The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [244]
In the aftermath of the June summit, there was worldwide speculation about why Kim Jong II suddenly emerged from the shadows and appeared to be opening his previously closed society. Was the change real or cosmetic? Had he changed strategy or only tactics? What were his main objectives?
Kim Dae Jung, in a dinner for Korea experts and friends in New York three months later, said he believed the most important reason for the opening was North Korea's desperate economic travail, which made assistance from the outside essential to its survival. "Without improved relations with South Korea, others won't help them," he said. Other reasons he cited were the failure of North Korea to sideline the ROK while responding to the United States; global pressure for detente from China, Russia, and other nations; and Pyongyang's growing trust that the South's policy was actually aimed at assisting the North rather than undermining it. Scholars also noted that a summit with the South had long been under consideration in Pyongyang and that Kim Il Sung had been preparing for a full-scale summit meeting with Kim Young Sam on the very day he died.
After the June summit, South Korea and the world were treated to a rapid, almost dizzying series of developments on the divided peninsula. Before the end of year, the two Koreas held four rounds of formal ministerial talks to authorize a wide range of cooperative activities, and aides agreed to four North-South pacts to encourage trade and investment. Kim Jong Il invited forty-six top executives of the South Korean media to Pyongyang and opened himself to a wide range of questions. Two sets of emotional meetings temporarily reuniting 100 families on each side were held, and more were sched uled, along with the first exchanges of mail between separated families. The DPRK defense minister came south to meet his opposite number, authorizing lower-level military working groups from the two opposing armies. The two sides agreed on plans to repair and reconnect the severed North-South railroad that ran through the peninsula until the outbreak of the Korean War, and to build a highway alongside the tracks to facilitate commerce and other exchanges through the heavily fortified DMZ. Harsh propaganda broadcasts against each other were toned down or stopped. In one of the most memorable moments of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the athletes of North and South Korea marched together under a single peninsular flag, in sharp contrast to their bitter disputes over the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Hyundai and North Korea agreed to begin construction of a massive industrial park and export-processing zone at Kaesong, close to the northern edge of the DMZ, initially to involve hundreds of South Korean companies employing tens of thousands, eventually hundreds of thousands, of North Korean workers. The Hyundai-sponsored tourism to Diamond Mountain continued, although the losses on the tours and the company's overall economic difficulties cast a shadow over its continuing inter-Korean activities.
Many conservatives, who are powerful in the South, were uncomfortable with sudden warming and the rush of developments. After a period of muted criticism, the opposition Grand National Party began finding fault with Kim Dae Jung's policy, largely on the grounds of its lacking reciprocity for the South's concessions. Skeptics pointed out that despite symbolic acts, there had been no reduction in DPRK military forces or their potential threat to the South. As the ROK economy and stock market began to sink anew after the Pyongyang summit, disenchantment and impatience with the Northern policy mounted, although specific steps of DPRK cooperation continued to be applauded by the majority of the public. Even the awarding of the highly prized Nobel Peace Prize to President Kim in early December for his painstaking efforts at reconciliation with the North and his lifelong struggle