The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (52 page)

General Luck had played an integral role in earlier planning for augmentation of his forces under the existing war plan, but he received only a few hours’ notice that the Pentagon would ask Clinton to authorize its execution on June 16. He was startled by the timing, concerned that the North Koreans would interpret the reinforcements as a signal of an American decision to destroy their regime and intensely worried that no serious evacuation plan for 80,000 American dependents and other civilians in Korea had been put in place. Japan, which was the logical place for evacuees to go, had not agreed to receive them. Transportation for the evacuation had not been prepared. Most people had no idea an evacuation was imminent and no information about where to go or what to do. Moreover, an announcement of an evacuation of American civilians, and especially the loading of them onto planes and ships, was likely to panic South Koreans as well as many Americans.

Luck and Ambassador Laney met secretly at the ambassador’s residence in Seoul the morning of June 16 (the evening of June 15 in Washington). Both felt there was no choice but to proceed with evacuation planning on an urgent basis. The ambassador did not wait for formal orders. He told his daughter and his three grandchildren, who were visiting at the time, that they should leave Korea by Sunday, three days thence.

CARTER IN PYONGYANG

In the meantime, Carter, accompanied by his wife, Rosalynn, and a small party of aides and security guards, had crossed the DMZ on June 15 on his way to see Kim Il Sung. Carter found walking across the dividing line at Panmunjom, then being handed over by US and ROK military to North Korean military “a bizarre and disturbing experience, evidence of an incredible lack of communication and understanding.” He was well aware of the risk to his reputation, believing that “the chances of success were probably minimal because so much momentum had built up on both sides of the sanctions issue.”

In his initial meeting in Pyongyang, Carter found North Korean foreign minister Kim Yong Nam so uncompromising and negative that the former president awoke at 3:00
A.M
., believing it likely that North Korea
would go to war rather than yield to international sanctions. In desperation, he dispatched an aide, former ambassador Marion Creekmore, to the DMZ with a message to be sent through secure US channels in South Korea, appealing to Clinton for authorization to agree to the start of the third round of US-DPRK negotiations to head off a crisis. Carter instructed Creekmore not to send the message until receiving a go-ahead after his meeting with Kim Il Sung on the morning of June 16.

For Kim Il Sung, the meeting with the most prominent American ever to visit the DPRK was the culminating moment of his two-decade effort to make direct contact with American ruling circles and a potential turning point in the escalating international crisis over his nuclear program. The Great Leader greeted his visitor with a booming welcome, a hearty handshake, and a big smile, which was returned by Carter’s characteristic toothy grin.

When the talks began, Carter explained that he had come as a private citizen rather than as a representative of the US government, but that he had come with the knowledge and support of his government. The presence of Dick Christenson, the Korean-speaking deputy director of the State Department’s Korea Desk, was testimony to the semiofficial nature of the mission. Carter emphasized that the differences in the two governmental systems should not be an obstacle to friendship between the two nations, a point he repeated several times. If the current nuclear issues could be resolved, he said, then high-level negotiations on normalizing relations could move ahead.

Kim, responding on the high plane of generality and mutual recognition that is particularly important in Asia, said that the essential problem between the two nations was lack of trust and that therefore “creating trust is the main task.” Kim expressed frustration that, although he had often announced that the DPRK could not make and did not need nuclear weapons, he was not believed. The DPRK’s requirement was for nuclear energy, he declared: if the United States helped to supply light-water reactors, North Korea would dismantle its gas-graphite reactors and return to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. As part of a solution to the nuclear issue, Kim also requested US guarantees against nuclear attacks on the DPRK. He expressed irritation that South Korea might interfere with whatever solution could be worked out, saying that whenever the prospect of making progress between Pyongyang and Washington came close, Seoul found a way to block it.

