The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [16]
The meeting, whose record was kept by Lee's aide and not disclosed until seventeen years later, was remarkable for the shared antipathy to the major powers and the heavy emphasis by both sides on reaching accords and eventual reunification.
LEE: President Park Chung Hee and I believe unification should be achieved by ourselves without interference of the four powers [the United States, China, Japan, the Soviet Union].... We are never front men of the United States or Japan. We believe we should resolve our issues by ourselves....
xm: Our position is to oppose reliance on external forces on the issue of unification. This is where I agree with Park Chung Hee....
LEE: I'd like to tell you that President Park is a person who detests foreign interference most.
Km: That being so, we are already making progress to solve the issue. Let us exclude foreign forces. Let's not fight. Let's unite as a nation. Let's not take issue with communism or capitalism... .
LEE: A nation with 40-50 million people is a powerful country. [The population of the South in 1972 was 32 million; that of the North 14 million.] One hundred years ago we yielded to big powers because we were weak. In the future the big powers will yield to us. I'd like to make it clear to you, the big powers only provide lip service to our hope for unification. But in their hearts, they don't want our unification.
KIM: Big powers and imperialism prefer to divide a nation into several nations.
In a further attempt to clear the air, Kim apologized for the actions of the North Korean commando team that had attempted to assassinate Park in 1968. Kim suggested, improbably, that he did not know of the famous Blue House raid in advance, blaming it on "leftist chauvinists within our structure" and saying that when he had learned of it, he fired his chiefs of espionage and security. (In fact, there was a purge of military and paramilitary officials afterward.) "Tell President Park I feel very sorry," said Kim.
After the secret return visit to Seoul by the DPRK deputy premier Park Sung Chul, who conferred with President Park, North and South Korea surprised the outside world by publicly issuing a joint statement on July 4, 1972, a date that seemed to have been chosen to illustrate their independence from the nation that celebrates its own independence then.* The statement declared that the two sides had reached full agreement on three principles:
First, unification shall be achieved through independent efforts without being subject to external imposition or interference.
Second, unification shall be achieved through peaceful means, and not through use of force against one another.
Third, a great national unity, as a homogeneous people, shall be sought first, transcending differences in ideas, ideologies, and systems.
As part of the joint statement, the two sides agreed "not to defame and slander one another" and to take positive measures to prevent inadvertent military incidents. In order to avoid officially granting recognition to each other, however, the statement was not signed by the two governments but simply by KCIA director Lee Hu Rak and Director of Organization and Guidance Kim Young Joo, Kim Il Sung's brother, "upholding the desires of their respective superiors."
In a press conference Pyongyang's emissary to the South, Deputy Premier Park, announced the North's interpretation of these accords. He declared, "Now that there exists no threat of aggression in South Korea from the North, nor ... any need of protection and [since] our nation is settling its internal problems according to its own faith, the U.S. imperialists must no longer meddle in the domestic affairs of our country;