The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [185]
CARTER IN PYONGYANG
In the meantime Carter, accompanied by his wife Rosalynn and a small party of aides and security guards, had crossed the DMZ on June 15 on his way to see Kim Il Sung. Carter found walking across the dividing line at Panmunjom, then being handed over by U.S. and ROK military to North Korean military "a bizarre and disturbing experience, evidence of an incredible lack of communication and understanding." He was well aware of the risk to his reputation, believing that "the chances of success were probably minimal because so much momentum had built up on both sides of the sanctions issue."
In his initial meeting in Pyongyang, Carter found Foreign Minister Kim Yong Nam so uncompromising and negative that the former president awoke at three A.M. believing it likely that North Korea would go to war rather than yield to international sanctions. In desperation, he dispatched an aide, former ambassador Marion Creekmore, to the DMZ with a message to be sent through secure U.S. channels in South Korea, appealing to Clinton for authorization to agree to the start of the third round of U.S.-DPRK negotiations to head off a crisis. Carter instructed Creekmore not to send the message until receiving a go-ahead after his meeting with Kim Il Sung on the morning of June 16.
For Kim Il Sung, the meeting with the most prominent American ever to visit the DPRK was the culminating moment of his twodecades-long effort to make direct contact with American ruling circles, and a potential turning point in the escalating international crisis over his nuclear program. The Great Leader greeted his visitor with a booming welcome, a hearty handshake, and big smile, which was returned by Carter's characteristic toothy grin.
When the talks began, Carter explained that he had come as a private citizen rather than as a representative of the U.S. government, but that he had come with the knowledge and support of his government. The presence of Dick Christenson, the Korean-speaking deputy director of the State Department's Korea desk, was testimony to the semiofficial nature of the mission. Carter emphasized that the differences in the two governmental systems should not be an obstacle to friendship between the two nations, a point he repeated several times. If the current nuclear issues could be resolved, he said, then high-level negotiations on normalizing relations could move ahead.
Kim, responding on the high plane of generality and mutual recognition that is particularly important in Asia, said that the essential problem between the two nations was lack of trust and that therefore "creating trust is the main task." Kim expressed frustration that, although he had often announced that the DPRK couldn't make and didn't need nuclear weapons, he was not believed. The DPRK's requirement was for nuclear energy, he declared: if the United States helped to supply light-water reactors, North Korea would dismantle its gas-graphite reactors and return to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. As part of a solution to the nuclear issue, Kim also requested U.S. guarantees against nuclear attacks on the DPRK. He expressed irritation that South Korea might interfere with whatever solution could be worked out, saying that whenever the prospect of making progress between Pyongyang and Washington came close, Seoul found a way to block it.
Carter, following talking points that he had cleared with Gallucci by telephone before traveling to Pyongyang, asked two things of Kim: that he temporarily freeze his nuclear program until the completion of the planned third round of U.S.-DPRK nuclear negotiations, and that the two remaining IAEA inspectors still at Yongbyon, who were scheduled to be expelled from the country on the next flight to Beijing, be permitted to remain. Even though the expulsions might seem a matter of course since North Korea had announced its withdrawal from the IAEA, they were certain to be taken as a sign that Pyongyang was going full speed ahead with a nuclear weapons program. Carter's request that Kim permit the