Carter, following talking points that he had cleared with Gallucci by telephone before traveling to Pyongyang, asked two things of Kim: that he temporarily freeze his nuclear program until the completion of the planned third round of US-DPRK nuclear negotiations and that the two remaining IAEA inspectors still at Yongbyon, who were scheduled to be
expelled from the country on the next flight to Beijing, be permitted to remain. Even though the expulsions might seem a matter of course because North Korea had announced its withdrawal from the IAEA, they were certain to be taken as a sign that Pyongyang was going full speed ahead with a nuclear weapons program. Carter’s request that Kim permit the inspectors to remain produced the most revealing and, as it turned out, the most important exchange of the meeting.

Apparently completely unfamiliar with the issue, Kim turned to his deputy foreign minister and chief DPRK negotiator, Kang Sok Ju, who was among the few aides present, and asked what this request was about. Kang jumped to his feet and stood at attention, as all aides did when addressing the Great Leader. Then, as had been the case with Selig Harrison and the freeze proposal eight days earlier (about which Carter had not been informed), Kang patiently explained the issue. Kim seemed wary of giving something important away, but he asked his aide’s opinion. Kang responded that keeping the inspectors on duty would be the right thing to do. Following this discussion, all in Korean, Kim turned to Carter and announced that North Korea would reverse the previous order and leave the inspectors in place.

This exchange, one of the few times when outsiders witnessed policy actually being made in North Korea, suggested that Kim Il Sung remained capable of making on-the-spot decisions of great importance without debate or fear of contradiction. It also suggested that he was willing to solicit and take the advice of aides in whom he had confidence—in this case, Kang. Kim’s eldest son and anointed successor, Kim Jong Il, was nowhere in evidence in Carter’s meetings, although Carter had asked to see him. The younger Kim rarely appeared in meetings with foreign visitors. Nevertheless, Kim Jong Il was closely involved in the decisions and had originally given Kang the orders to fix the problem unloading the rods had created, something the first vice foreign minister was apparently trying to do when he advised keeping the inspectors in country.

When Kim Il Sung agreed to the temporary freeze and to keep the international inspectors and monitoring equipment in place, a relieved Carter told him he would recommend that the US government “support” North Korea’s acquisition of light-water reactors (although he made it clear the United States could not finance or supply them directly) and that the long-awaited third round of US-DPRK negotiations be quickly reconvened. Carter said he could speak with assurance that no American nuclear weapons were in South Korea or tactical nuclear weapons in the waters surrounding the peninsula. He and Kim agreed that the Korean peninsula should continue to be free of nuclear weapons from any source.

Believing that he had made an important breakthrough, Carter met later in the day with Kang to confirm the details. Kang warned against
proceeding with the UN sanctions (which Carter had opposed from the beginning), telling him that “all the people in this country and our military are gearing up now to respond to those sanctions. If the sanctions pass, all the work you have done here will go down the drain.” From the comments of Kang and his nominal superior, Foreign Minister Kim Yong Nam (Kang worked directly with Kim Jong Il; Kim Yong Nam had little to do with the diplomacy on the nuclear issue), Carter concluded that North Korea actually would have gone to war on a preemptive basis if sanctions had been imposed while the United States was engaging in a major military buildup in the area.

Cable News Network correspondent Mike Chinoy and a CNN film crew, who had been permitted to broadcast a rare series of reports from the North at the time of Kim Il Sung’s eighty-second birthday two months earlier, had been allowed to return to cover the Carter visit. The only American journalists on hand, they were a channel for worldwide attention. Carter decided to give CNN an interview to announce the results of his meeting with Kim and to halt the rush toward armed conflict. But first it was necessary to inform the White House.

