The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [241]
On March 2, Kim left Seoul for state visits to Italy, France, and Germany. On March 9 at the Free University in Berlin, he called for a government-to-government dialogue with the North without delay and announced extensive new proposals for ROK assistance. These included a government role in expanding the North's "social infrastructure, including highways, harbors, railroads and electric and communications facilities." He proposed business-related treaties on investment guarantees and prevention of double taxation. To deal with the underlying causes of the North's famine he proposed "comprehensive reforms in the delivery of quality fertilizers, agricultural equipment, irrigation systems and other elements of a structural nature," with the assistance of the South. U.S. officials, who were in the midst of negotiating with North Korean diplomats in New York, were taken aback by his ambitious offers, which they heard about only hours before the speech in Berlin. Secretary of State Albright protested the lack of advance notice to the ROK foreign minister, Lee Joung Binn, who apologetically said Kim had been working on the details of his speech right up until the time it was given.
Kim did not have long to wait for an answer from Pyongyang. On March 14, shortly after he returned from his trip, he received a message through the truce village of Panmunjom proposing a secret meeting in Shanghai to discuss the possibility of a summit. Kim called in Culture and Tourism Minister Park Jie Won and assigned him to be his negotiator. On March 17, Park flew to Shanghai after telling reporters and staff members that he was taking a leave of absence to be hospitalized for a checkup. The same day he began four rounds of talks with Song Ho Gyong, a veteran North Korean diplomat who was vice chairman of the DPRK's Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, an influential Workers Party unit in charge of policy toward the South. According to a high-ranking ROK official, the North sought to explore details of the economic assistance mentioned in the Berlin speech. There was also a question of where to meet and when to announce a meeting. No agreement was reached in the first two days of secret talks, nor in a second round the following week in Beijing. But when Park was summoned back to the Chinese capital by his negotiating partner on April 8, he and Song, "under instruction from the highest authority" of each side, signed an agreement on a North-South summit meeting to take place in Pyongyang on June 12-14. The agreement was announced on April 10, just three days before nationwide parliamentary elections in South Korea, generating skepticism and charges of "obvious politicking" from the political opposition. As it turned out, the announcement appeared to have little effect on the elections, in which the president's party failed in its bid to become the number-one party in the National Assembly.
SUMMIT IN PYONGYANG
Following the announcement that the leaders of the two Koreas would meet, midlevel officials of the two governments met at Panmunjom in five sessions of preliminary talks from April 22 to May 18 to hammer out summit details: the agenda, participants, press attendees, travel arrangements, security. The central issue and the greatest unknown, however-the intentions and even the character of the North Korean leader-remained a mystery.
On the afternoon of May 27, Lim Dong Won, the South Korean president's closest adviser on North-South affairs, flew secretly from Beijing to Pyongyang in a North Korean airliner to find out. The diminutive former general, who had been born in the North but who became an army major general, a professor, and a military and diplomatic strategist