The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [168]
The South Korean president's views surfaced dramatically and unexpectedly on November 23, at the start of his first official visit to Washington. Ushered into the Oval Office for what had been planned as a brief meeting to put a pro forma stamp of approval on the proposal, Kim announced that it looked to him and his people as if the United States were accommodating North Korea without even giving Seoul a role in the decision process. His eyes flashing and his gestures emphatic, Kim insisted that he, not the Americans, have the final say on whether to cancel the Team Spirit exercise, and that he be the one to announce the decision when the time came. He also demanded that the long-discussed "exchange of envoys" between North and South actually take place before the third round of U.S.-North Korean negotiations begin.
Clinton was startled and his senior aides mystified by the nature and the vehemence of Kim's objections, since the various elements of the proposed offer had been discussed for months with officials of Kim's government. As the "brief" Oval Office meeting stretched on to eighty minutes, with senior American and Korean officials, including Kim's foreign minister, waiting with growing apprehension in another room, the Americans realized that Kim's objections had as much to do with appearance as with substance. A change in terminology to describe the proposal to North Korea as "thorough and broad" rather than as "comprehensive" or a "package" seemed to ease Kim's concern substantially. The White House also agreed to permit Kim to announce the final decision on postponement of Team Spirit if it came to that, and to make the exchange of North-South "special envoys" a prerequisite for the next round of U.S.-DPRK talks. The latter requirement proved to be an important stumbling block: North Korea bitterly resented being required to give in to the South's demand in order to deal with the Americans.
By the end of the Kim Young Sam visit, the Americans had begun to appreciate the complexity and difficulty of negotiating with North Korea on the nuclear issue. In fact, the parties were arrayed in a series of overlapping circles: between North Korea and the International Atomic Energy Agency, between North Korea and South Korea, and between North Korea and the United States. As in a combination lock, all three had to be in alignment simultaneously for the talks to succeed. Now a fourth circle of problems had been added: between Washington and Seoul. As the holiday season approached in 1993, negotiations with the DPRK seemed to portend more problems than progress.
THE SEASON OF CRISIS BEGINS
In Pyongyang in early December 1993, the Workers Party Central Committee made a surprising admission. At a meeting marking the end of the country's current seven-year economic plan, the party announced publicly that the major targets of the plan had not been met, and it warned that the DPRK economy was in a "grave situation." Battered by the collapse of its allies and trading partners and by economic stagnation at home, "the socialist paradise" was suffering its fourth consecutive year of economic decline. Its GNP, once on a par with that of the South, was estimated at one-sixteenth the size of the booming ROK economy, and the gap was growing rapidly.
Instead of adopting a new seven-year plan with the usual emphasis on heavy industry, the party decreed a three-year period of transition, with top priority given to agriculture, light industry, and foreign trade. Behind the brave rhetoric about "socialist construction," the meaning of the shift was clear: the North's leaders had lowered their sights and were aiming at mere survival. They were failing to feed their people and to provide enough clothing and other consumer goods to avoid privation; hence the new emphasis on agriculture and light industry. In an attempt to ease the situation without making basic changes in its autarkic command economy, North Korea was looking to exports for salvation but it had little to sell that the world wanted.
Kim