My persistent requests for an interview finally won out over the extreme caution and skepticism of Pyongyang's UN observer mission. A lengthy first meeting in a cavernous Manhattan hotel suite was notable for Kim's prepared declaration, which he read from a cloth-covered notebook he took from his pocket, that North Korea was interested in talks with the United States on the "confidence building measures" mentioned by President Reagan in his UN address several weeks earlier. This was a reversal of the previous North Korean dismissal of confidencebuilding proposals and was clearly intended to be an important signal to Washington.
The Reagan administration, which at this point was contemptuous of North Korea and busily preparing for the U.S. presidential election in November,