The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [194]
In a globe-girdling telephone conference call that lasted most of the night, with various figures joining or leaving as their schedules and state of exhaustion dictated, it was decided to send condolences to "the North Korean people," in hopes of keeping the promising Geneva negotiations on track. Daniel Poneman, a National Security Council staff member, drafted the presidential statement that was promptly made public by the traveling White House:
On behalf of the people of the United States, I extend sincere condolences to the people of North Korea on the death of President Kim Il Sung. We appreciate his leadership in resuming the talks between our governments. We hope they will continue as appropriate.
There was no consultation about the condolence statement with South Korea, a fact that prompted anger in some circles in Seoul. If there had been full consultation, according to a U.S. official involved in the decision, the statement might never have been issued.
Clinton's condolences were praised in Pyongyang but sharply condemned by Senate Republican leader Bob Dole, the president's eventual rival in the 1996 election. Dole called the statement "insensitive to the generation of Americans who suffered as a result of the Korean War" and heedless that "Kim Il Sung was a brutal dictator of a government that is neither a friend nor an ally of the United States-a government whose policies and actions have threatened and continue to threaten U.S. security and interests." Clinton responded that his statement was appropriate in view of the ongoing negotiations, and that "the veterans of the Korean War and their survivors, as much as any group of Americans, would very much want us to resolve this nuclear issue with North Korea and go forward."
In Seoul, Kim Young Sam placed the ROK armed forces on maximum alert at 12:39 P.M., within minutes after the news of the North Korean leader's death was broadcast. A National Security Council meeting was convened at the Blue House at two P.M., and an emergency cabinet meeting at five P.M. The only unusual military development in the North was that DPRK forces virtually stopped training and other visible activities, apparently to mourn the supreme leader and prepare for funeral activities.
As the days wore on, the reaction to Kim's death became the subject of political controversy in the South. When an opposition legislator, Lee Boo Young, suggested that the government express condolences in view of the grief being expressed by North Koreans, he touched off an impassioned debate in which conservatives went on the attack. After a week's delay, the government announced it would crack down on any domestic moves to pay tribute to Kim 11 Sung and denounced the expression of condolences as "reckless" and "irresponsible behavior ignoring our history." The government also blocked a plan by leftist students to send a condolence mission to the North, and police warned that any expression of condolence would be met sternly as a violation of the National Security Law.
With old wounds reopened, emotions ran high. The Korean Broadcasting System was forced to terminate its broadcast of a fiftyfive-minute Polish documentary about Kim Il Sung after twenty-five minutes due to a flood of complaints from viewers who felt it was too favorable. The same film had run on KBS two years earlier without incident. In a move that fanned the flames, the South Korean government, on the day after Kim's funeral, made public a hundred Soviet documents that had been given to Kim Young Sam during a visit to Moscow in early June, demonstrating that Kim Il Sung had been the moving figure behind