The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (2024)

“Kim, Lee, and Park, account for more than 40 percent of the entire population of South Korea, according to a recent census. The surname Kim is associated with the mythical founder of the Silla dynasty. Lee (or Yi, in Korean) is the name of the dynasty that ruled Korea from 1392 to the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910. Park also has an ancient origin. Only about 250 different surnames are known to exist among South Korea's 44 million people.

“The common wisdom of American GIs on duty in the area is "there ain't no D in the DMZ.

“By A.D. 300 the Koreans had thrown off Chinese rule and developed three separate kingdoms in the north, southeast, and southwest of the peninsula. In A.D. 668 the Silla kingdom, with Chinese help, overwhelmed the other two and unified nearly all of Korea.From that early time on, for nearly thirteen hundred years until the mid-twentieth century, Korea developed as a unified country under a single administration with a distinctive language and strong traditions. It invented its own ingenious writing system”

“Korea has suffered nine hundred invasions, great and small, in its two thousand years of recorded history.”

“unified Japan began its major expansion in the sixteenth century, its leader Hideyoshi Toyotomi attacked Korea as the first phase of an invasion of the Chinese mainland. The Korean navy under Admiral Yi Sun Sin fought back with an early class of ironclad warships, known as turtle ships, which inflicted severe losses on the Japanese. Eventually the Japanese were driven out, but only after laying waste to the land, thus setting a lasting pattern of enmity.”

“In the wake of the Japanese invasion and a subsequent invasion by the Manchus, who were soon to take power in China, Korea established a rigid policy of excluding foreigners, except for the Chinese and a small Japanese enclave that had been established at the southern port of Pusan. The imperial rulers of the Hermit Kingdom, as it was often called, created a governmental and social system modeled on Chinese Confucianism,”

“In 1882, as a defensive measure against its neighbors, Korea signed a "Treaty of Amity and Commerce" with the United States”

“In 1902, Japan carved out a strong position for itself by entering into an alliance with Britain, the most important European power in the area. Japan recognized British interests in China in return for British recognition of Japanese special interests in Korea. Sensing the weakness along the rim of the Chinese mainland, Russia began mov ing forces into Korea and immediately came into conflict with Japan.”

“dividing line at the thirty-eighth parallel-the same line chosen by the United States for the division of Korea after World War II. Russia's refusal to accept this and other proposed compromises led eventually to the Russo-Japanese war of 1904. Japan's surprise victory, its first over a Western power, put the Japanese in a powerful position to dominate Korea.In 1905, in what many Koreans consider their first betrayal by the United States, Secretary of War (later President) William Howard Taft approved Japan's domination of Korea in a secret agreement with the Japanese foreign minister, in return for assurances that Tokyo would not challenge U.S. colonial domination of the Philippines. Later the same year, Japan's paramount political, military, and economic interests in Korea were codified in the Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire), in which President Theodore Roosevelt played peacemaker and dealmaker between Japan and Russia, and for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. With no opposition in sight, Japan occupied Korea in 1905 and annexed it outright as a Japanese possession in 1910. Japan then ruled as the harsh colonial master of the peninsula until its defeat in World War II.”

“The United States, Britain, and China had declared in the Cairo Declaration in 1943 that "in due course, Korea shall become free and independent," and at the 1945 Yalta Conference President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a U.S.-Soviet-Chinese trusteeship over Korea.”

“It was reported that in 1945 Secretary of State Edward Stettinius asked a subordinate in a State Department meeting to please tell him where Korea was.”

“Suddenly Washington realized that Russian occupation of Korea would have important military implications”

“two young officers were sent into an adjoining room to carve out a U.S. occupation zone in Korea, lest the Soviets occupy the entire peninsula and move quickly toward Japan. Lieutenant Colonels Dean Rusk, who was later to be secretary of state under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and Charles Bonesteel, later U.S. military commander in Korea, had little preparation for the task. Working in haste and under great pressure, and using a National Geographic map for reference, they proposed that U.S. troops occupy the area south of the thirty-eighth parallel, which was approximately halfway up the peninsula and north of the capital city of Seoul”

“might have suggested to Moscow that Washington had finally recognized this old claim. "Had we known that, we almost surely would have chosen another line of demarcation," ”

“Despite the fact that U.S. forces were far away and would not arrive on the scene for several weeks, the Soviets carefully stopped their southward advance at the parallel”

“Under Hodge's guidance, the U.S.-backed Republic of Korea was officially proclaimed on August 15, 1948. The Soviet-backed Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), in the North, was proclaimed on September 9, 1948.”

“The North obtained most of the heavy industry, electric power, and mineral resources. Each regime claimed sway over the entire peninsula; these claims persist today.”

“In none does blunder and planning oversight appear to have played so large a role. Finally, there is no division for which the U.S. government bears so heavy a share of the responsibility as it bears for the division of Korea.”

“too small to merit priority attention by more powerful nations on all but a few occasions”

“the Soviet Union chose a 33-year-old Korean guerrilla commander who had initially fought the Japanese in China but had spent the last years of World War II in Manchurian training camps commanded by the Soviet army. Kim Il Sung, as he called himself (his birth name was Kim Song Ju), had a burning ambition to reunite his country.”

“Late in 1948 the Soviet army went home, turning North Korea over to the regime it had created.”

“The invasion was contested and ultimately repulsed by the forces of the United States, South Korea, and fifteen other nations under the flag of the United Nations. The Chinese intervened massively on the other side to save North Koreans from defeat. Internationally, the bloody three-year Korean War was a historic turning point. It led the United States to shift decisively from post-World War II disarmament to rearmament to stop Soviet expansionism, tripling U.S. military outlays and doubling its troop presence in Europe to bolster the newly formed North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The war cemented the alliance between the Soviet Union and China for most of a decade and made the United States and China bitter enemies for more than twenty years.”

“However, documents from the Soviet archives recently made available to historians show clearly that in March, August, and September 1949 and January 1950, Kim implored Stalin and his diplomats repeatedly to authorize an invasion of the South, at one point telling Soviet embassy officers, "Lately I do not sleep at night, thinking about how to resolve the question of the unification of the whole country. If the matter of the liberation of the people of the southern portion of Korea and the unification of the country is drawn out, then I can lose the trust of the people of Korea.”

“but the documents establish that in early 1950 he approved the war plan due to the "changed international situation." At this writing, scholars are still unsure what led to Stalin's reversal. Was it the victory of Mao's Communist Party in China, the development of the Soviet Union's atomic bomb, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea, or Secretary of State Dean Acheson's famous statement excluding South Korea from the U.S. defense perimeter-”

“On the peninsula, however, the war was savage in its destructiveness. Although the figures are uncertain, a widely accepted estimate is that 900,000 Chinese and 520,000 North Korean soldiers were killed or wounded, as were about 400,000 UN Command troops, nearly two-thirds of them South Koreans. U.S. casualties were 36,000 dead.”

“Around 3 million people, roughly a tenth of the entire population of both sides at the time, were killed, wounded, or missing as a result of the war.”

“The antipathy that had developed between the opposing regimes was deepened into a blood feud among family members,”

“the Rhee regime in the South became increasingly dictatorial and corrupt until it was forced out of office in 1960 by a student-led revolt.”

“Major General Park Chung Hee, a Japanese-trained officer who had flirted with communism immediately after the Japanese surrender. Park's background created concern in Washington and initial hope in Pyongyang. Early on, Kim Il Sung dispatched a trusted aide to the South to make secret contact with Park. But instead of exploring a deal, Park had the emissary arrested and executed.”

“In the North, Kim II Sung systematically purged his political opponents, creating a highly centralized system that accorded him unlimited power and generated a formidable cult of personality. As the great communist divide between the Soviet Union and China emerged in the mid-1950s”

“In the most notable incident, in January 1968, a thirty-oneman North Korean commando team attempted to assassinate the South Korean president. The team penetrated to within a thousand yards of the Blue House,”

“From Kim II Sung's vantage point China's sudden shift toward amicable relations with the United States represented a betrayal”

“This was an abrupt reversal of the long-standing position, reiterated by North Korea's foreign minister only four months earlier, that the ouster of the ruling party was an essential condition for negotiations”

“he too found it shocking because it raised new doubts about the constancy and reliability of his great power sponsor. To Park, the rapprochement implied U.S. acceptance of a hostile, powerful, and revolutionary country in South Korea's immediate neighborhood, tied by a military alliance to North Korea. Since the announcement of the "Nixon Doctrine" in mid-1969-that Asians should provide the manpower for their own wars-the United States had appeared to be moving steadily toward disengagement.”

“The United States has long been trying to reach a rapprochement with Red China, but China has not changed," Park complained, suggesting that Washington had made all the concessions. In a subsequent off-the-record dinner with Blue House correspondents, Park declared that 90 percent of the Nixon visit to China was a domestic maneuver intended to aid the president's reelection.”

“The South Korean president was particularly worried that deals might be made about the Koreas during Nixon's forthcoming trip to Beijing, and he wanted to discuss it with Nixon at a meeting. But in Washington Park's concern was such a low-priority question that it took three months for the State Department and Nixon's National Security Council staff to frame and present a presidential reply. When it finally came, it was a ritual declaration from Nixon that during his Beijing trip he would not seek accommodation with China at the expense of South Korea's national interest.”

“years later, Park wrote that "this series of developments contained an unprecedented peril to our people's survival....”

“There it was arranged for the secret contacts to go to a higher level: the chief of South Korea's intelligence agency would come to Pyongyang for talks, and a senior North Korean would reciprocate by making a trip to the South. In late April, a direct telephone line linking the offices of the KCIA and the Workers Party was secretly installed between Seoul and Pyongyang.”

“His parents were both Christians. His mother was the devout, churchgoing daughter of a Presbyterian elder, and his father had attended a missionary school.”

“he was successful enough that the Japanese put a price on his head.”

“Some accounts suggest that Joseph Stalin himself made the final choice of Kim from several candidates. Stalin is reported to have said, "Korea is a young country, and it needs a young leader.”

“He emerged from a family of hard-working ordinary people and described himself in his memoirs as "an ordinary man.”

“find in him "an absolutely normal person, with whom you could talk not only about politics but also weather”

“When he went to the Soviet Union by train in 1984, all rail traffic was stopped along his route at the demand of the North Koreans, so that his luxurious special train could travel unimpeded by any competing or oncoming trains. (This caused massive tie-ups in the Soviet rail system.)”

“East German doctors being given responsibility for Kim's head and neck, including the large but benign tumor on the back of his neck that had been visible since the early 1970s.”

“To a large extent, he owed his career as well as his country's well-being to China and Russia, yet he was always wary of their dominant power. In a tradition practiced by Koreans throughout their history, Kim went to extraordinary lengths to gain and maintain as much independence as possible.”

“In deference to the intellect, he added a pen to the traditional communist hammer-and-sickle as North Korea's official emblem, but in personal conversations he rarely referred to world history or to any work of serious literature. "He knows a lot of Confucianism and a smattering of Marx, Lenin, Hegel, and such," said a former communist diplomat who dealt with Kim extensively.”

“Great Leader is the brain that makes decisions and commands action, the Workers Party is the nerve system that mediates and maintains equilibrium between the brain and the body, and the people are the bone and muscle that implement the decisions and channel feedback”

“seemed to reflect a craving for adulation that could never be sated.”

“Starting in the 1960s, every North Korean adult wore a badge bearing Kim's likeness on his or her suit, tunic, or dress. Within his country Kim was nearly always referred to as suryong or Great Leader, a term referring to the greatest of the great that Kim reserved for Lenin, Stalin, and Mao before he began applying it to himself in the 1960s.”

“Our country is used to paying respect to elders-like China and Japan, we live by Confucian culture.”

“Citizens were arrested, and some even sent off to one of the country's extensive gulags, for inadvertently defacing or sitting on a newspaper photograph of the Great Leader or his son and chosen successor. Reports of inhuman treatment, torture, and public execution for failure to conform with Kimism were rife. According to defectors and U.S. State Department Human Rights reports, twelve prison camps were established in remote areas containing as many as 150,000 people,”

“Kim was a stickler for detail. While in Pyongyang, "he would call me every day," said this South Korean, always asking, "How are you feeling? Is everything all right?”

“whatever I am doing, I cannot rest easy unless I have the whole situation at my fingertips." As the restless and energetic leader of a small country, Kim telephoned the chief of the general staff every night for a report on the military situation, and the foreign minister for a report on diplomatic developments.”

“he commended Lee as "a very bold person" and "a hero" for making the journey to the opposite camp.”

“Park is a person who detests foreign interference most.”

“In order to avoid officially granting recognition to each other, however, the statement was not signed by the two governments but simply by KCIA director Lee Hu Rak and Director of Organization and Guidance Kim Young Joo, Kim Il Sung's brother, "upholding the desires of their respective superiors.”

“Kim Il Sung saw the North-South dialogue as a way to wean the South Korean regime away from the United States and Japan and to bring about the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Shortly after the July 4, 1972, joint statement, Kim's ambassador in Berlin, Lee Chang Su, in a confidential presentation to the East German Politburo, said that "the [communist] party and government of North Korea will concentrate on forcing South Korean leaders into agreement, to free them from U.S. and Japanese influence and to allow no U.S. intervention." He revealed that a North Korean peace offensive had been authorized in meetings of the Workers Party in November 1971 and July 1972, and he said the effort had "undermined the attempts of the U.S. imperialism to retain its troops in Korea, as well as the attempts of the Japanese imperialists to invade Korea again....”

“Park had no belief or interest in unification in his lifetime, his aide said, and little interest in making compromises to bring fruits from the North-South contacts”

“Most of the world, however, greeted the surprising news of the conciliatory joint statement with soaring optimism about the chances for a rapprochement”

“When she returned to a large, loud, and unruly welcome in the South, to her own surprise she began weeping uncontrollably with relief and joy to be among familiar human beings with human reactions. "It was my most genuine experience of patriotism," Chung recalled.”

“the KCIA, which had devised the program of the North Koreans, had asked for and received the services of some of the country's most beautiful young women from the national airline, modeling firms, and television companies and provided each one with a substantial sum of money to buy whatever dress she thought showed off her features best. In return, she was to show up as a hostess for the North Korean visitors”

“An austere man wearing a Mao jacket and a Lenin cap to complement his Kim Il Sung button, Yuri Ki Bok, who was the chief political adviser of the North Korean delegation, observed sourly that the palace buildings were "outright testimony that the ruling class in the past exploited the people." The following night, the visitors were guests at a risque display of bikini-clad, high-kicking South Korean dancers at Walker Hill, which had been built as a restand-recreation center for American troops. Some of the North Koreans, whose society was officially prudish, covered their faces or averted their eyes. They complained that the show was "the result of American imperialism”

“Businesses in the city's tall buildings were asked to leave their lights on all night to present a more impressive view and, not incidentally, to prove that Seoul had electricity to spare.”

“Until the South built a new power plant, the North had caused privation and consternation by shutting off the electricity whenever it chose.”

“The North Korean political adviser, Yun Ki Bok, attacked the United States, referred to "the nation's glorious capital, Pyongyang," and praised "the Great Leader," whereupon hundreds of telephone calls of protest, some stimulated by Seoul's ubiquitous intelligence agency, flooded the switchboards of the television station and local police. Responding in part to signals from the top, the country's mood shifted abruptly, from hope to anger. When the North Koreans left the hotel after the opening ceremony, for the first time they encountered silence rather than applause. A North Korean delegate waved to a crowd outside, but this time nobody waved back.”

“As a negotiating forum, however, it was a flop.”

“As we talked, he toyed with a tiny chihuahua dog in his lap and rarely looked me in the eye.”

“When his private safe was opened after his death, aides discovered files of handwritten personal notes on individuals, meticulously arranged in Park's own indexing system.

“Park then switched sides, turning over a list of communists in the armed forces and becoming an intelligence official at army headquarters whose job it was to hunt them down.”

