The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [217]
Kim got his meeting at 5:50 A.M. on April 16, 1996, when Air Force One touched down at Cheju Island, a colorful spot favored by honeymooners, off the southern end of the Korean peninsula. Five days earlier, Kim's party had won a commanding position in the National Assembly elections, due in part to the curiously timed North Korean military incursions in the DMZ. After taking an early morning walk through a garden of bright yellow flowers, Clinton and Kim settled down to discussions in the same hotel suite where presidents Roh Tae Woo and Mikhail Gorbachev had met in April 1991.
In a prearranged declaration that had already been presented informally to North Korea, China, Japan, and Russia, Clinton and Kim agreed to propose a four-power conference of the two Koreas, the United States, and China "to initiate a process aimed at achieving a permanent peace agreement" on the Korean peninsula. In a significant difference from the stillborn initiative of the previous year, this was a joint U.S.-ROK proposal rather than an ROK proposal backed by the United States.
Announcing the proposal in a press conference before Clinton flew on to Japan, both presidents expressed hope that North Korea would accept it. Clinton cautioned against expecting an immediate and positive response: "What is important is to put the offer out there and let it stand and be patient." Clinton and Kim were heartened when Pyongyang did not immediately reject the proposal but instead raised questions about the specific objectives of such a conference and about its procedures. Chinese president Jiang Zemin, in a letter to Kim a few days after the Cheju announcement, expressed Chinese support for the four-power talks. China ultimately would become an active and interested party in the talks, giving Beijing important diplomatic as well as strategic stakes in North-South stability.
As noted earlier, the idea of three-power talks involving Washington and the two Koreas had a history going back to the late 1970s and had been the subject of active diplomacy for a time in the early 1980s. The proposal for four-power peace talks, bringing in China as well, went back even further, to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's speech to the UN General Assembly in September 1975. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, as earlier noted, advanced the idea in 1977. The Reagan administration briefly resurrected the plan in the mid-1980s but put little effort into promoting it.
In 1996 North Korea, although continuing to seek bilateral peace talks with the United States, was in no position to take a rigid stand against the four-party proposal. The country had managed to get through the winter without actual starvation as a result of scrimping, the improvisation of its people, and a modest amount of international humanitarian assistance. However, the summer months before the next grain harvest posed a serious threat. In mid-May the UN World Food Program issued a special alert on North Korea, warning that "the food supply situation has deteriorated more seriously than had been anticipated." The UN agency reported that the DPRK government had reduced rations under its public distribution program to 300 grams (10.5 ounces) of grain per person per day, about 1,000 calories. The UN minimum standard for refugees was 1,900 calories per day. In South Korea, by contrast, food was so plentiful that the National Institute of Health and Social Affairs reported after an extensive survey that one in every four adults was on a diet to avoid putting on excess weight.
Diplomatic discussions with the United States, which had revolved around the nuclear issue and political relations in the previous three years, were increasingly dominated in the spring of 1996 by North Korea's urgent need for economic help. Calling on Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Hubbard, the State Department's senior point man on Korea