The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [202]
• North Korea would implement the 1991 North-South joint declaration on the demilitarization of the Korean peninsula and reengage in North-South dialogue.
North Korea greeted the accord as a triumph, which was neither surprising nor unjustified in view of the vastly unequal weight of the two countries. DPRK negotiator Kang Sok Ju called the agreement "a very important milestone document of historical significance" and was greeted with ceremonial honor at Pyongyang airport when he returned from Geneva. He and his team were honored at a banquet given in the name of (but not in the presence of) Kim Jong 11. The Workers Party newspaper, Nodong Sinmun, hailed the agreement as "the biggest diplomatic victory" and boasted, "We held the talks independently with the United States on an independent footing, not relying on someone else's sympathy or advice."
In Seoul, public opinion and the views of influential elite groups were extremely negative, even though the ROK government officially endorsed the agreement and pledged to cooperate to make it work. Arriving on one of my periodic visits a month after the signing of the accord, I was startled to run into so many objections expressed in such passionate terms, even by normally pro-American and pragmatic Koreans.
The objections ran the gamut from the failure to consult Seoul adequately to the belief that the U.S. negotiators could have obtained a better deal through tougher bargaining. Moreover, many South Koreans agreed with the sentiments expressed by President Kim Young Sam to The New York Times during the last days of the Geneva bargaining: any American deal would help shore up a Pyongyang regime on the verge of collapsing, thus postponing reunification.
However, the most important objection to the Agreed Framework was less specific but much more serious: South Koreans were in anguish that the United States, their great ally and closest friend, would establish any relationship with North Korea, about which nearly everyone had complex feelings and which many regarded as a bitter enemy. All the more infuriating was the fact that the U.S.- DPRK deal had been consummated without the direct involvement of the ROK. Suddenly Washington was dealing with "the evil twin," as one Seoulite put it to me, and doing so behind South Korea's back. The consequences of this shift in relationships with North and South, which were little understood in Washington, made the ROK government and its people immensely more difficult to deal with.
The agreement was greeted coolly by the American public, which had not been prepared for such a broad accord with a pariah nation. The New York Times headline was "Clinton Approves a Plan to Give Aid to North Korea." The Washington Post announced, "North Korea Pact Contains U.S. Concessions; Agreement Would Allow Presence of Key Plutonium-Making Facilities for Years."
Seventeen days after the Agreed Framework was signed, its problems in Congress became more serious when Republicans in the 1994 elections unexpectedly won control of both houses for the first time in decades. Foreign policy had been only a minor issue in the political campaigns, but the new Republican Congress was much more conservative and more skeptical of any dealings with North Korea than the outgoing Democratic Congress had been.
THE KIM JONG IL REGIME
On December 17, less than two months after the signing of the Agreed Framework, the new relationship between Washington and Pyongyang was tested in a way nobody had expected. That morning two U.S. Army warrant officers in an unarmed helicopter lost their way in snow-covered terrain and flew across the DMZ five miles into North Korean airspace before being shot down. Chief Warrant Officer David Hileman was killed, but the copilot, Chief Warrant Officer