It was the morning of June 16 in Washington, a half-day behind Korea. President Clinton, Vice President Gore, Secretary of State Christopher, Secretary of Defense Perry, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Shalikashvili, CIA director James Woolsey, UN ambassador Madeleine Albright, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, and other senior foreign policy and defense officials were gathered in the Cabinet Room in the second hour of a climactic decision-making meeting about the Korean nuclear issue. At the outset, Clinton gave final approval to proceed with the drive for the sanctions against North Korea in the UN Security Council, where the American sanctions plan had been circulating in draft form for several days. That decided, General Shalikashvili began outlining the US military buildup in and around Korea, which Perry and the Joint Chiefs had recommended in tandem with the sanctions decision. The president was informed that the dispatch of substantial additional forces, as contemplated in the meeting, would require a limited call-up to active duty of US reservists. This would necessarily alert the country to the seriousness of the looming crisis.

The JCS chairman had explained the first option of modestly augmented forces and was well into his discussion of the Pentagon’s preferred choice, the second option involving the dispatch of war planes, another aircraft-carrier battle group, and more than ten thousand additional troops. Suddenly, a White House aide entered the room with the news that Carter was on the telephone line from Pyongyang.

Gallucci, who was designated to take the call in an adjoining room, heard the enthusiastic former president say that Kim Il Sung had agreed
to freeze the nuclear program and to allow the IAEA inspectors to remain. Carter said he believed the third round of US-DPRK negotiations should be convened in light of this breakthrough, and he was asking for White House permission to say so. Then he told Gallucci, who was startled but made no comment, that he planned to describe the progress he had made in a live interview shortly with CNN. Gallucci told Carter he would report his news to a meeting on these issues taking place as they spoke, and he promised a response later.

Gallucci’s report was a bombshell in the Cabinet Room. Except for leaving the inspectors in place, the substance of Carter’s accomplishments sounded to some like nothing new. But there was anger in the room about Carter’s imminent CNN interview, which seemed likely to upstage and embarrass the administration just as it was reaching major new decisions on a problem it had been living with for more than a year. One participant viewed Carter’s actions as “near traitorous.” Another feared it was a stalling action by the North Koreans, just as the United States was about to “pull the trigger” on sanctions and the troop buildup. Whatever their private thoughts, Clinton and Gore decreed that it was essential to shape a substantive response, not indulge in mere Carter bashing.

As Clinton left for another event, the others crowded in front of a television set where they stood or sat, some on the floor, as Carter spoke by satellite from halfway around the world in Pyongyang to CNN White House correspondent Wolf Blitzer, who was on the White House lawn a few steps away, and CNN diplomatic correspondent Ralph Begleiter, who was in a Washington office a few blocks away. Carter repeated Kim Il Sung’s statements and declared them to be “a very important and very positive step toward the alleviation of this crisis.” While saying that next steps would be up to the Clinton administration, Carter publicly proclaimed his preference: “What is needed now is a very simple decision just to let the already constituted delegations from North Korea and the United States have their third meeting, which has been postponed. That’s all that’s needed now, and that’s all the North Koreans are addressing.”

Suddenly, a diplomatic-military crisis took on new political dimensions, as it was played out in public on live television in full view of Clinton’s friends and foes at home as well as officials around the world. To the consternation of the White House team, the press saw administration officials as bystanders while a private citizen, former president Carter, appeared in control of US policy.

After the officials filed back into the Cabinet Room, National Security Council aide Stanley Roth, a veteran of Asia policy making on Capitol Hill and at the Pentagon, suggested the course of action that was ultimately accepted: that the administration design its own detailed requirements for a freeze on the North Korean nuclear program and send them
back to Pyongyang through Carter. In effect, the United States would say, “We agree and accept if you accept our version of the freeze.” As was noted in the meeting, the tactic was similar to a celebrated US ploy at the height of the 1962 US-Soviet Cuban missile crisis, when the Kennedy administration had interpreted communications from Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in its own way to fashion an acceptable settlement.

Gallucci and two other aides left the room and drafted US requirements for a North Korean freeze that was to be in effect while talks continued. In their version, North Korea would have to agree specifically not to place new fuel rods in the 5-megawatt reactor and not to reprocess the irradiated fuel rods that had been removed. By the time it ended, the marathon White House meeting had stretched on for more than five hours.