The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [163]
This was only the first in a series of surprises from Kim Young Sam. Like much of the Korean public, whose feelings about the North are a complicated mixture of kinship, disdain, and fear, Kim's views on North Korea were replete with inconsistency.
Born on an island off the far south coast, Kim Young Sam had had little to do with North Korea issues during most of his career as an opposition political leader. Except for his strong prodemocracy stands, Kim was considered moderate to conservative on most political issues. As noted in Chapter 6, his mother had been murdered in 1960 by a North Korean agent who had invaded his parents' home. In 1992 his successful campaign for president featured anticommunist attacks on his longtime adversary Kim Dae Jung, whom he falsely accused of being endorsed by Pyongyang. On the other hand in his February 1993 inaugural address, Kim Young Sam offered to meet his North Korean counterpart "at any time and any place," and he declared that as members of the same Korean family, "no ally can be more valuable than national kinship." The latter remark, which implied a higher priority to reconciliation with the North than alliance with the United States, created something of a sensation on both sides of the DMZ.
What drove Kim Young Sam's northern policies above all were the tides of domestic public opinion. Unlike his military predecessors, Kim was a professional politician with a keen interest in the shifting views of the public. Known for relying more on his feel for the political aspects of issues than any overall strategy, he cited newspaper headlines or television broadcasts more often in internal discussions than official papers, which aides complained he did not read. According to a White House official, Kim constantly referred to polling data, public opinion, and political positioning in discussing his reactions to events, even in meetings and telephone calls with the U.S. president.
In mid-July, just prior to the second round of U.S.-North Korean negotiations, Kim was personally reassured about American policy by President Clinton, who came to Korea for a brief visit following the Group of Seven summit conference in Tokyo. Traveling to the DMZ for the traditional meeting with American troops, the U.S. president, clad in a fatigue jacket and "U.S. Forces Korea" cap, was taken to the very edge of the Bridge of No Return, which marks the border with North Korea-close to where the two American officers had been beaten to death in 1976 and much closer to the border than his predecessors had come during their visits to GIs. The North Korean soldiers manning a guard post on the other side of the bridge were in plain sight. Turning to a press pool accompanying him, Clinton held forth on the issue of the day: Due to U.S. security commitments, he said, "it is pointless for [North Koreans] to try to develop nuclear weapons because if they ever use them it would be the end of their country."
Clinton's remarks went over well in South Korea and at home, where he was considered suspect among many military-oriented people for evading the draft during the Vietnam War, but they were unwelcome in Pyongyang, where Foreign Ministry officials were preparing for the second round of talks with the Americans. When the negotiations convened on July 14 in Geneva, Kang protested that the United States had promised in June not to threaten the DPRK, yet Clinton had publicly threatened them with annihilation while stand ing in military garb on their very border. The Americans responded that when it came to bellicose language, Pyongyang had few peers. "The President of the United States went to South Korea. What did you expect him to say there?" Gallucci retorted. It soon became clear that Kang, while upset