“Park's political opponents sought to use his early leftist activities against him, but when he was strong enough he prohibited further public mention of it. In the early 1970s, an American correspondent, Elizabeth Pond of The Christian Science Monitor, was barred from the country for writing an article discussing Park's past.”

“American-style, which he considered an inconvenient and unproductive practice. After he led the 1961 coup, it took heavy pressure from the Kennedy administration to persuade him to return the country to nominal civilian rule and to run for election as president.”

“He narrowly won that third election in 1971”

“His approach to his stewardship as ROK head of state has remained that of a general who desires that his orders be carried out without being subjected to the process of political debate.”

“The extent of American confidence in Park in the 1960s is suggested by the later disclosure of former Ambassador William J. Porter that U.S. intelligence had installed listening devices in Park's Blue House office, though he said they had been removed by the time of his arrival in 1967. Following disclosure of the bugging, Park had the Blue House swept by his own surveillance experts and installed special multilayered glass windows with static between the panes to foil electronic eavesdropping from outside, activated by a switch near his desk. "Whenever he'd call me to his office, he'd turn on the switch and lower his voice," one of Park's ministers recalled.”

“More than two-thirds of South Koreans polled by a Seoul daily in March 1995 said Park was the country's greatest president, more than five times the number that gave that honor to any other chief executive. The overwhelming reasons cited were the economic progress and development under his regime, and its relative stability.”

“I honestly felt as if I had been given a pilfered household or a bankrupt firm to manage. Around me I could find little hope.... I had to destroy, once and for all, the vicious circle of poverty and economic stagnation.”

“Economic Planning Council, which later became the Economic Planning Board, to provide central governmental direction for the economy”

“As that passage suggests, Park's model for economic development was the highly successful postwar Japanese system. In 1965, in a very unpopular personal decision that nonetheless gave a powerful boost to the Korean economy, Park normalized relations with Japan.”

“the Seoul-Tokyo normalization, which was strongly encouraged by Washington, brought an immediate Japanese assistance package of $800 million and led to many more millions in Japanese investments and valuable economic tie-ups with Japanese firms. In another far-reaching decision of the mid-1960s, Park sent two divisions of Korean troops to fight alongside American forces in South Vietnam, for which he received Washington's gratitude and Korean firms received a major share of war production and construction contracts. In 1966 revenues from the war made up 40 percent of South Korea's foreign exchange earnings, making Vietnam the country's first overseas profit center.Park took personal charge of the economy, bringing highly professional economists, many of them American-educated, into the planning agencies.”

“he frequently met with economic officials and businessmen who were developing projects with government support. ”

“Park refused to be guided by economists when he was determined to move ahead with one of his visionary projects. When American and World Bank economists said that South Korea could not successfully build, operate, or support an integrated steel mill and refused to approve financing, Park remained determined to build it. Declaring that "steel is national power," he obtained Japanese loans and personally pushed through construction of a massive mill at Pohang, on the southeast coast, which became the world's largest steel-production site and a foundation of Korea's heavy industry. Park was the driving force behind the ambitious Seoul-to-Pusan expressway, which experts had also said was impractical.”

“Up and down he would go, this time with a team of geologists to figure out what was wrong with some mountainside that had crumbled on our tunnel-makers”

“President Park monitored the progress of every single project, both public and private, and closely governed the industrialists by the stick-and-carrot method," according to Kim Chung Yum, who was a senior economic aide to Park and eventually his chief of staff. Park chose the firms that would be awarded contracts on large government-backed projects and provided or withheld credit through government banks, depending on their performance. The growth sectors of the national economy came to be dominated by a few highly organized, diversified industrial-business conglomerates known as chaebols, loosely modeled on the Japanese prewar zaibatsu or its postwar zaikai. While this facilitated Korea's dramatic economic rise in the 1970s and beyond, the intimate relations between government and business also set the mold for the corruption charges that later were to plague the retirement years of Park's successors.Although he wielded enormous economic power, Park never became a rich man and was not personally corrupt. He usually had a simple bowl of Korean noodles for lunch and ate rice mixed with barley, to save on rice. He had bricks placed in his Blue House toilet to conserve water. Setting a modest style, he wore open-collar shirts”

“Park's personal hold over the economy was embodied by his ambitious Heavy and Chemical Industries Promotion Plan, a massive program to build up six strategic industries-iron and steel, shipbuilding, chemicals, electronics, nonferrous metals, and machinery. Initiated in late 1971 and formally announced in January 1973”

“The Heavy and Chemical plan, which Park conceived and rammed through despite the misgivings of the Economic Planning Board and other economists, was the foundation of Korea's later success in automobiles, shipbuilding, and electronics, but it was also very costly and eventually was scaled back considerably.”

“the emergence of immense conglomerates, and widening inequality”

“In broad terms, according to the World Bank, South Korea's inflationadjusted GNP tripled in each decade after Park's first year in office, thereby condensing a century of growth into three decades. At the same time, the country dramatically reduced the incidence of poverty, from more than 40 percent of all households living below the poverty line in 1965 to fewer than 10 percent in 1980.”

“At six P.M. on October 16, 1972, Park's prime minister, Kim Jong Pil, notified U.S. ambassador Philip Habib of a sweeping change in the country's political direction, requesting that it be kept secret until made public twenty-five hours later. The surprise announcement by Park, a copy of which was handed to Habib, declared martial law, junked the existing constitution, disbanded the National Assembly, and prepared a plan for indirect election of the president. At the same time, to silence opposition, Park arrested most of the senior political leaders of the country.”

“Washington had played the central role in anointing Syngman Rhee as the country's first president, and in 1960, in the face of a student-led popular uprising, it had also played a major role in forcing him to leave power. In 1961, the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Command had spoken out publicly but ineffectually against General Park's military coup against the constitutionally elected postRhee government, but it had then successfully applied steady and persistent pressure to force Park to reestablish civilian government. ”

“Only three weeks earlier, Washington had done nothing when Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, in a very similar maneuver that had been closely watched by Park, declared martial law and jettisoned his country's existing political institutions. Both Marcos and Park had sprung their power grabs during the campaign period of a U.S. presidential election, when American presidents are more reluctant than usual to make controversial decisions in foreign affairs.”

“They didn't have time to be bothered" by Korea developments, he recalled.”

“Habib was instructed to tell Park that taking such a far-reaching decision without a serious exchange of views with the United States, was "incomprehensible in light of the past sacrifices and present support which we have given to the Republic of Korea and specifically to the present government." Nevertheless, no action was recommended to change Park's mind. If he were asked whether the United States would recommend against imposing martial law, Habib was instructed to answer that "this is an internal matter... It is up to him to decide.”

“The references to U.S. policy in the prepared announcement were dropped, although to Washington's displeasure some references to maneuvering by "big powers" were retained”

“seeking to soften the repressive aspects of new policies would be seen as giving tacit U.S. endorsem*nt to the yushin plan as a whole. What remained, Habib concluded, was "a policy of disassociation," in which the United States would say it had not been consulted or involved in Park's actions and would stay clear of involvement in the reorganization of the Korean political system”

“The process of disengagement should be accelerated.”

“When Prime Minister Kim Jong Pil visited the U.S. capital three months later, President Nixon told him privately that "unlike other presidents, it is not my intention to interfere in the internal affairs of your country.”

“In a brutal procedure known as the Korean barbecue, some opponents were strung up by their wrists and ankles and spread-eagled over a flame in KCIA torture chambers”

“For more than a year following the yushin decree, KCIA operatives came daily to major Korean newspapers and broadcast stations to tell them what news they could or could not report,”

“Kim escaped being silenced with other political leaders in October 1972, because he happened to be in Japan when martial law was imposed.”

“On August 8, 1973, Kim was lured to a luncheon meeting with two visiting Korean parliamentarians in a suite at a Tokyo hotel. As he said good-bye in the corridor, he was shoved into a nearby room by three men in dark suits, then punched, kicked, and anesthetized. He was taken by car down an expressway to a port and placed aboard a motorboat and then a large ship, where he was tightly trussed and weights placed on his hands and legs.”

“U.S. intelligence officers quickly identified the KCIA as the culprit, whereupon the ambassador, in his characteristically blunt and salty language, laid down the law to the high command of Park's government, declaring that there would be grave consequences for relations with the United States if Kim did not turn up alive.”

“Habib's quick action probably saved Kim's life.”

“Five days after his abduction, he was released, battered and dazed, a few blocks from his residence in Seoul. After thirty-six hours during which Kim was permitted to speak publicly of his ordeal, he was placed under house arrest. Park's government made no effort to identify or penalize his abductors.”

“ Moreover, the exposure of North Korean delegates to the more prosperous South was making Pyongyang's leaders uncomfortable.”

“North Korea had diplomatic relations with only thirty-five countries, nearly all of them socialist regimes, while South Korea had diplomatic relations with eighty-one countries. Immediately following the start of North-South dialogue, Pyongyang gained recognition from five Western European nations and many more neutral countries. Within four years, North Korea was recognized by ninety-three countries, on a par with South Korea's relations with ninety-six. The North also gained entry for the first time to the UN's World Health Organization and, as a result, sent its first permanent UN observer missions”

“In April 1973, North Korea's legislature, the Supreme People's Assembly, sent a telegram to the U.S. Congress referring to the developments on the divided peninsula and asking the American lawmakers for help in removing U.S. troops from South Korea, as they had just been removed from South Vietnam. Congress did not reply,”

“Under the new charter, the nation was to be guided by the juche idea "as a creative application of Marxism-Leninism.”

“Without a strong push from the outside powers, who had conflicting interests and who were paying little attention to the Korean peninsula, the two rival states were incapable of sustaining their dialogue.”

“On his way out Park noticed his wife's shoes and handbag under the chair where she had been sitting, and he picked them up as he left. Explaining Park's impassive behavior at a moment of supreme stress, his longtime aide Kim Seong Jin described the president as "a man of responsibility, who has got to finish what he set out.”

“While Saigon was falling, Kim Il Sung made a bid to renew his open warfare against the South, but China refused to go along, and the Soviet Union avoided even inviting Kim to visit Moscow to make his case. By the mid-1970s, both the giants of international communism had much too great a stake in their own relations with the United States to risk another international war on the Korean peninsula.”

“Washington's veto of Seoul's nuclear ambitions proved that the United States could still wield impressive clout”

“Pyongyang's subsequent suspension of the North-South dialogue robbed the government of its strategic justification for the internal crackdown.”

“Undergirded by the Confucian emphasis on scholarship, students had spearheaded nationalistic movements against Japanese colonial rule. They saw themselves, and were often seen by others, as guardians of state virtue and purity”

“Massive student protests in 1960 against Syngman Rhee's increasingly authoritarian government were halted by police gunfire that killed 130 students and wounded another thousand in Seoul alone.”

“Christianity, too, was strongly associated with Korea's resistance to Japan's colonial rule. As advocates and symbols of Westernoriented modernization, Christians have had high prestige in Korean society. From an estimated 300,000 in North and South Korea in 1945, the number of Christians had grown rapidly by 1974 to an estimated 4.3 million in South Korea (3.5 million Protestants and 800,000 Roman Catholics). Except for the largely Catholic Philippines, South Korea is the most Christianized country in Asia.”

“criticism of Park's human rights policies and the activities of the KCIA in intimidating Korean Americans led to Capitol Hill hearings and congressionally mandated cuts in U.S. military aid to South Korea.”

“The payoffs to members of Congress he arranged would later blow up into an influence-peddling scandal that, following the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon, was given the name Koreagate.”

“When Nixon aide John Niedecker came to Seoul in May 1974 as the official U.S. representative to a Korean presidential prayer breakfast, he was handed a sealed envelope just prior to his departure by President Park's powerful chief of presidential security, Park Jong Kyu. To Niedecker's surprise and discomfort, the envelope contained $10,000 in hundred-dollar bills. He quickly turned the money over to the U.S. Embassy, which returned it to the security chief in short order with a stern rebuke”

“When Park moved from room to room in his presidential mansion, the corridors were cleared of all but essential people because of what a senior U.S. Embassy official called his "morbid fear of assassination" by North Koreans. When Park's bulletproof limousine rolled down the street, traffic was stopped, and all windows along the route were ordered shut on pain of arrest.”

“The man who tried to change Korean history with a .38 caliber pistol was a 22-year-old Korean resident of Osaka, Japan, who confessed to being instructed and assisted by an official of a North Korea-oriented residents association in Japan. The identity of the would-be assassin and the fact that his attack had been launched from Japan led to a serious crisis between the two U.S. allies in Northeast Asia”

“He checked in to Korea's best hotel and on the morning of the Independence Day ceremony hired a limousine and driver from the hotel, paying him extra to perform obsequious bows at the entrance to the National Theater. ”

“The assassin had planned to shoot Park in the lobby of the theater, but failed to get an unobstructed view.”

“But as Mun sought to move into position, his finger accidentally squeezed the trigger of his pistol, and the gun went off, grazing his left thigh. At that point, the unplanned shot having alerted security guards, the gunman made a run for it down the aisle”

“Under law and practice in Japan, he and others like him had little hope of ever becoming Japanese citizens and were relegated to secondary jobs and status.”

“the Japanese Foreign Ministry issued a statement refusing to accept any Japanese responsibility for the assassination attempt.”

“shows how much they despise and look down on Koreans.... If [Chinese leader] Mao's wife had been killed by a Chinese raised in Japan, the Japanese prime minister would crawl on his hands and knees from Tsingtao to Beijing to apologize for Japan's responsibility,”

“Park personally summoned the Japanese ambassador, Torao Ushiroku, and threatened dire consequences if Japan did not cooperate. To emphasize his anger, Park refused to speak to the ambassador in Japanese-though, having been a lieutenant in the Japanese army, he knew the language perfectly-insisting that his foreign minister interpret his words instead.”

“As added pressure, Park instigated and orchestrated daily anti-Japanese demonstrations in the capital, during one of which protesters chopped off their fingers in ritual sacrifice against Japan and marched on to storm the Japanese Embassy and smear its walls with blood. Most importantly, Park made serious preparations to break off diplomatic relations with Japan and nationalize all Japanese assets in Korea if satisfaction was not forthcoming.”

“Asia experts in Washington were aghast at the dangerous breach between the two U.S. allies, the orders to American diplomats were to stay out of the dispute.Disregarding the instructions, Deputy Chief of Mission Richard Ericson, in charge of the embassy in Seoul after the departure of Philip Habib to be assistant secretary of state, placed his career on the line and worked out a face-saving accommodation. In secret meetings with Japanese Embassy officials and South Korean prime minister Kim Jong Pil, Ericson arranged a carefully phrased Japanese letter of regret,”

“Yook Young Soo (Korean women keep their maiden names after marriage) had been Park's second wife, or third if one counts a common-law liaison in the late 1940s. She had come from a prominent family and was graceful, physically attractive, and articulate-all the things he was not. She had been a check and balance for her husband, a sounding board and humanizing influence.”

“The dying fall holds only loneliness. In the garden the chrysanthemums bloom, beautiful, peaceful, as they did a year ago, but the autumn leaves, falling one by one, only make me sad.”

“This day a year ago was the longest of my life, the most painful and sad. My mind went blank with grief and despair. I felt as though I had lost everything in the world. All things became a burden, and I lost my courage and will.”

“discovered steam rising from high grass in the southern part of the demilitarized zone, about twothirds of a mile south of the military demarcation line”

“additional troops could be put through the tunnel at a rate of 500 to 700 men per hour. Suddenly American and South Korean forces faced a threat of surprise attack from beneath behind their forward defense lines.North Koreans are masters of tunneling, a practice they developed to a fine art when protecting themselves against American air power during the Korean War. ”

“An important break came in September 1974, when a North Korean Workers Party functionary from the city of Kaesong, just north of the DMZ, defected, bringing with him valuable knowledge and diagrams of some tunnel locations beneath the southern lines. The defector, Kim Pu Song, said that extensive tunnel digging had been ordered from the highest echelons of the party in late 1972, not long after the North-South joint statement in which the two sides agreed to work for peaceful unification and "not to undertake armed provocations against one another, whether on a large or small scale.”

