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By Root 1862 0

in the South, was the most trusted and most powerful foreign-policy official in Kim Dae Jung's presidency. Lim had been deeply involved for many years in policy toward and negotiations with the North, but he had played little role in domestic politics until he joined Kim Dae Jung in 1995 as director general of Kim's Asia-Pacific Peace Foundation. Kim had been outspokenly determined for decades to pursue engagement with the North rather than confrontation; Lim, who agreed, brought expertise and enterprise in making it happen. After serving in two earlier senior posts, Lim in December 1999 became director general of the National Intelligence Service, the contemporary successor of the controversial Korean Central Intelligence agency (KCIA). In that post he had a hand on all intelligence concerning the North, and could direct and even participate in secret activities.

Before traveling to Pyongyang, Lim did not know what kind of man he would meet at the top of the North Korean hierarchy. He had collected ten books that had been written about Kim Jong Il, all from the negative side. Most of the intelligence that had been gathered and promulgated by the NIS was also harshly negative. Yet some other people and materials, including the accounts of Russian and Chinese officials who had met Kim Jong 11, were much more positive about his ability, his interests, and his inclinations.

In four hours of talks, Lim found a North Korean leader very different from most of the advance accounts. On returning to Seoul, he made a six-point report to Kim Dae Jung about his summit partner:

1. He is a strong dictator, stronger than his father, whom Lim had met on two occasions in the early 1990s.

2. He is the only person who is open-minded and pragmatic in the North Korean system.

3. He is a good listener. He took notes on the meeting with Lim, like a student with a professor.

4. When he is persuaded to another's point of view, he is decisive.

5. He is gentle and polite to older people around him, as he was to Hyundai founder Chung Ju Yung.

6. He has a sense of humor.

Lim sought to negotiate a joint statement to be issued at the end of the summit by the two leaders, but Kim Jong Il refused. He said he wished to work out such a statement in person with Kim Dae Jung during their meetings.

After a last-minute one-day postponement, the North-South summit began on the morning of June 13, when the special plane from Seoul bearing the ROK president; his wife, ministers, and aides; and an accompanying press corps, landed at Pyongyang airport. Meeting them on a red carpet laid on the tarmac was Kim Jong 11, clad in his characteristic quasi-military garb of khaki trousers and zippered khaki jacket, who greeted Kim Dae Jung with a warm twohanded handshake and words of welcome. As millions of South Koreans watched with high emotion via a television hookup, their president was accorded full honors, including a military band, an honor guard of North Korean soldiers with rifles and bayonets in salute position, and hundreds of women in traditional billowing gowns waving colorful flowers. The two leaders got in the back seat of Kim Jong Il's limousine for a forty-minute ride through the streets, which were lined with an estimated 600,000 cheering people waving pink and red paper flowers. En route to a state guest house, the two leaders occasionally held hands in a gesture of friendship as they chatted.

In three days of talks, accompanied by only a few aides during serious discussions, the leaders ranged widely over the issues between the two Koreas. They discussed the possibilities of South Korean assistance and of North Korean concessions on such issues as reunions of divided families, exchanges of cultural and sporting groups, and meetings of the military and civilian government officials that had long been desired by the South.

After much bargaining, the two Kims worked out, signed, and promulgated a joint declaration:

1. The South and the North have agreed to resolve the question of reunification on their own initiative