The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [138]
The amicable settlement of these unexpected emergencies coincided with the erosion of Chinese relations with North Korea as Kim Il Sung's trips to Moscow in 1984 and 1986 led to warming Soviet security ties and large new shipments of Soviet weapons. Chinese military officials were also unhappy with Soviet air force overflights of North Korean territory and Soviet navy visits to North Korean ports, all on the rim of China.
According to the account of a former Chinese official, a very senior North Korean military official, probably Defense Minister 0 Jin U, sought to match the Soviet weaponry with Chinese weaponry in the mid-1980s, making extensive requests for ships, planes, and other major weapons during an unpublicized trip to Beijing. After a study by the Defense Ministry of the requirements and costs, Deng rejected the entire request and directed his aides to supply nothing. The North Korean minister left for home furious about the denial of military aid.
While unofficial contacts with South Korea continued to develop-most prominently, the participation of several hundred Chinese athletes in the 1986 Asian games in Seoul-the greatest shifts developed after the advent of President Roh Tae Woo. During his campaign for the presidency in 1987, Roh had pledged at the west coast port city of Inchon to "cross the Yellow Sea" to China during his term in office. China thus became the highest-priority target of his nordpolitik policy. This had an important domestic political component because the west coast areas of South Korea facing China were much less developed economically than the more prosperous east coast areas facing Japan. Perhaps because of his promises regarding China, Roh carried Inchon, normally a stronghold of the political opposition, in the presidential vote.
Roh began working on China relations immediately after taking office. Only eight days after his inauguration, he invited to the Blue House an old friend, a Chinese-born medical doctor who had lived three decades in Korea, and authorized him to go to China as an unofficial emissary to pave the way for diplomatic relations. This was the first of a large number of unofficial approaches by Korean businessmen and others authorized by Roh to make the case for full-scale ties. A number of influential Chinese, including Deng's daughter and his handicapped son, visited Seoul as guests of Korean industrialists. "We were sure they would send back their impressions to Deng and higher-ups without any filter," said a senior aide to Roh.
While the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries were moving toward political ties with South Korea in the wake of the Seoul Olympics, China remained cautious, insisting on the clear-cut separation of politics from economics. Roh, however, continued to signal his interest to Beijing in every way possible. When the Chinese government's June 1989 suppression of prodemocracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square created widespread revulsion and endangered China's hosting of the 1990 Asian games, Roh lobbied Asian sports leaders, whom he knew well from the Seoul games, not to penalize China. He also urged Bush and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, among other world leaders, to restrain their reactions to the Tiananmen crackdown, and he made sure that Beijing leaders knew of his efforts.
In the spring of 1990, China finally activated a channel for unofficial contacts aimed at eventual diplomatic relations with Seoul. The initial discussions, resembling the meetings of go-betweens exploring a marriage to unite two Asian families, involved Lee Sun Sok, president of the Sunkyung corporation in Seoul, whose board chairman's son had married Roh Tae Woo's daughter,