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Relations with the United States, however, appeared to be drifting if not stalled. In September 1999 North Korea proposed sending a high-level emissary to Washington to confirm officially the missile moratorium and move relations to the next level. Throughout the fall and winter, U.S. diplomats urged their Pyongyang counterparts to send the emissary soon, lest North Korean policy become embroiled in the U.S. presidential debate in 2000. From meeting to meeting North Korean diplomats were unable to set a date, suggesting to some of the Americans a policy debate in Pyongyang over what to do. Among other impediments, North Korean diplomats complained bitterly that the US. economic sanctions that President Clinton had publicly promised to lift were still in force. Neither they nor the pub lic was told that the White House had made a private commitment in writing to Republican leaders of the Senate not to lift the sanctions until the high-level visit began to discuss elimination of long-range missiles-and nobody could say when that would be.*

I was in Seoul in early January 2000 and met privately with Kim Dae Jung to discuss North-South relations for the third time since he had become president two years earlier. The previous month, Kim had begun to receive signals from a variety of channels that Pyongyang wished to move again toward official cooperation and economic assistance, but he did not tip his hand. Asked about the lack of a clear-cut response to his overtures, Kim told me, "We told North Korea when they respond to our efforts for peace, we will respond." He expressed the belief that the activities of former secretary of defense Perry and the growing solidarity of the United States, South Korea, and Japan would have a positive influence on North Korea. Citing Pyongyang's efforts to reach out, he said, "they realized if they continue like this without cooperation with the outside, they cannot maintain their system." The day before our meeting, Italy had become the first Western European country to establish diplomatic relations with North Korea. Kim said the Italians had spoken to him ahead of time and "I told them to go ahead." His objective, he said, was "to liquidate the cold war structure on the Korean peninsula within three years"-the time remaining in his presidency. He did not predict what would happen next, but I sensed he was more confident than before.

In the early months of 2000, in fact, decisions were jelling in the North. On March 5, in the first observable sign to the outside that something different was happening, Kim Jong 11 made a well-publicized visit to the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang. The nearly five-hour meeting was a farewell gesture to Ambassador Wan, who was soon to leave his post-but it had greater significance than that. Kim Jong Il normally did not receive ambassadors, and a visit by him to an embassy was astonishing in North Korean terms. It appears he used the evening to notify Chinese leaders what was coming, and to set the stage for an initially secret trip to see them in Beijing two months later.

Kim Dae Jung had decided early in the year that his top priority would be a summit meeting with Kim Jong 11, as difficult is that might be to arrange, because he believed the only way to negotiate successfully with a dictatorial government was from the top down. On January 20 he publicly proposed a summit meeting to discuss issues of mutual cooperation, peaceful coexistence, and co-prosperity. In a public statement on February 6, he said he would not be bogged down by matters of location or format. His aim and flexibility were also made known in low-level channels that had been opened to the North. Perhaps more importantly, Kim began to speak publicly in startlingly positive terms about his potential opposite number at a North-South summit. A meeting of the top leaders is essential, the South Korean president said in February in an interview with the Tokyo Broadcasting System, and it is practical as well: "I believe [Kim Jong 11] is a man of good judgment,