“In view of the length of the DMZ-it stretches across 151 miles-and the complex geology of the Korean peninsula, an American physicist who examined the effort called it "worse than looking for a needle in a haystack; more like looking for a vacuum in space." The Pentagon tried everything-even hiring psychics to find more tunnels.”

“the intercepted tunnels served Seoul and Washington as tangible evidence of North Korea's aggressive intentions. According to Nathanial Thayer, the CIA national intelligence officer for East Asia in the mid-1970s, "Anytime anyone wanted more money for CIA, I would go up to see [House Speaker] Tip O'Neill. The argument was, if [North Koreans] are not aggressive, why are they building these tunnels?”

“A retrospective U.S. military analysis of North Korea's development identified 1972-77 as a time of "remarkable North Korean Army growth" surpassing any other period since the Korean War.”

“The militarized ruling group in the North promulgated the slogan "Arms on the one hand and hammer and sickle on the other.”

“For all these reasons former CIA director Robert Gates described North Korea as "a black hole" and "without parallel the toughest intelligence target in the world.”

“U.S. ambassador to Seoul in 1989-93, said, "North Korea is the longest-running intelligence failure in the world.”

“the best source of information about the North Korean military has been aerial photographs and electronic intercepts provided by U.S. reconnaissance satellites.”

“In mid-1973, concerned by the buildup in the North, the U.S. Army assigned to Korea one of its ablest and most flamboyant combat leaders, Lieutenant General James F. Hollingsworth, who had extensive battle experience in World War II and Vietnam. Given command of the ROK/U.S. I Corps forces charged with defense of Seoul, Hollingsworth was visited at his new command post one night by a worried President Park, who asked, "Are you going to do the same thing here you did in Vietnam?" Hollingsworth's response: "I'm here to fight and die to save your country. That's what I'm going to do.”

“I'm going to turn you into an offensive army," began moving the bulk of his artillery as far forward as possible, near the southern edge of the DMZ, where it was in position to strike well into North Korean territory. Two brigades of the U.S. Second Division were targeted to seize Kaesong,”

“On April 18, the day after the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge took over the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, and as the final battle for Saigon was getting under way, Kim Il Sung was received in Beijing with elaborate ceremony at the start of an eight--day state visit. In a famous speech at a welcoming banquet, the North Korean leader celebrated the communist victories in Indochina and forecast the collapse of the U.S.-backed regime in Seoul and the worldwide victory of Marxism-Leninism.”

“Kim told Chinese leaders it would be "no problem" to liberate South Korea, but Premier Chou Enlai and his colleagues opposed any such idea.”

“Moscow made it explicitly clear to Kim that "we only support peaceful means for solution of the [South Korean] problem." Significantly, Kim did not stop in Moscow during an extensive trip to Eastern Europe and North Africa immediately following his Beijing visit. In a sign of discord between Kim and his senior communist sponsor, the North Korean leader even flew many hundreds of miles out of his way to avoid passing through Soviet airspace.”

“The prospects and plight of South Vietnam, the U.S.-backed anticommunist half of another divided country, bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the situation in South Korea.”

“disengagement from Korea had "already begun" and "should be accelerated." However, in the wake of the debacle in Vietnam, Sneider made the case that "disengagement, whether gradual or otherwise, is now far too risky as long as the North Korean posture remains militant; it would escalate the possibility of conflict and risks a breakdown of Japanese confidence in our treaty commitment.”

“recommended alternative "durable partnership" with long-term guarantees for Korea, along the lines of the NATO and Japanese partnerships.”

“a transition from economic aid to private investment (which was already happening), and a higher priority for Korea on the U.S. negotiating agenda with China and the Soviet Union. However, the most important element he recommended was "a significant U.S. force presence with indefinite tenure ”

“had told Park during a brief visit to Seoul in November 1974 that "we have no intention of withdrawing U.S. personnel from Korea." ”

“Democrat Jimmy Carter, then considered a longshot contender for his party's presidential nomination, had already begun advocating the complete withdrawal of American ground troops from Korea.With the election looming ahead, no new American relationship along the lines of Sneider's recommendation was instituted. ”

“The government doubled defense expenditures in the 1976 budget and continued to increase them sharply each of the next three years of Park's rule. In 1979 they doubled again, bringing them to four times the expenditure level of 1975.”

“Although military spending on both sides was rising, the South's by the end of the decade was more than double that of the North.”

“Korea began a quiet drive to recruit ethnic Korean nuclear, chemical, and engineering specialists from the United States and Canada.”

“India's nuclear test in 1974, the first by a developing nonaligned country, jolted the world awake to the dangers of the spread of nuclear weapons. Suddenly nuclear proliferation became a high-priority concern in Washington. U.S. intelligence officials began giving renewed scrutiny to import data on sensitive materials, and "when they got to Korea, everything snapped into place," an American analyst recalled years later. Based on these telltale hints, according to Paul Cleveland, who was political counselor of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, "people were sent to work, and in a relatively short period of time developed absolute confirmation from clandestine sources" that South Korea was secretly embarked on a program to build the bomb.”

“American policy as set forth in the secret instructions was "to discourage ROK effort in this area and to inhibit to the fullest possible extent any ROK development”

“If the U.S. nuclear umbrella were to be removed, we have to start developing our nuclear capability to save ourselves." He said much the same thing in an interview with me several weeks later.”

“Schlesinger did not refer to the U.S. intelligence findings, and Park did not admit to a secret weapons program. The U.S. defense secretary got the feeling, though, that "he knew that I knew.”

“bluntly told his ROK counterpart in May 1976 that the United States "will review the entire spectrum of its relations with the ROK,”

“warning that "if you cut more branches, there will be a big problem." The senior American officer, Captain Arthur Bonifas, a West Point graduate who was within three days of ending his one-year tour in Korea, ignored the protest”

“Bonifas turned away from the North Korean officers, and Pak removed his watch, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and put it in his pocket. The other KPA officer rolled up his sleeves. Pak then shouted, "Chookyo!" (Kill!), and smashed Bonifas from behind with a karate chop, knocking him to the ground. This signaled a general KPA attack, first with fists and feet and then with clubs and iron pipes, which had been stored in the truck, and axes seized from the work party. Bonifas was beaten to death by five or six North Koreans wielding clubs and with the blunt edge of an ax. Lieutenant Mark Barrett, the other American officer present, tried to come to the aid of an enlisted man and was also knocked down and beaten to death.”

“President Ford was at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, where he was competing for his party's presidential nomination against Ronald Reagan, who accused him of being too conciliatory to communists. ”

“We are virtually certain that this incident was a deliberate provocation. We believe it was intended to support North Korea's diplomatic offensive against the US and South Korea ... and also to arouse US public opinion about the American troop presence in Korea during the presidential election campaign.”

“Kissinger, who had spoken with Ford by telephone, was in a brutal mood. "The important thing is that they beat two Americans to death and must pay the price," the secretary of state announced. One participant in the meeting came out of it quoting Kissinger as saying, "North Korean blood must be spilled.”

“Kissinger observed that "it will be useful for us to generate enough activity so that the North Koreans begin to wonder what those crazy American bastards are doing or are capable of doing in this election year.”

“Kissinger wanted to do much more. After some discussion the group set in motion-and Ford subsequently ordered-(1) the raising of the American (and South Korean) alert status to greater readiness for war; (2) deployment of a squadron of F-4 fighters from Okinawa and F-111 fighter-bombers from Idaho to Korea; (3) preparations for "exercise" flights of B-52 heavy bombers from Guam to make practice bombing runs close to North Korea; and (4) preparations for redeploying the aircraft carrier USS Midway from Japan to the Korean straits.”

“Hyland suggested an air strike in the eastern end of the DMZ, "where it would be unexpected and where it would not necessarily touch off something we couldn't handle." Kissinger seemed interested.”

“In the end, Ford decided against any military reprisals because of their potential for escalation into a general war on the Korean peninsula. He explained later, "In the case of Korea to gamble with an overkill might broaden very quickly into a full military conflict, but responding with an appropriate amount of force would be effective in demonstrating U.S. resolve.”

“North Korean radio broke into regular programming to announce that the entire army and reserve force was being placed into "full combat readiness.”

“Foreign Minister Ho Dam, speaking at a summit meeting of the nonaligned movement in Sri Lanka, depicted the ax killings as "intentional provocative acts against our side in the joint guard area of Panmunjom" intended to "directly set fire on the fuse of war.”

“In a second meeting to go over Stilwell's plans, Park expressed a firm belief that the military response should be limited to removal of the poplar tree, and that "escalation should only evolve if the North escalates." Otherwise, he added, "the matter drops.”

“This little band of troops, with its narrowly limited mission, was backed up by a mighty array of forces appropriate to the initiation of World War III.”

“Waiting on the runway at Osan Air Base, armed and fueled, were the F-111 fighter-bombers.”

“Under a lastminute White House order, American artillery were to open fire on the North Korean guard barracks in the DMZ in case of armed resistance.”

“Within a few minutes five North Korean trucks and about 150 troops armed with automatic weapons gathered on the far end of the Bridge of No Return, looking across at the poplar. The troops watched in silence as the big tree was felled in forty-two minutes, three minutes fewer than Stilwell had estimated."We know it was very”

“We know it was very scary to the North Koreans, because we were listening," said an American official in Washington with access to North Korean front-line communications. A U.S. intelligence analyst monitoring the radio net said that "it blew their f*cking minds."The North Korean leadership quickly recognized that the killings at the DMZ were a dangerous mistake and moved to reduce the danger.”

“Major General Han Ju Kyong, requested a private meeting with the chief American representative, Rear Admiral Mark Frudden, to convey a message from Kim Il Sung. The personal message was Kim's first to the UN Command in the twenty-three-year history of the armistice. The usual fierce rhetoric was absent as Kim declared it "regretful”

“Joint Security Area should be divided at the military demarcation line, which runs through it, and that henceforth KPA guards should stay north of the line and UN guards should stay south. The UN Command had made similar proposals several times in the past, but North Korea had not agreed.”

“Bonifas was so badly beaten with the blunt end of an ax that his face was no longer recognizable. "Beneath the surface civility, this is what you are dealing with," Lee cautioned incoming U.S. officers at the DMZ.”

“In Scowcroft's view, which is hard to dispute, if North Korean belligerence had generated a war in August 1976, three months before the presidential election, "Ford would have won the election.”

“in the first days of his candidacy for president, Carter advocated the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea, which after the pullout from Vietnam were the only remaining U.S. military deployment on the mainland of Asia”

“he ordered that his idea be put into practice despite the absence of serious consideration within the government, despite the opposition of South Korea, which was alarmed, and Japan, which was gravely concerned.”

“In the end, he was forced to give it up, even though in theory he had the power to order the troops home from Korea with the stroke of his pen”

“The origin of my position is not clear to me," the former president wrote me while I was preparing this book.”

“he turned down an offer of a CIA briefing on Korea, and he rarely attended any of the National Security Council discussions of Korea in the course of his administration.”

“In the month that Saigon fell, April 1975, only 14 percent of Americans responding to a Louis Harris public opinion poll favored U.S. involvement if North Korea attacked the South, while 65 percent said they would oppose it. This made a strong impression on Carter, who still recalled the results in his letter to me two decades later.”

“The new secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, returned from the White House with instructions that the review should not consider whether to withdraw American ground troops from Korea, but only how to withdraw them.”

“Carter said bluntly that Park must understand:a) American forces will be withdrawn. Air cover will be continued.”

“Minister Park, however, recalled that Carter's main justification was that "troop withdrawal is my campaign pledge.”

“Before he became president, Carter said he would seek guarantees of South Korea's security from China and the Soviet Union, before making a decision to withdraw troops. In fact, he did not. As late as mid-June 1977, well after the withdrawal plan had been established and announced, the administration still had not provided even an authoritative briefing for the Chinese and Soviets on what the United States had in mind.”

“increasingly believed Carter's policy courted unnecessary and possibly unacceptable political and military risks.”

“a battle for the president's mind," this came to be "a battle against the president's mind.”

“a full-scale rebellion against the president.”

“Brown's guideline was to "obey direct orders, but otherwise try to turn the president around.”

“Major General John Singlaub, the chief of staff of the U.S. Command in Korea, told Washington Post correspondent John Saar that "if U.S. ground troops are withdrawn on the schedule suggested, it will lead to war." Stung by what he considered military insubordination, Carter summoned Singlaub to the White House, reprimanded him, and summarily removed him from Korea, reassigning him to a domestic post.”

“American domestic opponents of the withdrawal became more numerous and more vocal.”

“not a single senator or representative spoke up in support of the withdrawal, and many expressed their opposition. "It is clear that we face an uphill battle on this issue with Congress," Brzezinski reported in a memorandum to Carter.”

“Abuses of human rights and, especially, the arrest and conviction of eighteen prominent Christian leaders for issuing a manifesto complaining of the lack of freedom, provoked strong reactions from American churches and the public.”

“Six months later, after conviction of the Christians, 154 members of Congress wrote President Park to protest "disrespect for human rights," which they said was undermining American-South Korean relations. Carter, who sought to make human rights and morality central tenets of his foreign policy, found the Park regime's abuses particularly offensive.”

“a Korean agent, Park Tong Sun, had distributed $500,000 to $1 million a year to bribe as many as ninety members of Congress and other officials”

“only one member of Congress, Representative Richard Hanna, was convicted of being bribed. But with charges of bribery and an avalanche of investigations filling the news, nobody wanted to vote for compensatory aid for the South Korean military. "By the spring of 1978," according to Robert Rich, the State Department country director for Korea, "Congress probably could not have passed a bill stating that Korea was a peninsula in Northeast Asia.”

“everybody, even Vance, is against you" on proceeding with the troop withdrawal. Carter pleaded with his subordinate, "Zbig, you've got to protect me. This is my last foreign policy proposal from the campaign I haven't walked away from.”

“Because of `Koreagate,' congressmen fear political retribution at the polls if they vote for any sort of aid to Korea this year." Moreover, Holbrooke said, to proceed with withdrawal without the aid package would be seen "as part of a retreat from East Asia" and could torpedo the administration's plans to normalize American relations with China. Michael Armacost, then a National Security Council staff member and much later U.S. ambassador to Tokyo, said "it will have extraordinarily adverse consequences in Japan”

“Carter felt he was up against the establishment" on the touchy withdrawal issue, said Brown, "whereas we felt we were trying to save him from doing things that would cause big trouble with allies.”

“On the eve of Carter's inauguration, however, the fierce rhetoric was dropped, and the "American imperialist aggressor army" became simply "American forces" in Pyongyang's statements. The DMZ killings were blamed on the outgoing Ford administration by name, giving the incoming president a clean slate in Pyongyang.”

“And to open. direct U.S.- DPRK peace talks, which at least initially would exclude South Korea. The American reply expressed interest in discussions with the North, including discussions of "more permanent Armistice arrangements,"

“Carter lifted the ban on travel to North Korea by U.S. citizens in March and for the first time invited North Korea's UN representative to an official U.S. reception.”

“a U.S. Army helicopter was shot down by North Korean forces after it strayed over their side of the DMZ, killing three crewmen and leaving the fourth a captive. In a remarkably mild reaction, Carter described the flight as a mistake and played down the conflict”

“Like Korea, Germany had been divided as a result of World War II. East Germany, like North Korea, was struggling to survive against a more populous and more prosperous capitalistic regime across a heavily militarized dividing line. Encouraged by the Soviet Union and recognizing the similarities, the German Democratic Republic (GDR, the formal name of East Germany) had been an important source of economic aid during all of North Korea's existence.”

“The transcript of the confidential discussions with Honecker on December 10, preserved in the GDR archives, provides a rare snapshot of Kim's private views”

“third, to develop solidarity and unity with the international revolutionary forces.”

