The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [141]
If Seoul snubbed Taiwan in the face of this long relationship, its representives implied, Taiwan would retaliate by opening official relations and expanding its trade with North Korea. But if on the other hand, Seoul managed to continue its diplomatic relations with Taiwan, South Korean firms would receive top priority in construc tion contracts and special trade benefits for five years. No such deal was in the cards, however. Taiwan had little bargaining power, since for strategic as well as economic reasons, fully normalized relations with China were far more important to South Korea than its ties with Taiwan.
For China, the delicate question was how to manage the establishment of diplomatic relations with the South in a way that did not alienate the North, as the Soviet Union had done with Gorbachev's abrupt maneuvers. This Beijing accomplished with great political and diplomatic finesse. While moving cautiously toward ties with Seoul in October 1991, Chinese leaders hosted Kim Il Sung with elaborate ceremony in what they announced was his thirty-ninth visit since the founding of the DPRK, a ten-day tour in which he was accompanied for several days by Communist Party general secretary Jiang Zemin. In April 1992, as Seoul was being secretly informed of China's willingness to initiate negotiations, Yang Shangkun, the president of the People's Republic, traveled to Pyongyang and personally intimated to Kim Il Sung that the change was coming. In the midst of negotiations with Seoul, China sent its president's brother, Yang Baibing, another powerful figure who was secretary-general of the Communist Party's Central Military Commission, on an eight-day "goodwill visit" to North Korea.
After July 29, when the substance of the Sino-South Korean arrangements were fully agreed and secretly initialed by both sides, the Chinese insisted on delaying the announcement for nearly a month until August 24, evidently for the sole purpose of further preparing the way in Pyongyang. During this time Foreign Minister Qian took the news to Pyongyang in an unannounced trip that met with much greater understanding than had Shevardnadze's tumultuous mission of the same sort two years earlier. Qian maintained that the normalization of relations with Seoul had been undertaken at the order of senior leader Deng Xiaoping, which left the North Koreans little room for argument.
Chinese officials later confided to a Japanese diplomat that flattery and saving face had been keys to obtaining North Korea's acceptance of the change. According to this account, Beijing told the North Koreans that "we need your help, because China has to respond to Taiwan's gaining recognition abroad." The Chinese called on North Korea as old friends to magnanimously assist by permitting Beijing to recognize South Korea, thereby penalizing Taiwan for its actions.
When the Beijing-Seoul rapprochement was announced, North Korea accepted the blow with official silence. A month later, at the United Nations, I asked North Korean foreign minister Kim Yong Nam about the switch; he replied that China's new relationship with Seoul was "nothing special ... nothing [that] matters to us."
In fact, the newest change in the great power alignments around the peninsula mattered greatly to Pyongyang, which was seeking to establish relations with the United States and Japan and hoped that China would withhold its official ties with South Korea until a package deal could be arranged. Pyongyang had elaborate warning that the Chinese shift was coming, but the timing of it must have been galling, because it arose from Beijing's desire to slap back at Taiwan rather than from any consideration of its impact on the Korean peninsula. North Korea's realization of its true standing in the priorities of its giant neighbor, along with sharply rising international pressures to curb its nuclear program, contributed to its growing troubles.
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