The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [191]
The meeting with the economic aides was among the last activities of an aged head of state who had reengaged dramatically in the affairs of his country, as if somehow he sensed that his time was short. In the month of June, Kim had taken part in seventeen events and activities, including on-the-spot inspections at two collective farms and meetings with a variety of visitors from overseas, compared to five appearances the previous month and even fewer in some earlier months.
Following the meeting with Carter, Kim's preoccupation was to prepare for the unprecedented summit meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Kim Young Sam, which had emerged from the talks with the former U.S. president and which was scheduled to begin in Pyongyang on July 25. After decades of haggling and disagreeing about such a meeting, the North and South this time had smoothly and quickly agreed on the overall plan and many of the details. Kim Il Sung personally intervened to facilitate agreement on some of the planning issues.
In Seoul, Kim Young Sam was spending days meeting with his ministers, staff, and experts on North Korea in preparation for the momentous conference. The two sides had agreed that the South Korean president would lead a hundred-member delegation to Pyongyang, accompanied by an eighty-member press corps equipped for live television broadcasts to the public back home. The actual meetings, which were to take place over two or three days, would be one-on-one discussions, with only two or three aides and a note-taker accompanying each president.
On the crucial subject of national reunification, Kim Young Sam was preparing to contest his counterpart's confederation plan calling for one country with two systems, which South Koreans found biased and unworkable, and to propose instead gradual steps to reconciliation such as the exchange of visits by separated families, exchange of correspondence, and mutual access to television and radio programs of the other side. The maximalist position of the North had often clashed in the past with the step-by-step position of the South, but the South Korean leader hoped that this time the recent danger of armed conflict on the peninsula, to which he attributed Kim 11 Sung's willingness to meet, would make agreements possible.
Kim Young Sam believed it would take more than one meeting to iron out the historic trouble between the two Korean governments; he therefore planned to propose that this be the first of a series of summits. To ease the way, he was preparing to surprise North Korea by offering to supply 500,000 tons of rice to help feed its people. This huge amount was more than double the 100,000 to 200,000 tons North Korea had been unofficially requesting through ROK businessmen.
Kim 11 Sung was also making preparations. On the afternoon of July 6, after meeting his economic ministers in the morning, he traveled to his favorite place of respite from the summertime heat, the beautiful Myohyang Mountains (literally, Mountains of Delicate Fragrance) about a hundred miles north of Pyongyang. Kim maintained a sumptuous villa there with spectacular mountain views nestled amid a pine forest and ringed by guards and high fences. This is where he took special visitors whom he was seeking to impress, such as the Japanese parliamentarian Shin Kanemaru, and he had decided it was just the place to take the South Korean president.
On July 7, en route to the mountains, Kim made one of his onthe-spot inspections of a collective farm, where he may also have planned to take the South Korean president. The temperature was nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In the mountains, he personally inspected a guest villa, which was being prepared for his South Korean visitor, checking bedrooms and bathrooms, even making certain that the refrigerators would be stocked with plenty of mineral water.
After these strenuous activities and his dinner, Kim complained of being tired. A short time later, he collapsed with