“A U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analysis of the economic competition on the peninsula, issued a month after the Kim-Honecker meeting, cited the priority on teaching ideology over useful skills in the education system as a key reason why North Korea had fallen behind in labor productivity and a well-educated South Korea had surged ahead.”

“by 1977 the balance of economic power on the peninsula was shifting decisively in favor of the South. In the first years after the Korean War, the centrally directed economy of North Korea had grown more rapidly than the more loosely controlled economy of South Korea. But in the early 1960s, the two economies took decisive turns: the North opted for an inner-directed economy, centered on building its heavy industry at home and shying away from commitments abroad; the South, guided by American-trained Korean economists and the promise of a share in the American and Japanese markets, turned toward an externally directed economy centered on exports and initially on light industry.”

“In the mid-1970s, as poverty was reduced below the thirty-eighth parallel, South Korea passed the North in per capita GNP for the first time since the division of the country.Part of North Korea's economic problem was its very heavy spending for military purposes. From the mid-1960s to the mid1970s, the North devoted an estimated 15 to 20 percent of its economy to its military. The South spent an average of 5 percent on its military, though due to Park's massive armament program the proportion briefly jumped to near 10 percent in the mid-1970s.”

“But in the worldwide economic dislocation following the 1973 Middle East war and oil embargo, North Korea found itself unable to meet the fast-rising payments on its external debts. As a result, North Korea's access to international credit was severely restricted, while South Korea's growing international trade made it a major player on the global scene.”

“Contrary to existing evidence and belief in the South, Kim claimed that North Korean communists had been behind the student revolution that overthrew the regime of Syngman Rhee in 1960,”

“ "if we get together with Park Chung Hee and hold negotiations, there is the danger of weakening the South Korean political forces who are opposing Park Chung Hee."On the first day of his visit, Honecker had committed East Germany to have "no relations" with South Korea, but Kim continued to stress the need to isolate the South, perhaps in hopes that his visitor would pass along his views to Moscow. Honecker's pledge would prove to be costly to East Germany; over the years that followed, each time the GDR was tempted to trade with the South, a sharp protest from Pyongyang reminded Honecker of his commitment, and the proposed deal was squelched.”

“The North Korean leader emphasized his troubles with Beijing during the Cultural Revolution, revealing that the Chinese had set up giant loudspeakers at the Sino-Korean border and delivered deafening attacks on "Korean revisionists" from five A.M. to midnight every day. On a later occasion, Kim told Honecker that at the height of the Sino-Soviet conflict in 1969, Chinese troops had threatened to march into Korean territory near the Soviet border, and he had ordered DPRK forces not to shoot. The Chinese withdrew, Kim reported. Since those days, relations with China had been repaired, but "we do not follow China blindly," Kim emphasized to Honecker. On the other hand, he added, "we also do not participate in the Soviet Union's polemics against China.”

“While he was concerned about the danger of a revival of Japanese militarism, Kim conceded that "the Japanese nation is not as it was before" due to the lessons learned from World War II and the U.S. atomic bomb attacks. Looking to the future, he declared that a triumph of communism on the Korean peninsula would be "beneficial for stimulating the revolution in Japan.”

“While pretending to prepare to withdraw, the American military was actually "carrying out war drills and importing weapons [to South Korea] every day.”

“While pretending to prepare to withdraw, the American military was actually "carrying out war drills and importing weapons [to South Korea] every day.”

“in 1976 a North Korean team wearing ROK-style uniforms covered sixty to seventy miles on foot south of the DMZ before being caught. By the time of the Kim-Honecker meeting, the U.S. Command in Seoul had acknowledged in a confidential report that "the North can infiltrate or exfiltrate its agents or special warfare units by land, sea or air to virtually any location within the ROK." On the other hand, American and South Korean operations inside North Korea were extremely limited. U.S. knowledge of North Korean military affairs, however, was beginning to receive much higher priority.”

“this assumption was thrown into doubt by a new set of U.S. intelligence estimates that depicted the North's military forces as much more numerous and much better armed than previously believed”

“Armstrong identified an entirely new tank division (about 270 tanks and 100 armored personnel carriers) in a valley about fifty miles north of the DMZ.”

“In response, the army initiated a much more extensive study in Washington, with a reinforced team of thirty-five analysts summoned from all over the world. They went to work reexamining all the intelligence reports on North Korean forces since the armistice, and scrutinizing every frame of overhead photography and all the signal intelligence obtained since 1969. The results, officially reported in classified briefings beginning in mid-1978, were startling.Due to a strong and steady buildup since 1971-72, North Korea was credited in the new estimate with about seven hundred maneuver battalions, nearly twice the number carried on the books a decade earlier and nearly double the size of the South Korean force structure.”

“The overall size of the North Korean ground forces, previously estimated at 485,000, was now put at 680,000, an increase of about 40 percent. For the first time, the North was estimated to have more men under arms than the South, whose population was twice as large. In North Korea, according to the new data, one out of every twenty-six persons was on active duty in the army, the highest proportion of any major nation.”

“He was being battered from every side following the forced departure of the shah from Iran and the triumph of the Iranian revolution earlier in the month, which led to a redoubling of world oil prices, intensified inflation, and other economic dislocations worldwide.”

“As the trip preparations were under way, Carter arrived at the Oval Office one morning with a novel-and startling-idea of how to ease the North-South confrontation on the Korean peninsula. Following the precedent of the Camp David ”

“William Gleysteen. A career Foreign Service expert on Asia who had grown up in China, the son of missionary parents, Gleysteen "just fell out of my chair" when informed of it.”

“However, the establishment of full U.S. diplomatic relations with China on January 1, 1979-a major accomplishment of the Carter administration-revived the possibility that Beijing might help to defuse the conflict on the divided peninsula. At the end of January, when Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping visited Washington, Carter asked him to help arrange North-South talks.”

“Deng said China would not pressure North Korea, lest it lose its influence there, but he assured Carter there was absolutely no danger of a North Korean attack.”

“The South Korean president had been asked in advance by American officials to say little or nothing about the withdrawal issue so as not to upset the delicate minuet they had devised for Carter, but Park had his own ideas. The former schoolteacher had written out in his neat hand a lengthy presentation of the strategic and peninsular reasons why withdrawing American troops would be a cataclysmic mistake in view of the North's growing strength, and he boldly delivered it ”

“As Park continued his forty-fiveminute oration, the president passed a note to Vance and Defense Secretary Brown: "If he goes on like this much longer I'm going to pull every troop out of the country.”

“It was, as Assistant Secretary of State Holbrooke later observed, "as terrible a bilateral meeting between treaty allies as you can have.”

“and second, that Park make a significant move in the human rights field, such as release of a large number of jailed dissidents. That afternoon, Vance wrote later, "our Korean policy hung in the balance" while the U.S. team sought and won agreement to Carter's demands from Park's government. Ironically in view of later events, the aide designated by Park to negotiate with the Americans on the prisoner release, which ultimately involved eighty-seven dissidents, was KCIA director Kim Jae Kyu.”

“In the limousine en route to the airport, Carter tried in a most unusual way to reach out to Park. The devout U.S. president asked his counterpart about his religious beliefs. When Park replied that he had none, Carter said, "I would like you to know about Christ.”

“While Carter did not achieve his fervent aim of eliminating all U.S. nuclear weapons from Korean soil, he did reduce their number from nearly 700 to around 250 and consolidated them all at a single site, Kunsan air base,”

“In Seoul, Carter's conflict with Park inadvertently diminished the standing of the South Korean president. The consequences were soon to come.”

“Security Chief Cha, who was advocating a harsher crackdown on students and strikers, also berated the KCIA director for contributing to the unrest by espousing policies that were too conciliatory”

“Kim pulled out his pistol and demanded of Park, "How can you have such a miserable worm as your adviser?" Then he opened fire at point-blank range, first at Cha, then at Park, severely wounding them both. When his gun jammed, he borrowed another .38 pistol from a KCIA guard and finished the two men off. ”

“South Korea was no longer an economic-aid client of the United States but had emerged as a rising middle power with a large and complex economy.”

“nearly all the Americans had been pulled back to reserve positions, leaving South Korean troops to defend most of the DMZ front line.”

“We should keep in mind that the Korea of 1979 is not the Korea of the early '60s when we were able to bully the early Park regime into constitutional reforms.”

“an aircraft-carrier task force was ordered to Korean waters as a show of force intended to impress and deter the North”

“South Korea had been afflicted by the worldwide inflation and recession, that arose from the redoubling of oil prices after the Iranian revolution early in 1979. An unprecedented wave of bankruptcies and strikes had swept the country. The large-scale release of dissidents under the unannounced agreement with Carter during his visit in early July had emboldened Park's critics, especially opposition New Democratic Party leader Kim Young Sam,”

“Kim publicly appealed to the United States in a New York Times interview to end its support of Park's "minority dictatorial regime. " In response, on Park's instructions, Kim was expelled from the Korean National Assembly, precipitating the mass resignation of opposition party deputies”

“increasingly bold in identifying President Park as the man making the wrong decisions, listening to advisors who were telling him what they thought he wanted to hear." ”

“Becasue of these draconian measures, Park was increasingly cut off from normal human contacts.”

“At his trial, he told the court he had decided to kill Park years earlier in order to end the dictatorial yushin system, and he claimed that his objective was "a revolution for the restoration of democracy." On the basis of conversations with Kim, his lawyer, Kang Sin Ok, told me that Kim had decided a few weeks earlier to kill Park at his first opportunity.”

“There had been rumors beforehand that Kim would soon be ousted from his job by the dissatisfied president, giving rise to the theory that he had acted in part from fear of dismissal or worse. Along with many other officials, Kim had clashed bitterly with chief bodyguard Cha in the pas”

“suspicion of U.S. complicity persisted in Korea”

“reviewed the previous intelligence reporting and cable messages in embassy files and found nothing that indicated any physical danger to Park.A more difficult question is whether the American clashes with Park over the withdrawal of American troops, the Koreagate scandal, and human rights abuses had weakened the Korean president”

“Choi, who had no independent political backing, was not a forceful leader. It seemed likely that the military leadership was the real power. The question was, who would be the military leaders?”

“The answer came suddenly on the night of December 12, when a group of generals headed by Chun Doo Hwan shifted troops into key positions and used force to depose the existing military authorities. Moving without warning, they arrested the martial-law commander and army chief of staff, General Chung Seung Hwa, and commanders loyal to him and occupied army headquarters, the Defense Ministry, media outlets, and key bridges and road junctions. The takeover was so swift and decisive that firefights were rare and there were few casualties.”

“Ignoring lawful procedures, Chun and his coconspirators took their dramatic actions before obtaining the approval of President Choi.”

“Later Ro left for Defense Ministry headquarters nearby, where he was seized by plotters and compelled to assist in obtaining ex post facto authorization from President Choi for the arrest of the martial-law commander.”

“ cut short the reemergence of democratic and civilian rule, to which South Korea aspired after nearly two decades of domination by Park and his uniformed friends. Over the coming months, as the military once again took power, many Koreans felt that, once more, the government had been hijacked by a new and unknown ruling group using force of arms rather than the mandate of heaven or the consent of the governed.”

“a little-known figure named Chun was now the man to see in South Korea.”

“He was fond of telling aides-and he once recounted to me-his surprise, while driving through a small town well past midnight, to see the driver in a car ahead of him stop for a traffic light, even though no police or anybody else could be seen for miles. This impressed Chun with the law-abiding spirit of the American people, a trait he proclaimed was "essential for freedom and democracy.”

“In response to Gleysteen's plea for a return to constitutional order, Chun insisted that he supported President Choi, that the events of December 12 were an accidental outgrowth of his investigation of Park's assassination, and that he harbored no personal ambition. The purge of the army, which had resulted in Chun's unchallenged control of the most important levers of power, was a glaring contradiction of this claim. While recognizing his intelligence and drive, Gleysteen came to distrust Chun and eventually consider him "almost the definition of unreliability ... unscrupulous ... ruthless ... a liar." Gleysteen's successor as U.S. ambassador, Richard L. Walker, considered Chun "one of the shrewdest, most calculating, politically smart people I've known.”

“The generals also sensed, correctly, that Washington, which was obsessed by the plight of American diplomats held hostage in Tehran since November 4, felt under great pressure not to push so hard in Seoul that they created "another Iran.”

“In mid-April he had Choi name him acting KCIA director, an act that provided him immense new authority and that convinced the U.S. Embassy that he was bent on taking over the presidency.”

“As the number of student demonstrators demanding elections grew to the tens of thousands and spilled off the campuses into the streets, both the civilian and military sides of the South Korean government raised with American officials the possibility of using military forces to back up the hard-pressed police. ”

“Chun blamed the unrest on "a small number" of student radicals”

“The exchanges left Gleysteen with the impression that the student demonstrations might be handled with moderation, although they were reaching massive proportions and becoming larger by the day.”

“Chun suddenly played the North Korean card, telling Wickham that Pyongyang was the "hidden hand" behind the students”

“American scrutiny of its intelligence turned up no sign of preparations”

“Years later a Korean military intelligence officer said he had been ordered by officials close to Chun to fabricate the supposed threat.”

“three most likely candidates for president, the "three Kims"-opposition leaders Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam and former prime minister Kim Jong Pil. All political activity was banned under a declaration of full martial law, as opposed to the partial martial law that had previously been in effect. The National Assembly was closed at bayonet point, and heavy censorship was reimposed on the Korean press. The army seized control, occupied many campuses, and closed all universities.”

“Kim Dae Jung. Because of his spectacular kidnapping from Tokyo by KCIA agents in 1973 and his subsequent persecution by the Park government, the opposition figure and former presidential candidate was better known abroad than any other living South Korean. At home he inspired passionate loyalty,”

“As the country moved toward elections, it seemed distinctly possible, perhaps likely, that Kim could win a free and fair presidential balloting in the light of his popularity, the widespread respect for what he had suffered at the hands of Park, and the strong popular reaction against military rule.”

“Gleysteen, in a cable to Washington, called the Kwangju events "a massive insurrection" that is "out of control and poses an alarming situation for the ROK military”

“The official death toll was raised to 240 in 1995 as a result of a reinvestigation, but Kwangju people claim that the real number of casualties was far higher than either official number. The outcome fueled a long-lasting and intense opposition to Chun, Roh, and the other generals and fervent anti-Americanism among citizens of the Cholla provinces and many Korean students.”

“Nonetheless, U.S. intelligence reported, "Chun feels that he can more or less do as he pleases, irrespective of U.S. warnings.”

“Roh said emphatically that he did not believe any military man was ready to become Korea's political leader. "We are not expert in economics or politics," he insisted, and should leave those issues to people who are. The crucial thing for the next leadership is a strong national consensus, Roh told me. "Our intention is very sound: defending the nation and not becoming involved in politics.”

“He spoke of the importance of a strong presidency, given the external and internal challenges before the country. As a former political reporter, I had little doubt that he was preparing to move to the Blue House.”

“General Wickham told Sam Jameson of The Los Angeles Times and Terry Anderson of the Associated Press in an interview that Chun might soon become president and that "lemming-like, the people are kind of lining up behind him in all walks of life." ”

“Declaring that "national security and internal stability surely come before political liberalization," the U.S. general declared, "I'm not sure democracy the way we understand it is ready for Korea, or the Koreans ready for it." The State Department disavowed Wickham's remarks, but the disavowal had little effect.”

“Chun's main bid for popularity was his "purification" drive, in which close to ten thousand people were dismissed from government or arrested on corruption charges. The embassy learned to its dismay, however, that the new president and his aides were handing out cash to their followers on an even bigger scale than their predecessors had.”

“I had had numerous interviews with Kim over the years and never believed the accusations”

“Chun told him, "I am under terrific pressure from the military to execute him." Chun insisted that despite the intense feelings abroad, "I can't possibly succumb to foreign pressure.”

