The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [239]
The first serious naval clash between the two Koreas in the Yellow Sea since the Korean War put nerves on edge, prompted the dispatch of additional U.S. naval forces to the area, and created grave questions about relations between Seoul and Pyongyang. Yet, somehow, it did not escalate. After the shoot-out, the incursions, across a line the North had never officially recognized, did not continue. Despite fierce rhetoric, North Korea did not put its forces on alert, build up its forces near the battle zone, or counterattack with its nearby shore battery of 100-mm guns or its Silkworm antiship missiles.
Speculation was intense about why North Korea had sought to contest the sea border at that time. Some declared that the incident reflected an effort by hard-liners among the North Korean military to sabotage moves toward rapprochement with the South. Others suggested it was intended to improve Pyongyang's bargaining position in forthcoming talks with Seoul. Others saw the incident as a grave challenge to President Kim Dae Jung's engagement, or Sunshine, policy toward the North. In retrospect, high-ranking South Korean officials became convinced that the confrontation had been unintentional on the part of Pyongyang, and that it arose from a much more mundane cause: the fishing fleet's quota for crabs, which are sold by the North for scarce hard currency, had been raised to double that of the previous year, a new quota almost impossible to meet without tapping the southern waters.
The impact of the sea clash was substantial in all directions. Domestically, it appeared to validate the lesser-noticed "hard" side of Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine declaration, as expressed in his 1998 inaugural address: "We will never tolerate armed provocations of any kind." The military action improved his standing, at least temporarily, with those in South Korea who felt his policies toward the north were too accommodating. In an interview months later, Kim told me that the naval clash had been "a decisive success" that taught North Korea a great lesson, while improving the morale of South Korean armed forces. The embarrassed North, although it avoided any military response, reacted politically. Two weeks after the battle, longdelayed meetings of North and South Korean vice ministerial officials in Beijing broke down in arguments over the sea battle, and without a widely anticipated agreement on meetings of divided families in return for ROK economic assistance. Senior South Korean officials who subsequently dealt extensively with the North believe the clash in the Yellow Sea may have delayed Pyongyang's movement toward accommodation with the South by six months or more. If so, the delay proved to be a costly one in the developments on the divided peninsula.
In the summer and fall of 1999, North Korea was reaching out to a variety of key countries. In mid-May, Kim Jong Il summoned the Chinese ambassador, Wan Yongxiang, for the first meeting with a Chinese ambassador since his father's death. Kim applauded China's reform and open door policies and asked that China receive a mission to reestablish the high-level relations that had been dormant for five years; a few weeks later, he dispatched the mission headed by Kim Yong Nam, the former foreign minister who was nominally the head of state for protocol purposes. In November, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov was received in Pyongyang to make preparations for a new bilateral treaty on trade and cooperation, replacing the old Soviet military alliance. In early December the North welcomed a Japanese parliamentary group headed by former prime minister Tomiichi Murayama and including Hiromu Nonaka of the Liberal Democratic Party, which paved the way for resumption of Japan-North Korean normalization talks. Japan then announced the