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By Root 1840 0

Il Sung endorsed the economic shift in his annual New Year's address to the nation, typically the most important policy pronouncement of the year. Gone was the traditional goal, repeated incessantly by Kim since 1962, that North Koreans would soon be able to "eat rice and meat soup, wear silk clothes and live in a tile roofed house." Kim conceded that during the seven-year plan, "we came up against considerable difficulty and obstacles in the economic construction owing to the unexpected international events and the acute situation created in the country." Giving his personal blessing to the new priorities, Kim described the situation at home and abroad as "complicated and strained."

This abrupt departure from Kim 11 Sung's eternal official optimism was like God announcing that things weren't what they should be in heaven. Adding to the impact of Kim's change in direction and tone was evidence that in his eighties he was emerging from semiretirement to reassert himself in day-to-day administration. American experts interpreted this as a sign of dissatisfaction with the work of his eldest son, Kim Jong 11, who had been openly designated as his chosen successor in 1980.

How much Kim Il Sung knew-or wanted to know-about the details of his country's problems in his latter years is a debatable point. According to a variety of North Korean and foreign sources, the younger Kim had increasingly assumed the management of governmental and party affairs. On the eve of his eightieth birthday in 1992, Kim Il Sung had told The Washington Times that he continued to carry out "some external work," but that "as far as the internal affairs of our country are concerned, everything is dealt with by [Kim Jong II]."

Nonetheless, according to North Korean defector Kang Myong Do, a son-in-law of Prime Minister Kang Song San, the turning point in Kim Il Sung's reengagement in the economy had taken place by the time of the interview. In late 1991 or early 1992, the defector said, his father-in-law, who had been prime minister during two earlier periods and was the son of one of Kim 11 Sung's guerrilla comrades, gave the Great Leader an unvarnished account of the desperate economic conditions in the strategic province along the Chinese and Russian borders where he was currently serving as provincial governor. Beginning in March 1992, startled by the contrast with rosier reports that he had been receiving through official channels, Kim 11 Sung convened a series of extended Workers Party meetings on the economic situation. By the end of the year, the incumbent prime minister had been fired and Kang had been brought back for his third term in the job. In early 1993 Kim presided over an extended Politburo conference on the economic troubles, which led eventually to the new economic policies that he announced in December.

Toward the end of January, Kim Il Sung received an illustrious visitor. America's most famous evangelist, the Reverend Billy Graham, had often carried his crusades to communist and totalitarian countries, but he had a special interest in North Korea because his wife, Ruth, had spent part of her youth attending the American School in Pyongyang while her parents were missionaries in China. In 1992 the evangelist had paid a successful visit during which he preached in several small churches and brought a conciliatory message from President Bush. With tension growing again between Washington and Pyongyang, Graham had requested and received a message from Clinton in connection with his trip. This one, however, was only a few sentences long, with no salutations or good wishes and very blunt-it said, in essence, cooperate on the nuclear issue, and only then can relations improve.

The evangelist and his aides, especially Stephen Linton, a missionary's son who knows the culture and the language from years living in the South, sought to surround the Clinton pronouncement with grace notes and explanatory phrases that could make it more polite, less stark, and more acceptable to the eighty-one-year-old Korean leader. Nevertheless, when Graham