“the former lieutenant general told me he personally opposed executing Kim and did not believe that Chun would carry it out but used the possibility as "a card" to obtain what he badly wanted-an early official visit to Reagan in the White House.By the end of the third meeting, Allen, with encouragement from the outgoing administration, had arranged a deal to save the condemned dissident in return for a Chun visit to the White House and normalization of Chun's relationship with Washington. On January 21, 1981, the very day after Reagan's inauguration, the White House announced Chun's impending visit. Three days later, Chun announced the lifting of martial law and commutation of Kim's death sentence to life imprisonment.*

“The controversial Korean was received at the White House before the leaders of such important American allies as Britain, France, or the other NATO countries, Japan, or even Canada or Mexico.”

“Tossing aside the restrained remarks drafted for him by the State Department, Reagan delivered a wholehearted embrace”

“With his accustomed oratorical skill, Reagan declared, "We share your commitment to freedom. If there's one message that I have for the Korean people today, it is this: Our special bond of freedom and friendship is as strong today as it was in that meeting thirty years ago.”

“Reagan formally informed Chun in their White House conversation that the United States was prepared to sell Korea F-16 warplanes, the most modern in the U.S. inventory, an arrangement that had been agreed to in principle during the Carter administration, but which Carter personally prevented from coming to fruition. ”

He also left a store of bitter antagonism and a sense of betrayal among Koreans who had previously admired the United States but who now held it responsible for Chun's December 12 military coup”

“officials at an American-Japanese listening post heard the chilling report of a Russian fighter pilot to his headquarters: "The target is destroyed.”

“President Reagan in subsequent statements called the action a "massacre," an "atrocity," and a "crime against humanity." The Soviet Union initially denied destroying the plane but later admitted it and justified the action on grounds that the airliner had violated its "sacred" borders on an espionage mission concocted by the United States and its South Korean ally.*”

“ It drove U.S.-Soviet relations to new depths of tension at a moment when relations were already extremely tense due to the imminent deployment of American missiles in Europe.”

“A second severe shock to South Korea came little more than a month later, on October 9, 1983, during the state visit of President Chun Doo Hwan to Rangoon, Burma. At the ceremonial beginning of the visit, the best and the brightest of the South Korean government stood side-by-side in the Martyr's Mausoleum at the National Cemetery, awaiting the Chun's arrival for a wreath-laying in honor of Burma's founder.”

“At that moment, North Korean army major Zin Mo, mistaking the ambassador's arrival and the bugler's call as the start of the wreath-laying ceremony, detonated a powerful bomb that he and two North Korean army captains had planted two days previously in the roof of the mausoleum. In the thunderous explosion, four members of the South Korean cabinet, two senior presidential advisers, and the ambassador to Burma were blown to bits by shrapnel”

“Presidential Secretary Kim Jae Ik, an architect of South Korea's economic development. Due to his delayed arrival, Chun himself escaped injury.Before the explosion, reclusive Burma and reclusive North Korea, each pursuing a distinctive brand of Asian socialism, had been the best of friends.”

“According to Koh Yong Hwan, a North Korean diplomat who took part in the plot but later defected to the South, the operation had been called off at the last minute on the personal instructions of the younger Kim. Koh, a sophisticated man who later became the Great Leader's French-language interpreter, said he believed the cancellation was ordered because the assassination of the South Korean president in an African country could have devastated North Korea's important African support in the UN General Assembly.”

“U.S. experts suggested that the route be moved farther away from the Vietnamese and Chinese coastlines, causing a change in the ROK president's planned schedule.”

“Chun was still on his way from the ROK ambassador's residence, about a mile away from the mausoleum, when the powerful bomb went off.The sudden deaths of South Korea's leading high officials caused a new outpouring of anger and grief in Seoul”

“few weeks later South Korean officials charged that Pyongyang had planned to launch commando raids after Chun's expected assassination. Kang Myung Do, a well-connected North Korean who defected in 1994, told me that a mass insurrection on the order of the 1980 Kwangju uprising had been anticipated if Chun had been killed.”

“ Chun said later he met with commanders who were eager to attack the North and declared that only he would decide whether to take military action-and that anyone who jumped the gun would be guilty of disloyalty. In a visit to Chun,”

“Chun responded, "I want to assure your president that I'm in full control of this government and military officers, who report to me. I have no intention of doing anything foolish or anything without full consultation with your government.”

“In fact, no retaliatory action was taken. When President Reagan visited Seoul the following month, he made a point of telling Chun in a private meeting that "we and the whole world admired your restraint in the face of the provocations in Rangoon and over Sakhalin Island [referring to the downing of KAL 007]." Reagan had come from Japan, where he had discussed the Rangoon bombing with Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, and told Chun he was pleased to learn that the Japanese were "doing whatever they can to punish the North Koreans." Secretary Shultz informed the ROK government that Washington would lead a worldwide campaign to censure and isolate North Korea in the aftermath of the bombing.”

“Oddly enough, as the Rangoon bombing plot developed, North Korea was simultaneously pursuing its most important diplomatic initiative toward the South in more than a decade. On October 8, 1983, the day before the bombing, Chinese diplomats passed a message to Washington from North Korea saying for the first time that it would take part in three-way talks with the United States and South Korea to bring peace to the peninsula, accepting Seoul as a full participant. ”

“In the aftermath of Rangoon, Deng was furious at Pyongyang for staging the bombing immediately after he had passed along Pyongyang's conciliatory diplomatic initiative to the Americans. For weeks afterward, Deng refused to see any North Koreans. The controlled Chinese media did not accept its ally's denials of complicity in the bombing, giving precisely equal treatment to the North Korean denials and the damning official reports from Rangoon.”

“Moreover, for both regimes, considerations of "face" or prestige were often more important than issues of substance.”

“act of naturetorrential rains and landslides in the region near Seoul that killed 190 people and left 200,000 homeless. North Korea, in a gesture implying superiority, grandly offered to send relief supplies to its better-heeled cousins in the South. To everyone's surprise, Chun's government did not spurn the offer but prepared to receive rice, cement, textiles, and medical supplies. "Along a worn concrete road gone to weeds, hundreds of North Korean trucks entered South Korean territory today carrying the first supplies to pass between the two countries since the Korean war ended 31 years ago," wrote The New York Times' Clyde Haberman, who was on the scene at the DMZ. Some of the rice turned out to be wormy and the cement nearly unusable,”

“In September 1985, thirty-five South Koreans were permitted to cross the DMZ to visit family members in Pyongyang, and thirty North Koreans crossed in the other direction to meet family members in Seoul.”

“An American intelligence official, who was given full access to the transcripts of the talks by Chun's government around the time that they took place, said that the two sides "got tied up in all sorts of linguistic tangles" such as what words to use to describe the level and nature of the proposed summit meeting.”

“the North was not very interested in making progress, and the South was also bringing up things that would irritate the North.”

“Chun's intention in working with the Americans to enlarge Team Spirit, according to a former aide, was to scare the North Koreans. If so, he succeeded, because Pyongyang in most years put its own forces on full alert during the maneuvers, which lasted up to two months, and acted as if it feared a real attack”

“Kim estimated that these annual mobilization exercises cost the country "one and a half months of working shifts ... a great loss.”

“suggesting that he personally insisted on continuing the war for well over a year after Kim was ready to seek a negotiated way out. Then, two weeks after Stalin's death, the Soviet leadership reversed his position and issued secret orders to communist negotiators to end the fighting.”

“created enormous problems for Kim, who struggled to keep on good terms with both of them even while being denounced for his internal policies and independent stance. Kim reacted bitterly to Nikita Khrushchev's reformist policies and his denunciations of his idol Stalin and the Stalinist "cult of personality" that Kim emulated. He was even more offended when the Chinese attacked him as a counterrevolutionary revisionist, aristocrat, and capitalist during the radical phase of the Cultural Revolution.”

“Vadim Tkachenko, a leading Korea expert on the staff of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party from 1962 to 1991, said Moscow was concerned about Pyongyang's often surprising and uncontrollable policies: "North Korea was an independent country which took the kind of actions that were difficult to explain”

“We didn't know [KCIA director] Lee Hu Rak was in Pyongyang in 1972; the Americans told us. We didn't know about the negotiations when the [U.S. spy ship] Pueblo was seized [in 1968]; the Americans told us. You'd make a mistake to think that Kim Il Sung was Moscow's man.”

“A Central Committee official put it well at a closed conference in Moscow in 1984: "North Korea, for all the peculiarities of Kim Il Sung, is the most important bastion in the Far East in our struggle against American and Japanese imperialism and Chinese revisionism." For this reason, the Soviet Union continued to fuel North Korea's economy and military machine throughout the cold war”

“On May 4, three days after Reagan flew home, Hu traveled to Pyongyang for an eight-day official visit. Two million people turned out to greet him in what North Korea called "the greatest welcome in Korean history.”

“ Yes, it was true that China was flirting with the Americans and Japanese, but Kim declared that this was because "China is a poor country with a population of one billion people and its leadership is seeking help with modernization from the United States and Japan." At another point in his tour, Kim said that despite his confrontation with the United States and Japan, his greatest fear was "of socialism not being maintained in China." With Deng Xiaoping moving rapidly into market economics and hosting Reagan, "we must all insure that they follow a socialist way and none other,”

“Then, having refurbished high-level Communist Party and government ties between the two countries, Kim asked for more Soviet economic and military assistance. He was remarkably successful.”

“40 percent of Pyongyang's exports to all countries and about 25 percent of its imports. After Kim's 1984 visit, the flow of goods to and especially from the Soviet Union increased rapidly. Due initially to an extensive aid package approved as a result of Kim's visit, imports from the USSR jumped from $471 million in 1984 to $1,186 million in 1986 and $1,909 million in 1988, when they accounted for roughly two-thirds of North Korea's imports from all countries. Moscow not only financed a growing trade deficit with Pyongyang but also provided Soviet coal and oil at cut-rate prices, well below those of the world market.”

“with the South sapped the force of his argument. If he could deal with Seoul, his allies reasoned, why couldn't they? ”

“the Soviet Union began to permit South Korean citizens to participate in international conferences and sports events in the USSR. Pyongyang immediately protested, but Moscow responded that if it barred South Koreans from legitimate international activities, its own participants could be barred, and "there is even a danger that the Soviet Union would be expelled from”

“On another occasion, eagle-eyed North Korean diplomats detected a few South Korean stamps in an international postal exhibition in Moscow, prompting a high-level complaint and hurried removal of the offensive stamps from the display cases.”

“Georgi Kim, said at a closed meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee that the Soviet Union should stop looking at Seoul through Pyongyang's biased eyes. He declared, "It is obvious that South Korea is a successful and respected country which is genuinely interested in being our friend. To respond positively to Seoul's overtures correlates with the U.S.S.R. national interest.”

“Kim told Gorbachev with considerable exaggeration, "There is a big movement in favor of socialism in the South, and work is underway to create a national front. One third of South Korean parliamentarians support the North. Unlike the recent past when Americans were perceived as liberators and supporters, now many, not to mention the students, speak against the American presence.”

“Vadim Tkachenko, the Korea expert on the Central Committee, was thunderstruck by Gorbachev's declaration, which contradicted the policy decisions that had been recently made with Gorbachev's participation.”

“Gorbachev had met Reagan in a highstakes bargaining match over nuclear weapons at the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik and had returned to Moscow without an agreement.”

“Gorbachev had an ironical attitude to the claims of the Great Leader and considered him as a burden he had from the past,”

“North Korea was seen as a privileged ally, close to us through the socialist family group and the treaties of mutual friendship and protection. For this reason, we fulfilled virtually all of Pyongyang's wishes for weapons deliveries and economic help.”

“In 1987, the year following Kim's meeting with Gorbachev, the Soviet Union sent forty-five delegations to North Korea, while North Korea sent sixty-two delegations to Moscow. Nonetheless, there is considerable evidence that Kim Il Sung did not trust the new Soviet leader, especially as his liberalizing reforms, glasnost and perestroika, began to take hold and his relations with the capitalist world improved. Word was circulating among Pyongyang's diplomatic elite that Kim considered Gorbachev even more of a revisionist than the dreaded Nikita Khrushchev had been.”

“the South experienced dramatic economic gains, but its political arrangements seemed frozen in time. This discrepancy gave rise to growing public discontent, expressed passionately by potent antigovernment political and social forces that even the strongest rulers had never been able to stifle.”

“South Koreans demanded an end to military rule enforced by the heavy-handed activities of secret police”

“The June Resistance," as the political crisis of mid-1987 is sometimes known, was the turning point for South Korea in its shift from authoritarianism toward democratic practice”

“At a crucial moment, the United States played an important supporting role.”

“The opportunity for peaceful transition emerged in the first instance from Chun's pledge, soon after taking office, to serve only a single presidential term, after which he would retire. Chun made his pledge, according to a close associate, because he drew a profound lesson from watching the regime of his mentor, President Park, decline, decay, and collapse in a hail of gunfire when its leader stayed on too long. In June 1980, while dominating the political scene as the top-ranking general before assuming the presidency, Chun told Richard Walker, a conservative professor with extensive Asian experience who later would become U.S. ambassador to Korea, "If I were to become president, I would like the history books to say that I was the first one in Korea to turn over power in a legitimate and constitutional manner.”

“ their children had asked Chun not to become president, because they were happy with their lives and did not wish to change them so drastically. Furthermore, she said, when her husband was inaugurated on September 1, 1980, they asked him to finish his presidency properly and hand over the office to his successor. On Chun's first day in office, in a small meeting with her husband and his top aides, the First Lady repeated this advice, according to a participant. She added that George Washington was eternally revered in the United States because he refused to be installed permanently in office but insisted on leaving the presidency. "Please help my husband act like that," she implored the officials present. Two days later, while presenting letters of appointment to the members of his initial cabinet, Chun publicly declared, "More than anything else, I am fully determined to establish a tradition of peaceful transfer of power." Subsequently he announced at a press conference that he would serve a single termwhich was set by his new constitution at seven years-and then return to private life.”

“Chun lacked legitimacy and stature in the eyes of his people. Initially it seemed unlikely that this stern, aloof, and unpopular general would be the person to inaugurate a democratic tradition. Chun, however, took his one-term pledge seriously. He made plans to center his postpresidential life in a one-story marble office building constructed for this purpose in a parklike setting, replete with fruit trees, behind high steel gates south of Seoul. "Chun's fortress," as it was dubbed by Seoulites, was the headquarters of the Ilhae Foundation, a think tank named for Chun's honorific pseudonym and financed with $90 million in forced contributions from South Korea's big businessmen. Showing a keen interest in his postpresidential life, Chun quizzed FBI director William Webster, on a visit to Seoul, about the U.S. system for protecting former presidents.Reagan and other senior American officials repeatedly and publicly praised Chun's "far-sighted" commitment to turn over power through constitutional processes”

“Yet Chun insisted he was sincere, volunteering to Reagan, in a private meeting at the Blue House in November 1983, that because of the precedents of Presidents Rhee and Park, who unilaterally extended their terms of office and were finally ousted by force, "the people believe that a change of presidents is possible only through violence. This is a very dangerous way of thinking.... My term is scheduled to end in 1988 and it will.”

“In a country like ours, it requires a lot more courage to give up power than to grab it," he confided at a dinner for Blue House reporters”

“An important factor in the Korean political transition was the worldwide trend in the mid-1980s, in which the United States played a supporting role, toward democratization of authoritarian, militarybacked regimes. The most dramatic case in Asia was the Philippines.”

“But in 1986 Washington approved the "people power" revolution in Manila that ousted Marcos, and it prodded the falling dictator to leave the country for exile in Hawaii aboard a U.S. Air Force plane. These spectacular events emboldened the Korean opposition”

“The opposition was also emboldened by the approach of the 1988 Summer Olympic Games to be held in Seoul, an event that promised greatly to enhance their country's international recognition and prestige and thus was of towering importance to all Koreans. The president of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, had made it known that the games might be moved elsewhere in case of massive disorders in Seoul. This added substantially to the government's reluctance to use lethal and overwhelming force to put down protest demonstrations.”

