The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [234]
The greatest questions, though, arose from Kim's decision to rule the country from a military post and the increasing prominence of military leaders in the Assembly, which suggested to outsiders a further militarization of the country's policies. Although Kim Jong II, unlike his father, had no military background, since his father's death he had spent a great deal of time establishing and improving close relations with the armed forces, the only people in the country capable of challenging him. Large numbers of officers had been promoted at his direction. The overwhelming majority of his officially reported activities in his first five years of supreme power were visits to military units or had military-related connections. An American visitor to Pyongyang in 1997 noticed some of the extraordinary ways in which he was garnering military support. General officers, of whom there were now many, were being driven around the capital by uniformed drivers in new Mercedes and BMW limousines. Despite the famine in the countryside, a special floor of the Koryo Hotel, the capital's best, had been set aside for the lavish wining and dining of senior military officers. Outside the capital, Russia-style dachas, or recreational residences, were springing up for the use of military leaders. As it turned out, Kim Jong Il's new post and his policies appear to have cemented his grip on the military, setting the stage for greater diplomatic maneuvers.
For South Korea and most of the West, the first crack in the depiction of Kim Jong Il as a withdrawn, eccentric, and threatening ogre came in October 1998, a month after the Supreme Peoples Assembly meeting, when he met in Pyongyang with Chung Ju Yung, the eighty-two-year-old founder and honorary chairman of the South's giant Hyundai group. In his first meeting with an outsider since his formal elevation as head of government, Kim was described by his guest as polite, courteous, and deferential to an older man. Photographs of Kim welcoming South Korea's most illustrious industrialist, and of the two holding hands for the camera, were splashed on the front pages of Seoul's newspapers. Of more lasting significance were business deals that were sealed or seriously discussed during the Hyundai chairman's visit.
Chung Ju Yung, born in 1915, the son of a poor rice farmer in a village just north of the current DMZ, had long been determined to do what he could to improve the lives of the people of his original homeland. In January 1989 he had been the first prominent South Korean industrialist to be welcomed with honors in Pyongyang. In the early 1990s his attempts to return were blocked for political reasons by the government of President Kim Young Sam. By 1998, Kim Dae Jung's desire to engage the North and his policy of separating business from politics created an opening for a series of imaginative initiatives by Chung. In June he undertook high profile "cattle diplomacy" by transporting in big Hyundai trucks 500 head of cattle from his farm through the DMZ as a gift to North Korea, and by bringing in 501 more in October, plus 20 Hyundai automobiles, including several luxury models suitable for Kim Jong Il. In an unusual gesture, Hyundai also presented the North Korean leader with a solid gold replica of a crane, reminiscent of those that annually transit the DMZ, and a solid-gold replica of a cow Each model was worth more than $3,000.
During the October trip North Korea granted Hyundai the right to bring tourists from South Korea to the famed Diamond Mountain (Mount Kumgang), just north of the DMZ, for payments totaling $942 million over six years. The tours in Hyundai-chartered ships began the following month, when the South Korean firm also began paying $25 million a month into a North Korean account at the Bank of China in Macao. The $150 million in unrestricted money in the first six months (to be reduced by agreement