The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [188]
Gallucci and two other aides left the room and drafted U.S. requirements for a North Korean freeze that was to be in effect while talks continued. In their version, North Korea would have to agree specifically not to place new fuel rods in the 5-megawatt reactor and not to reprocess the irradiated fuel rods that had been removed. By the time it ended, the marathon White House meeting had stretched on for more than five hours.
Lake then spoke to Carter in Pyongyang, where it was approaching dawn on June 17, and outlined the conditions, which went beyond what North Korea had offered and well beyond the legal restraints of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Carter objected vociferously to upping the ante, noting that these new conditions had not been mentioned before his trip and that he had not presented them to Kim Il Sung or others in Pyongyang. It seemed far from certain, perhaps even unlikely, that the North Koreans would accept them. In fact, however, perhaps because of their own urgent desire to end the dangerous confrontation, the North Koreans quickly accepted. To make certain of agreement on the details, Gallucci subsequently sent the conditions in writing to Kang through the North Korean Mission in New York, and Carter sent a parallel letter to Kim Il Sung. Both received back formal acceptance.
To celebrate the easing of the crisis, Kim Il Sung invited Carter and his party to a celebration on the Taedong River aboard the presidential yacht. This cruise produced another informative decisionmaking episode, this one involving Kim Il Sung's wife, Kim Song Ae, who was rarely seen with her husband in public but who participated in the boat ride due to the presence of former first lady Rosalynn Carter. As the yacht sailed by North Korean villages and farmland, the former U.S. president proposed that joint U.S.-DPRK teams discover and return the remains of U.S. servicemen killed during the Korean War as a goodwill gesture to the American people and to forestall the kind of arguments that had long held up improved U.S. relations with postwar Vietnam. Kim was noncommittal, saying this could be discussed in future negotiations, but Carter persisted. At this point, the North Korean first lady spoke up, telling her husband she thought the joint recovery teams a good idea. "Okay, it's done, it's done," responded the Great Leader.
During the boat ride, the exhausted Carter mistakenly told Kim while CNN cameras were rolling that the American drive for economic and political sanctions at the UN Security Council had been halted due to their discussions the previous day. This action had not yet been taken. Carter's comment, which was played on American television, seemed to suggest once more that the White House had lost control of its Korea policies. This gaffe turned out to be the most controversial facet of Carter's trip in the U.S. press and dominated much of the immediate commentary.
The boat ride was also the occasion for the most important breakthrough of the mission from the South Korean standpoint. Sitting across a small table in the main cabin of the yacht, Carter brought up the unresolved state of North-South relations and the possibility of a North-South summit meeting, which ROK President Kim Young Sam had asked him to propose to his North Korean counterpart. Kim Il Sung recounted for Carter his version of the various attempts at agreement between the two halves of the divided country, and he expressed his frustration that little had been accomplished. In a remarkable statement coming from him, Kim said that the fault for the lack of progress lay on both sides, and that responsibility for the mistakes had to be shared. Kim said he had noted his southern counterpart's