“returned from a European trip convinced that a parliamentary system of government would best suit South Korea and, many people suspected, that it might permit him to retain power as prime minister or power broker after the end of his presidency. The opposition saw such a change as a threat. It demanded a return to the earlier practice of direct election of the president rather than election by an easily controlled college of electors, which had been established in President Park's martial-law "reforms." With the press still muzzled and the National Assembly a toothless body, the political contest was waged in the streets, with the opposition seeking to demonstrate insurmountable national support.”

“The rout became complete when police brought up a big tanklike vehicle spewing great clouds of tear gas, to which generous amounts of noxious pepper had been added to make it more unbearable. I watched in fascination-until my burning eyes and throat forced me to retreat inside Citizens' Hall, where opposition party leaders were placing wet compresses over their painful eyes and expressing dismay.”

“These young insurgents were also virulently anti-Chun and anti-American, insisting that the United States was responsible for Chun's rule and that Washington was manipulating Korea for its own cold war purposes. The killings at Kwangju in 1980 were cited as the moment when "imperialism [the United States] and fascism [Chun] got together" in Korea. I found the students wildly unrealistic but learned that their ideas were not atypical of campus thinking. In a survey at the elite Seoul National University, 59 percent of the student respondents characterized the United States as "neocolonialist" or "imperialist," and 80 percent were dissatisfied with U.S.-ROK relations (compared with only 9 percent dissatisfaction expressed by adults in a separate newspaper poll.)”

“With North Korea still a military threat and more than 40,000 American troops at risk, stability in Seoul was a central U.S. objective, at times an overriding one.”

“Shultz initially termed the speech "outrageous" when he learned of its clear-cut prescriptions, but he later backed it strongly, telling Chun in Seoul that spring that "every sentence, every word, every comma is the policy of our government.”

“In mid-April, despite Sigur's call for "accommodation, compromise and consensus," Chun suddenly banned all further consideration of constitutional revision until after the 1988 Olympics. If permitted to stand, this ban meant that the next president, who was to be chosen before the end of the year, would be elected by a fivethousand-member electoral college that Chun could easily control. In practical effect, it meant that Chun could dictate the selection of his successor. Washington had only brief advance notice of Chun's decision but did not object forcefully. The opposition, however, began to protest immediately and vociferously.”

“Executive Committee of the ruling Democratic Justice Party to dinner at the Blue House and announced that he had chosen his longtime associate and friend, Roh Tae Woo, as the party's presidential candidate. Roh had retired from the army as a four-star general when Chun became president, and then held a succession of civilian jobs, including minister of sports, minister of home affairs, president of the Seoul Olympics Organizing Committee, and ruling party chairman. Nevertheless, he was seen by much of the public as "the bald man with a wig," meaning Chun in disguise”

“Tens of thousands of protesters were arrested. Citizens suffered in clouds of tear gas as the demonstrations paralyzed the central districts of Seoul and other cities, where such violence had rarely been experienced before. In an ominous development that threatened longterm stability, usually conservative middle-class Koreans displayed widespread sympathy and support for the protests as never before.Coming on the heels of the Philippine revolution and before the Seoul Olympics, the Korean political crisis attracted extensive international attention. In the last two weeks of June, it was the single largest story in the American press, even surpassing the ongoing hearings on the Iran-Contra political scandal.”

“the missive was couched in sympathetic, gentle, and inoffensive language, which Reagan preferred when dealing with allies. Saying that he was writing "as a friend," Reagan seemed to endorse ideas that Chun had already expressed. Yet its unmistakable meaning was a call for political rather than military solutions:”

“Finally, Reagan held out a personal sweetener-the promise of a visit to the United States by Chun after leaving office peacefully in 1988.*”

“The usually decisive Chun was worried and frustrated. He had been telling aides for days that putting down the protests under the guns and bullets of martial law would damage the nation domestically and internationally and would constitute "a sad chapter in history," but at the same time he said that if the police lost control, he would be forced to take that step. By Friday morning, Chun seemed to have made up his mind to use the army. Meeting at ten A.M. with his defense minister, uniformed service chiefs, and the director of the intelligence agency, he ordered deployment, by four A.M. the next day, of battle-ready troops on a variety of campuses and cities.”

“Lilley, an Asia expert who had been born in China and spent a career in the CIA before becoming an ambassador, presented Chun with the letter. Aware that the situation was extremely serious, Lilley had met beforehand with the U.S. military commander in Korea, General William J. Livesey, and obtained his verbal agreement that the use of military force was undesirable in the political crisis. Armed with this assurance, Lilley went beyond the gentle language of the Reagan letter to warn that intervention by the military would stretch the alliance in dangerous fashion and court a repeat of the damaging events of the 1980 Kwangju uprising. "This is the American position. The [U.S. military] command is with me. I speak for all of the United States," Lilley declared. Chun, who by that stage of his presidency often monopolized meetings with visitors, this time listened intently. He did not say what he would do, but he left Lilley with the belief that the presentation had made a serious impression. About an hour after Lilley left the Blue House, aides to Chun were told that the mobilization order had been suspended”

“These military leaders-like the rest of society-thought the demonstrators had a just cause and that a crackdown would be a disaster. Chung took their concerns to Roh, telling him that the use of the military would have grave consequences for society and Roh's own political future. According to Chung, Roh saw the president within hours and strongly recommended against using military force. Roh recalled in an interview for this book that at that "very difficult moment," he had taken his opposition directly to the president. Of crucial importance, he said, was that "the military themselves felt the army should not be mobilized,”

“ On June 22, Chun announced a plan to meet opposition leader Kim Young Sam to seek a political solution to the crisis. Surprisingly, the two men had never met. After negotiations about the terms, the meeting took place on June 24 but ended without agreement.”

“ "Don't you think I know what my people think about me? They don't want me in here anymore. And I don't want to stay under those circ*mstances," Chun confided to his American caller. "Tell the president, don't worry about that. I'm getting out. I'm not going to stay.”

“On June 29, Roh stunned Koreans by accepting the central opposition demand and agreeing to the direct election of the next president-a daring move in view of the unpopularity of the ruling party. Roh's eight-point program also advocated a complete amnesty for Kim Dae Jung, freedom of expression for the tightly controlled press, and autonomy for the nation's closely monitored colleges and universities. ”

“Roh made his startling announcement in the form of recommendations to Chun, whose views were not immediately known but who endorsed Roh's program two days later.In the national jubilation that followed, Roh was acclaimed a hero by many Koreans, especially since there was widespread speculation that he had taken the bold steps with only grudging assent from Chun. The president said nothing to refute this belief and steadfastly refused to discuss his role in Roh's decisions. In early 1992, more than four years later, Chun's former press secretary published detailed notes of presidential conversations from June 1987, indicating that Chun had originated the decision to accept direct elections and arranged for Roh to take the credit in order to enhance his candidacy. Late in 1996, Lee Soon Ja (Mrs. Chun) said much the same in a document presented to a Seoul court.”

“Roh Tae Woo was praised for his summertime role in agreeing to a direct presidential election, but it was widely assumed that he could not win in December because of his military background. Military rule was just too unpopular, as was the would-be kingmaker, Chun.”

“because the government has made numerous accomplishments and the economy is doing well.”

“Indeed, a central problem for the opposition, as had often been the case before, was the presence of two powerful leaders who were rivals more than colleagues, each with a different geographical and political base.”

“ When I reminded him of his statement at our first meeting that soldiers should not become involved in politics, he responded that he had not changed his mind. He went on to say, in the whispery voice he used to discuss sensitive topics, "I found myself in this situation. It may be the will of heaven-this is my destiny. That's my best answer.”

“Chun was privately agonized about whether he could really trust Roh as his successor, according to Kim Yoon Hwan”

“Chun as "a very simple man who sees pictures in black and white" and Roh as "a man of environment and situation." Another Korean, who had watched both men as political leaders at close range, said that "the secret of Chun's leadership was his assertiveness," while Roh was "calculating and cautious" as well as surprisingly artistic, being interested in music, poetry, and novels.”

“continue meeting at least weekly until they reached a joint decision about which of them would run for president. "The public expectation is for the nomination of one [opposition] candidate as soon as possible," he said. In the meetings, "we promised each other we would have a united front to achieve democracy.”

“A year later one of the robbers was caught and confessed to being a North Korean agent seeking money to buy a boat. The family tragedy, which was well known in Korea, colored Kim's attitude toward the North and shielded him from the red-baiting that was common against opposition politicians.”

“During the Park era, he was jailed for opposing military rule and in 1969 was the victim of an acid attack while opposing Park's drive to amend the Constitution to allow him a third term. A decade later he was expelled from the National Assembly for publicly calling Park a dictator and asking the United States to intervene.”

“Cholla was disadvantaged under President Park, who like both Chun and Roh was a native of a rival political center around Taegu”

“ hero and standard-bearer of Cholla and other downtrodden people in Korea, but at the same time he was distrusted and even feared by many people from other regions”

“The years in isolation and adversity had deepened his self-knowledge and political awareness. He had worked out his answers to major questions facing the country and could articulate them clearly.”

“There was very serious doubt that military leaders would permit Kim to take office if he should be elected”

“Democratization means neutralization of the military," he said.”

“Nevertheless, a few days after that, Kim Dae Jung appeared at a huge public rally in Kwangju in his home region of Cholla and began touring the country like a candidate. Later Kim Young Sam did the same, starting with his hometown of Pusan”

“Heedless of their pledges, both of them ran for president.Roh Tae Woo, meanwhile, enjoyed the advantages of leading the incumbent party, including massive funding and extensive coverage on television,”

“Although the U.S. Embassy was under orders to remain strictly neutral, Roh managed to meet President Reagan at the White House in a mid-September trip to Washington to burnish his image as an internationally respected figure.”

“On December 16, election day, Roh won the presidency with 36 percent of the popular vote, as Kim Young Sam (28 percent) and Kim Dae Jung (27 percent) split the opposition majority in half. Manwoo Lee, a Korean-American professor who made an intensive study of the election, wrote that "each candidate was like a Chinese warlord occupying his own solid territory" based on his region of origin. Lee also expressed doubt that either Kim Young Sam or Kim Dae Jung could have won even if running alone, due to the deep regional antagonism that had characterized the electioneering.”

“ Roh's victory also permitted him to ease South Korea's hard anticommunist stance and to bid successfully for amicable ties and eventual diplomatic relations with Eastern European communist countries, the Soviet Union, and China, thereby undercutting North Korea's alliances”

“The South hoped the 1988 Olympics would enhance its economic growth and global stature as the 1964 Tokyo Olympics had famously done for Japan. Moreover, the universality of the games provided a golden opportunity for South Korea to play host to the Soviet Union, China, and the communist-led countries”

“President Park Chung Hee, who had approved the plan to bid for the 1988 Olympics shortly before his death in 1979, specified that one of the major objectives would be "to demonstrate Korea's economic growth and national power," and another would be "to create favorable conditions for establishing diplomatic relations with both communist and non-aligned nations.”

“Seoul's most important competitor was Japan's entry, the city of Nagoya. Seoul had several advantages. Japan, a developed country, had already hosted one Olympics. Because of the intense rivalry between the two Koreas, which had often been played out in UN General Assembly votes, South Korea had embassies and consulates in nearly all third-world countries, which made up the bulk of the Olympics participants, while Japan had substantially fewer. Furthermore, many developing countries were sympathetic to one of their own.In the end, Seoul simply worked harder. Four months before the voting, Chung Ju Yung, chairman of the giant Hyundai group, was named chairman of the committee to bring the Olympics to Seoul. As the vote approached, he and other Korean industrialists traveled widely, wining and dining Olympic committee delegates of other countries.”

“ They were also greeted by dazzling smiles from dozens of Korea's most beautiful young women, including five former Miss Koreas and ten beautiful Korean Air Lines hostesses. According to a member of the victorious Korean delegation, Chung spent several million dollars in obtaining goodwill the same way he won construction contracts for Hyundai in the Middle East, with offers of airplane tickets, women, and money to any wavering delegates.”

“North Korea proposed that the Seoul Olympics be recast as the "Chosun games" or the "Pyongyang-Seoul games," with North Korea as cohost, sharing equally in the sports events as well as the television revenues. North Korea insisted to its allies that "if the U.S.A. and the South Korean puppets do not accept our justified suggestions, then the socialist countries-as in the case of the Olympic games in Los Angeles -should collectively carry out a mighty strike”

“Neither was a boycott of the games by the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies, which had boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles games and whose athletes and sports authorities were determined to participate this time.”

“Gradually Seoul improved its proposal, offering all table tennis and fencing events to Pyongyang.”

“North Korea is once again putting itself in self-imposed isolation. Through its stubborn behavior, North Korea is granting advantages to South Korea, which will enjoy an improved image.”

“In the end, they believed, North Korea would never agree to grant full access to tens of thousands of athletes, officials, and accompanying journalists from the West.”

“By the demonstration that the IOC and South Korea were doing their best to appease North Korea, the USSR and Eastern European countries were granted the option to participate freely in the Seoul Olympics.”

“They were told that the order came directly from Kim Jong Il, son of the North Korean president, and that its aim was to dissuade the nations of the world from participating in the Seoul Olympics. On November 29, a powerful bomb planted by the two operatives destroyed Korean Air Lines flight 858, flying across Southeast Asia on its way from Abu Dhabi to Seoul. All 115 persons onboard, mostly young South Korean men on their way home from engineering projects in the Middle East, were killed.”

“intelligence agencies gradually zeroed in on the father-and-daughter "Japanese tourists" who had briefly traveled on the ill-fated plane.Japanese police were quickly able to determine that the young woman's passport was a forgery. She and her companion were arrested at Bahrain airport while preparing to board their Rome-bound plane. As they were seized, both of them bit into poison ampules hidden in the filter tips of cigarettes they carried. The veteran agent died instantly, but Kim Hyun Hui survived, due to the quick reaction of a Bahraini policewoman who snatched the cigarette from her mouth”

“ eventually was given a presidential pardon on grounds that she was merely a brainwashed tool of the real culprits, the leaders of North Korea.”

“I had heard so many things about the torture and cruelty of the South Korean CIA that I was full of uneasiness and fear. I made up my mind I would have to face the worst part of this to keep my secret." In reality, however, she found that her captors treated her sympathetically and that South Korean television and walking tours of Seoul contradicted North Korean depictions of a corrupt, poverty-stricken American colony. "I began to doubt that the order [to bomb the airliner] was for unification of the country. I discovered I had just committed the crime of killing compatriots.... I thought I would die whether or not I confessed. I thought again and again. Finally I decided I had to tell the truth.”

“the United States placed North Korea on its list of countries practicing state terrorism, triggering new economic and political sanctions, and it instituted an interagency drive to assist the South in sophisticated security arrangements for the upcoming Olympics.”

“Peaceful negotiations cannot be reconciled with the fact that they are aiming cannons at us and sharpening their swords," he said,”

“In May 1988 a new and more Western-oriented team of officials took office, moving Hungary's orientation sharply toward the West.”

“In the end, Hungary settled for $625 million in loans, mostly on a commercial basis, to take the first dramatic step”

“North Korea suspected at the time, Hungary did consult the Soviet Union before establishing relations ”

“North Korea downgraded its relations after the establishment of full Seoul-Budapest diplomatic relations but did not break them off. Moreover, barter trade between the two countries continued to flourish. "North Korea is very pragmatic" when its economic interests are concerned, commented a Soviet bloc diplomat who observed the Hungarian developments from Pyongyang.”

“Korean spectators cheered wildly for the Soviet basketball team as it vanquished the American team, to the shock and dismay of many American viewers.”

“The games were ignored in North Korea, where most television and radio sets could receive only highly propagandistic channels and stations operated by the government. The Olympics were not broadcast in North Korea, and its athletes did not participate.”

“In private, the State Department was more effusive, calling the move in an internal document "a major-indeed historic-reversal of traditional ROKG [ROK government] policy.")”

“The United States continued to insist that any dealmaking regarding the divided peninsula would have to involve Seoul.”

“the Politburo decisions that day were based almost entirely on considerations of Russian national interest, with their impact in the peninsula given secondary consideration. Nonetheless, the reversal that was set in motion reverberated powerfully on both sides of the thirty-eighth parallel. Prodded and induced by the ROK, the Soviet Union was transformed over the next two years from godfather, superpower guarantor, and economic benefactor of North Korea to partner and, in some respects, client of South Korea. This was of monumental importance.”

“Yegor Ligachev, the most influential critic of the shift away from the traditional Soviet foreign policy support for "class struggle”

“Gorbachev had been to Washington to sign a nuclear-weapons reduction treaty with the United States, and Ronald Reagan had been to Moscow to celebrate their new relationship and walk in Red Square with Gorbachev”

“he took the occasion to announce a massive unilateral reduction of Soviet military forces and conventional armaments, and a large-scale military pullout from Eastern Europe, Mongolia, and the Asian part of the Soviet Union.”

“In the case of Korea, the fundamental reason for the Soviet policy shift was economic. Among the documents considered in the Politburo meeting of November 10 was a glowing memorandum from Vladimir Kamentsev, deputy prime minister in charge of foreign economic ties, who shared the view earlier endorsed by the ministers of foreign trade, finance, and oil and gas industries that the dynamic economy of South Korea was "the most promising partner in the Far East." Trade with Seoul, which was still being conducted in cumbersome fashion through unofficial contacts and third countries, was climbing steadily, and eager South Korean businessmen were knocking on Moscow's doors with attractive offers”

“Kim Il Sung's regime, which increasingly considered Gorbachev a "revisionist" departing from the true faith of MarxismLeninism.”

“Until the Gorbachev era, very little information about South Korea had appeared in the Soviet press, and nearly all of that negative. However, in the Olympic year of 1988, there were 195 stories in leading Soviet newspapers and magazines, most of them firsthand accounts by Soviet correspondents. In addition to sports news, the correspondents had covered Korean economic achievements, culture, and lifestyle, with authentic impressions of Korean reality.”

“the Soviet news agency, said his first visit to Seoul had been "a shock" to him. "Everything I had read before turned out to be outdated; I arrived into the 21st century." Correspondent Vitaly Umashev of the influential weekly Ogonyok said, "My vision of South Korea as a Third World country disappeared." He reported that "in South Korea, Xeroxes are sold everywhere ... but in our country they are still considered a tool of dissidents." The Communist Party newspaper Pravda, which had previously depicted South Korea mainly as a bastion of American militarism, summed up its impression after the close of the games: "The sports facilities in Seoul are the best in the world, and the values of the Korean traditional smile and etiquette have been greatly underestimated.”

“There is definitely no other place on earth where people so heartily welcome Soviets.”

“by 1988 the GNP of South Korea was at least seven times larger than that of the North and the gap was growing rapidly.Up to 1984, the Soviet Union had provided more than $2 billion in foreign aid and credits to North Korea, much of it in the form of whole factories financed by soft loans that were never repaid. Following the trips to Moscow by Kim II Sung in 1984 and 1986, the Soviet Union had provided an increasing quantity of oil and gas, weapons, and a variety of other goods on easy credit and concessional terms to its Northeast Asian ally. In 1984, however, Pyongyang stopped paying even interest on its smaller debt to Western creditors, and three years later it was officially declared in default, making it ineligible for further commercial loans. By 1988, Moscow was shipping $1.9 billion in goods to North Korea while receiving less than $.9 billion in return. This heavily subsidized Moscow-Pyongyang trade made up nearly three-fifths of North Korea's total trade turnover.The vibrant economy of South Korea, on the other hand, was booming, with economic growth rates over 10 percent annually and a large global trade surplus, as its auos, ships, tvs, chips mae their mark on the international economy.

“The USSR, to solve its economic problems, is interested in new partners. South Korea possesses technology and products that can be of use,”

“The North Korean capital struck members of the Soviet traveling party as depressingly cold and gray with unsmiling people and little clouds of dust in the streets

“It was left to Foreign Minister Kim Yong Nam, the official who often performed the job of putting forth Pyongyang's most intractable positions, to fiercely attack Moscow's shift on trade and economic relations with Seoul. According to Shevardnadze's internal report, his North Korean counterpart "rather sharply accused the socialist countries of not evaluating the situation in South Korea correctly, of deepening the division of the country and hindering inter-Korean dialogue and [charged that] some socialist countries are betraying socialism for the sake of money." ”

“At the height of the argument with his North Korean counterpart, he declared heatedly that "I am a communist, and I give you my word as a party member: the USSR leadership does not have any intention and will not establish diplomatic relations with South Korea." This would be thrown back in his face later by North Korea-and sooner than anyone guessed.”

“The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan in February, ending an occupation that had severely damaged Moscow's standing abroad. In May, Mikhail Gorbachev traveled to Beijing to terminate once and for all the decades-long dispute between the two giants of communism. The live television coverage that had been authorized for the auspicious occasion turned out to be a disaster for Chinese leaders when American network cameras recorded the demonstrations of student protesters during Gorbachev's visit and their bloody suppression on June 4, shortly after he left.In August, with Gorbachev's approval, the Polish Communist Party gave up power to a coalition headed by the noncommunist trade-union movement Solidarity. This spelled the end of the Brezhnev doctrine, under which Soviet military power enforced the loyalty of its peripheral satellite states”

“communist governments of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania were ousted or their leaders forced to reverse their political direction. In November, the crossing points in the Berlin wall were flung open, bringing the symbolic end of the iron curtain that had divided Europe since World War II and leading in time to the absorption of communist East Germany by the West.”

“While his foreign policy was winning praise abroad, Gorbachev was coming under growing criticism at home. The Soviet Union was in the first stages of a painful economic transition, with consumergoods shortages causing longer and longer lines and the budgetary deficit soaring to 12 percent of GNP,”

“In these circ*mstances, Gorbachev saw a profitable relationship with Seoul as a promising new source of economic help for the embattled Soviet leadership. Moreover, by forging a visibly close relationship with South Korea, Moscow was poking a finger in the eye of the standoffish Japanese, who were refusing to provide economic assistance because of the Northern Islands issue. Gorbachev had diminished concern about North Korea, which was seen as a holdover from the Stalinist era and the epitome of the cold war states that were rapidly passing from the scene in Europe.”

“It was very hard for us to invent new reasons all the time why he couldn't come," said a Gorbachev aide”

“Gorbachev told Chinese premier Li Peng, "We think that the USSR is behind China in developing ties with South Korea. Very far behind." The Chinese premier responded, "If you mean trade volume, you are right.”

“As it turned out, Kim's careful handling of his initial Moscow visit and the invitation from Pyongyang won acclaim from the government in Seoul and paved the way for Kim's political alliance with Roh Tae Woo in January 1990-an alliance that eventually resulted in Kim becoming Roh's successor as president. Nine months later, after becoming chairman of the ruling party, Kim returned to the Soviet capital and even managed a brief unofficial chat with Gorbachev.”

“Foreign goods were urgently needed in an effort to keep living standards from sinking while reforms were under way, but financial markets were refusing to supply further credit because of Moscow's inability to pay its debts. Searching for money wherever he could, Gorbachev was in the process of authorizing a series of secret financial appeals to the West German government as part of the intense negotiations on the future of Germany.Dobrynin recalled that Gorbachev's words to him were "we need some money.”

“In a 1993 interview for this book, Roh quoted Dobrynin as telling him that Soviet leaders "were in a desperate situation for their economic development.”

“they expected that South Korea could somehow play a role in the success of perestroika. As a model, they were attracted by the Korean economic development.”

“final collapse of North Korea's long-standing effort to wall off the southern regime from communist nations.”

“Although the meeting itself was an unremarkable exchange of generalities, the event marked "a radical change" in Soviet policy from exclusive alliance with North Korea, as Gorbachev acknowledged later in an internal Kremlin report. There was no explicit decision to move to full diplomatic relations, though this was clearly implied and rapidly accomplished after Gorbachev and Roh shook hands. According to Kim Jong In, who was then Roh's senior economic aide, Roh stated near the end of the meeting that the Korean government was prepared to offer "several billion dollars" in economic support. Soviet notes taken at the meeting said Roh "announced a readiness to grant considerable credit" for the purchase of South Korean consumer goods and also pledged cooperation in creation of joint enterprises and in the opening of Soviet Asia. Others who were interviewed for this book insisted that money was not discussed, though everyone knew the issue was an important one.”

“Roh repeated that Seoul did not wish to isolate the North Korean regime but that the ultimate objective of his Nordpolitik policy was to induce North Korea to open up. He told the assembled reporters, "The road between Seoul and Pyongyang is now totally blocked. Accordingly, we have to choose an alternative route to the North Korean capital by way of Moscow and Beijing. This may not be the most direct route but we certainly hope it will be an effective one.”

“The Soviet foreign minister told his party, as his plane took off, that the experience had been "the most difficult, most unpleasant talk of my life.”

“saying it would reinforce the division of the country and severely aggravate relations between Moscow and Pyongyang. He asked that it be reconsidered.After more t”

“would give international legitimacy to the permanent division”

“Soviet Union had been the first to recognize”

“embolden South Korea to try harder to destroy socialism in the North and swallow it up, along the lines of the East German scenario”

“Pyongyang would be free to recognize other parts of the Soviet Union, which would create trouble for Moscow. (According to one participant, Kim named several places where Pyongyang might establish diplomatic relations, including Khazhakstan and other Central Asian republics of the USSR and the Baltics,”

“ As to the threat to take up relations with Soviet republics, Shevardnadze was unconcerned, saying that such contacts could be in the mutual interest of everyone.”

“the Soviet Union today is not the Soviet Union of past days when it adhered to socialist internationalism but it has degenerated into a state of a certain other character.... The Soviet Union sold off the dignity and honor of a socialist power and the interests and faith of an ally for $2.3 billion" [the amount of a reported South Korean economic cooperation fund for Moscow.] The article was written under the byline of "commentator," a designation given only to the most authoritative statements from North Korea's ruling hierarchy.”

“As a result of the fall of communism in Europe, there was intense speculation that Kim 11 Sung and his regime would be the next to go.”

“Deng insisted that Asian countries were defending the faith and that Marxism-Leninism was still strong in China, Vietnam, and Cuba as well as in North Korea.”

“Kim was furious at the Soviet Union and spoke of the necessity for "yellow skins" to stick together against "white skins." The official said it was clear to him that Kim was worried about the Russians most of all, even more than the Americans. ”

“his proposal implied forthright Japanese acceptance of two Koreas, which North Korea had always opposed. The payoff for North Korea would be a large sum of Japanese reparations, in keeping with the precedent of the 1965 Japan-South Korea accord”

“formally apologize and compensate the DPRK" for the thirty-six years of Japanese occupation of Korea and also for the forty-five years of abnormal relations after World War II.”

“Kim II Sung pointedly told the South Koreans, "As long as I'm alive, I will rule the country.”

“Washington's failure to explore improvement in relations with Pyongyang in the last half of 1990, when North Korea was still reeling from the blow inflicted by the Soviet Union, was an opportunity missed. “

“Gorbachev asking for $5 billion in aid, including $2 billion in an immediate untied bank loan-in effect, ready cash. The Koreans were shocked by the size and nature of the request. Roh had said publicly on his trip to Moscow that cash grants were "out of the question" because such a big country as the Soviet Union "would not accept grants from a small country like ours even if we offered them.”

“Eventually Russia began providing tanks, helicopters, missiles, and spare parts to Seoul in partial repayment of the loans. By then Russia had again become an arms exporter to the world, but this time to nations that could pay with hard cash rather than to those with which it shared ideological solidarity. ”

“North Korea's most generous and most important trading partner began a steady decline that would increasingly sap the strength of the Kim regime.”

“ looked to be a strange land "left deserted by some invisible plague.”

“In the Korean War, China saved North Korea from defeat by sending its "volunteer" troops across the Yalu River, at the cost of 900,000 of its own soldiers killed or wounded.”

“in 1991-92 North Korea was forced to abruptly reduce its total petroleum consumption by between one-fourth and one-third, resulting in the deserted roadways and idle construction projects that I observed.”

“ the faltering of communism in the Soviet Union and its collapse in Eastern Europe proved the correctness of Kim Il Sung's independent policy of juche”

“The capital, Pyongyang, had been so leveled by American bombing in the Korean War that the head of the U.S. bomber command had halted further air strikes, saying that "there is nothing standing worthy of the name." Kim II Sung had rebuilt it from the ashes to a meticulously planned urban center of broad boulevards, monumental structures, and square-cut apartment buildings that resembled a stage set more than a working capital. Indeed, it was a synthetic city in many respects: according to foreign diplomats, the population was periodically screened, and the sick, elderly, or disabled, along with anyone deemed politically unreliable, were evicted from the capital.”

“Less celebrated but equally prominent was a mammoth 105-story hotel, built to be the tallest in Asia but that contained architectural defects so serious that it had never been occupied and probably never will be. Pyongyang struck me as a city designed by Russian-trained architects with some nods to Mao at the height of the allegiance to the Little Red Book. It appeared well suited for gigantic displays but not very convenient for people, who had few cars and buses and, unlike Beijing, no bicycles to help them traverse the capital's massive spaces.”

“The overnight train to Kaesong, the city just north of the demilitarized zone, took six hours to go about 120 miles, with antiquated equipment over a rough roadbed.”

“Compared with the heavily manned southern side, we saw remarkably few troops.”

“but once at work, he relentlessly followed his script in a way that reminded me of former Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko. An American diplomat described his performance as resembling a robot's. Koh Yong Hwan, a former North Korean diplomat and high-level interpreter who defected to the South, called him a "model" for North Korean officialdom: "If Kim 11 Sung was pointing to a wall and said there is a door, Kim Yong Nam would believe that and try to go through it." Yet by all accounts he is highly intelligent and, due to his high position and prestige within the system, an important behindthe-scenes figure in Pyongyang.”

“Kim Yong Sun is reputed to be a hard-drinking, partying buddy of Kim Jong 11, a ladies' man and devotee of high living.”

“It was a somewhat flattering touch, until I learned from a delegation of American Quakers months later that he had told them the same story, wearing the same jacket, at the start of their meeting.Kim Yong Sun had more self-confidence and flair than anyone else I met in North Korea. His authoritative yet freewheeling style appeared to be grounded in intimacy with the Dear Leader”

“I understand you know Baker," referring to the U.S. secretary of state. "Please tell him I want to meet him.”

“Deng Xiaoping told President Carter that North Korea "trusts China" and that "we cannot have contact with the South, or it will weaken that trust." ”

“Sino-ROK trade leaped from $19 million in 1979, to $188 million in 1980, to $462 million in 1984, to $1.3 billion in 1986, to $3.1 billion in 1988. Chinese trade with North Korea was left far behind, stagnating at about $.5 billion in the late 1980s,”

“Deng rejected the entire request and directed his aides to supply nothing. The North Korean minister left for home furious about the denial of military aid.”

“ and to establish a cooperative relationship. It is not our position to dominate them based on our economic power.”

“He reminded his aides that during their interaction over many centuries past, the Korean kings always sent their emissaries to pay court to China,”

“What brought about the Chinese resolve to move quickly, according to sources on both sides, had less to do with the Korean peninsula than with China's sensitivity to developments on Taiwan, where a campaign for greater international recognition had been intensifying. The worldwide flowering of Taiwan's informal and paradiplomatic contacts and visits was disturbing to the leaders in Beijing, and its few breakthroughs were maddening. In January 1992 the Baltic nation of Latvia, newly freed to seek its own destiny by the collapse of the Soviet Union, established official relations with Taiwan, despite intense protests from China.”

“. The way to retaliate, Chinese leaders reasoned, was to move quickly to establish diplomatic relations with Seoul, thus forcing South Korea to drop its diplomatic ties with Taiwan and depriving Taiwan of its last remaining official toehold in Asia.Breaking off its diplomatic relations with Taiwan as demanded by China, was no easy task for South Korea. When Taiwanese authorities got wind of the secret PRC-ROK negotiations, they sent a high-ranking envoy, the secretary general of the presidential office, to remind Seoul that the Nationalist governments of China, the lineal ancestors of the current Taiwan regime, had supported the Korean nationalists in exile during the Japanese occupation, had given strong support to the independence of South Korea in UN politics in 1948, and had been close comrades-in-arms in anticommunist struggles after Chiang Kai-shek had been forced into exile.”

“If Seoul snubbed Taiwan in the face of this long relationship, its representives implied, Taiwan would retaliate by opening official relations and expanding its trade with North Korea. But if on the other hand, Seoul managed to continue its diplomatic relations with Taiwan, South Korean firms would receive top priority in construc tion contracts and special trade benefits for five years. No such deal was in the cards, however. Taiwan had little bargaining power, since for strategic as well as economic reasons, fully normalized relations with China were far more important to South Korea than its ties with Taiwan.”

“ "we need your help, because China has to respond to Taiwan's gaining recognition abroad." The Chinese called on North Korea as old friends to magnanimously assist by permitting Beijing to recognize South Korea, thereby penalizing Taiwan for its actions.”

“the principal missing element in a serious atomic weapons program was a reprocessing plant.”

“Japan moved its secret weapons program to the northern part of its Korean colony to get away from the attacks and take advantage of the area's undamaged electricity-generating capacity and abundance of useful minerals. After the division of Korea in 1945, the Soviet Union mined monazite and other materials in the North for use in its own atomic weapons program.During the 1950-53 Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur requested authority to use atomic weapons and submitted a list of targets, for which he would need twenty-six A-bombs. His successor, General Matthew Ridgway, renewed MacArthur's request, but such weapons were never used. In early 1953 the newly inaugurated U.S. president, Dwight Eisenhower, began dropping hints that the United States would use the atom bomb if the deadlock persisted in the negotiations to conclude an armistice ending the war. Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and Vice President Richard Nixon all claimed later that the nuclear threats had played a major role in bringing about the truce, although recent revelations from Soviet archives cast doubt on that analysis.”

“Chinese leaders thought this was a very expensive project," said an official who was in the Korea section of the Chinese Foreign Ministry at the time. "North Korea is a very small country. [Chinese leaders thought] it wasn't needed.”

“North Korea sought to obtain civil nuclear power stations from the Soviet Union to alleviate its growing power shortages. ”

“Moscow agreed to supply four light-water nuclear power reactors-the type the Soviets operated at Chernobyl in Ukraine-but only if North Korea would join the NPT.”

“American nuclear weapons were stationed uncomfortably close to the DMZ and that nuclear warheads had been flown by helicopter almost routinely to the edge of the DMZ in training exercises.”

“On September 27, in an initiative calculated to bring forth reciprocal steps from Moscow, Bush announced the removal of all ground-based and seabased tactical nuclear weapons from U.S. forces worldwide. The withdrawal of the nuclear artillery from South Korea would leave in place there only some sixty nuclear warheads for air-delivered gravity bombs.”

“The withdrawal of the American nuclear weapons had a powerful effect in North Korea, contributing in important fashion to an era of compromise and conciliation.”

“When Representative Stephen Solarz met Kim 11 Sung on December 18 in Pyongyang, the Great Leader declared, pounding the table at the end of a long and contentious meeting, "We have no nuclear reprocessing facilities!”

“Pyongyang also saw relations with the United States as an important victory in its zero-sum game with the South. Its leaders hoped that the beginning of a relationship with Washington could, to some extent, substitute for the collapse of its alliance with Moscow”

“A semi-independent UN technical agency, it reports to the Security Council but is governed by a thirty-five-nation Board of Governors”

“Desert Storm, however, disclosed that Iraq, which was an NPT signatory, had carried on an intensive and sophisticated nuclear weapons program at secret sites adjacent to those being inspected by the agency. ”

“North Korea became the first test case of their new capabilities and attitudes.”

“described the works inside the giant building as "extremely primitive" and far from ready to produce the quantities of plutonium needed for a stockpile of atomic weapons. This conclusion contradicted worst-case U.S. assessments, such as that by CIA director Robert Gates on March 27 that "we believe Pyongyang is close, perhaps very close, to having a nuclear weapon capability.”

“The second inspection [in July] saw something that didn't fit the picture, the first signals that something was wrong." More discrepancies appeared beginning with the third inspection, which took place in September.”

“Far more sophisticated tests were conducted for the IAEA in supporting laboratories run out of the U.S. Air Force Technology Applications Center at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. Much of the work of this laboratory, which had pioneered the analysis of Soviet nuclear tests, had been secret during the cold war.”

“Blix and his experts reasoned that "there must be some more plutonium," but "whether it is grams or kilograms, we don't know.”

“They never expected us to be able to perform isotopic analyses. They could not understand this or explain the [test result] differences. The more they learned, the more they provided manufactured responses. We had to approach them harder and harder as they realized we were going to discover their wrongdoings."”

“secret invitation to travel to Pyongyang for the Great Leader's 80th birthday. To meet his counterpart on this occasion would make him seem to be a celebrant at Kim's party.”

“To Korea experts in Washington and to Donald Gregg, U.S. ambassador to Seoul, it was an unpleasant bolt from the blue-he later called it "one of the biggest mistakes" of Korea policy on his watch.For North Korea, the cancellation of the 1992 Team Spirit exercise had been the most tangible evidence of its improved relationship with the United States and the U.S. concession of greatest immediate benefit to the North Korean military establishment. While Americans tended to scoff at Pyongyang's fears that the annual field exercise was a threat to its national security, the landing of large numbers of additional American troops in South Korea by sea and air, the profusion of flights near the DMZ by American nuclear-capable warplanes, and the movement of heavily armed ROK and U.S. ground troops made a powerful impression on the North-as Team Spirit's planners had hoped from the start, nearly two decades earlier. Moreover, Team Spirit was personally important to Kim Il Sung, who had been complaining bitterly about it publicly and privately for many years. A U.S. official who visited Pyongyang in 1993 said the Great Leader's voice quivered and his hands shook with anger when he discussed[…]”

“In a public statement, North Korea described the threat to resume the maneuvers in 1993 as "a criminal act" designed to "put the brakes on North-South relations and drive the North-South dialogue to a crisis.”

“declaring that the decision to revive the Team Spirit exercise is "an act of provocation breaking the U.S. promise not to make nuclear threats."The day before the U.S.-ROK Team Spirit announcement, the Agency for National Security Planning (NSP), Seoul's renamed domestic and foreign intelligence agency, announced the arrest of sixty-two people in what it charged was the largest North Korean espionage ring in the history of the republic. More than three hundred others were implicated, the agency claimed, including a female member of the North Korean Workers Party hierarchy who had lived in the South under false identities several times in earlier decades. “

“The top floor was filled with heavy weapons, including tanks and missiles on mobile carriages. North Korea subsequently refused to permit formal inspection of the facility on grounds it was a military site and therefore should be exempt from inspection. The IAEA does not accept such an exemption.”

“Blix said there was also clear evidence that the North Koreans had sought to camouflage a nearby outdoor nuclear waste facility.”

“CIA was much less willing to display them to a board that included officials of leftist third-world countries such as Libya, Syria, and Algeria and in the presence of North Korean representatives.The CIA bureaucracy in Washington initially rejected showing the photos, but in response to urgent requests from the State Department, outgoing CIA director Robert Gates overruled his staff. Thirty years earlier, intelligence photos taken by a U-2 spy plane over Cuba had startled the world when they had been publicly displayed in the UN Security Council by the Kennedy administration during the Cuban missile crisis. In the meantime, orbiting satellites and highresolution cameras had made further remarkable advances, placing every spot on earth within range of prying American eyes. Although the CIA was reluctant to advertise its prowess, Gates knew that sensitive intelligence photos had been displayed for the Security Council on the Chad issue in the early 1980s, on the Iran-Iraq War later in the 1980s, and on Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991-92. "For me," Gates recalled, "the notion of sharing imagery with an international agency was not as new or as radical a step as it may have been to the bureaucracy.”

“The impact was electric. Although the senior North Korean representative at the meeting, Ho Jin Yun, denounced the photographs as fakery, the initially skeptical board was deeply and decisively impressed. At the end of its meeting, on February 25, the board demanded that North Korea permit the special inspection of the two disputed sites "without delay.”

“the credibility and international standing of both the IAEA and North Korea were at risk, with the stakes very high for both sides. If the IAEA could not secure international backing for inspections when there was evidence of cheating, its newly asserted authority could be defied with impunity, and the post-Iraq drive against nuclear weapons proliferation would be set back decisively.”

“Also at risk was the sensitive issue of respect, what Koreans call ch'emyon and Westerners call "face," a matter of tremendous, almost overwhelming, importance to the reclusive North Korean regime. "For us, saving face is as important as life itself,”

“they would almost certainly provide overwhelming evidence that North Korea had not told the IAEA the whole truth about its nuclear facilities and then had sought to cover up its misstatements. In the court of international opinion, North Korea would face demeaning condemnation. Such a prospect was intolerable for Pyongyang. As the tension increased, the country's minister of atomic energy, Choi Hak Gun, told IAEA inspectors, "Even if we had done it [cheated], we would never admit it.”

“As the conflict between the IAEA and North Korea was coming to a head in November 1992, Governor Bill Clinton was winning the American presidential election over incumbent George Bush. The outgoing administration was unwilling to contemplate long-range policies for dealing with North Korea and the issues posed by its nuclear noncompliance,”

“Kim Young Sam, assisted by last-minute red-baiting against Kim Dae Jung, won the presidential election in mid-December and took office on February 25, far from well equipped to deal with immediate crisis.”

“switch to a state of readiness for war" in view of the Team Spirit "nuclear war test aimed at a surprise, preemptive strike at the northern half of the country.”

“On March 12^th, Norht Korea said it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, citing the treaty's escape clause on defending supreme national interests. It gave two reasons: the Team Spirit "nuclear war rehearsal," it charged, had violated the spirit of the NPT and of the North-South denuclearization accord; and the IAEA demand for special inspection of two suspect sites, which it described as "an undisguised strong arm act designed to disarm the DPRK and strangle our socialist system.”

“unwelcome surprise to the newly installed governments of Kim Young Sam in Seoul and Bill Clinton in Washington”

“touching off an arms race that could spur Japan as well as South Korea to become nuclear weapons powers and destroy the international nonproliferation regime”

“Under chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which had been invoked after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, these sanctions could range from downgrading or severance of diplomatic relations to economic embargoes or military action. The carrots could include cancellation of the Team Spirit military exercise, security guarantees, trade, and other inducements to cooperate with the international community. "Pressure alone will not work," Han declared.Han's approach was in line with the thinking of most officials in the State Department, whose business and tradition is to negotiate”

“even a "surgical strike" against the Yongbyon reactor would lead to a major escalation of hostilities on the peninsula. ”

“Negotiations quickly emerged as the consensus solution in Washington, not because they appeared to be promising but because nobody could come up with another feasible plan to head off a crisis”

“urging direct negotiations between the United States and North Korea, which were ardently desired by Pyongyang. South Korean Foreign Minister Han, in a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen in Bangkok on April 22, said Seoul would drop its long-standing opposition to Washington-Pyongyang talks if China, in return, would agree not to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling on the North to comply with international nuclear inspections rather than withdraw”

“As Gallucci said later, he was "blissfully ignorant of profound regional contact," having previously spent only five days in South Korea and none in the North. ”

“he told American negotiators at one point that one of his favorite books was Gone with the Wind. To their amazement, he quoted from it to prove the point.”

“The exchanges that followed did not get far, with North Koreans adamantly refusing to stay in the NPT and the Americans demanding that they do so. ”

“Quinones returned to New York and met three Pyongyang officials in a Forty-second Street coffee shop. There for the next three days, the American diplomat carried on a Socratic dialogue with the DPRK diplomats, drinking orange juice and coffee for hours at a time at a table by the front window of the coffee shop, where nobody paid any attention to them except (Quinones learned later) the FBI, which photographed the rendezvous. ”

“in return, a North Korean decision to "suspend" its withdrawal from the NPT for "as long as it considers”

“though it did not resolve any of the inspection issues that had brought it on. ”

“Above all, Kang handled the nuclear questions in ways that suggested these were bargainable-that agreements could be made on many issues, if the two sides could agree on the price.”

“By raising the stakes with its nuclear program, North Korea suddenly had become important to the United States. For the same reasons that Pyongyang was satisfied, the joint statement raised hackles in conservative circles in Seoul,”

“follow-up communications take place through the North Korean UN Mission in New York.”

“If North Korea's objective had been to seize the attention of Washington and force it to negotiate seriously on a bilateral basis, its strategy had succeeded brilliantly.”

“the new South Korean president, Kim Young Sam, voiced harsh criticisms of the negotiations in separate interviews with the British Broadcasting Company and The New York Times.”

“Kim charged that the North Koreans were manipulating the negotiations "to buy time to finish their project,”

“American officials, who had undertaken the negotiations at the suggestion of the South and who had kept the South informed step by step, reacted with shock and anger.”

“ Kim's views on North Korea were replete with inconsistency.”

“Born on an island off the far south coast, Kim Young Sam had had little to do with North Korea issues during most of his career as an opposition political leader. Except for his strong prodemocracy stands, Kim was considered moderate to conservative on most political issues. As noted in Chapter 6, his mother had been murdered in 1960 by a North Korean agent who had invaded his parents' home. In 1992 his successful campaign for president featured anticommunist attacks on his longtime adversary Kim Dae Jung, ”

“What drove Kim Young Sam's northern policies above all were the tides of domestic public opinion”

“in discussing his reactions to events, even in meetings and telephone calls with the U.S. president.”

“Due to U.S. security commitments, he said, "it is pointless for [North Koreans] to try to develop nuclear weapons because if they ever use them it would be the end of their country.”

“The DPRK, he announced, was willing to shift its entire nuclear development program to more up-to-date, less proliferation-prone light-water reactors (LWRs) to fill its energy needs, if these could be supplied by the international community.”

“hey are much more complex than the primitive gas-graphite reactors, which were in service or under construction in Yongbyon”

“LWRs would produce vastly more energy: If it were working well, Yongbyon's only operating reactor, rated at 5 megawatts (5 million watts), would produce only enough electricity to power perhaps five large American office buildings; but two standard LWRs would produce 2,000 megawatts-nearly enough electricity to power the Washington metropolitan area.”

“Robert Carlin, the senior North Korea-watcher in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, wrote on his note pad, "They want out of this issue.”

“The last time I looked, such reactors cost about $1 billion per copy," he told the North Koreans.North Korea's quest for light-water reactors, although new to most of the Americans at the conference table, actually had a long history. The Soviet reactors that Pyongyang had requested in the mid1980s were to have been of the light-water type.”

“Privately Gallucci characterized his initial negotiating posture as, "If they do everything we want, we send them a box of oranges.”

“Now the objective in view was much more ambitious-but it was also clear that Pyongyang would demand more extensive benefits in return. While American officials were intrigued and some elated, many in Seoul were unhappy with the shift from limited to virtually unlimited U.S.-DPRK talks.”

“Pyongyang, however, insisted that in suspending its withdrawal from the treaty, it had entered a "special" and "unique" category in which it alone would determine what inspection requirements to accept.”

“While the IAEA was uncomfortable with this ad hoc concept-insisting that North Korea should comply in the fullest with its requirements-it went along.”

“only to replace the film and batteries in the monitoring equipment.”

“The General Assembly reacted with a resounding 140-to-1 vote (with China abstaining and only Pyongyang dissenting) urging North Korea "to cooperate immediately" with the IAEA, a demonstration of how isolated Pyongyang had become.”

“ Reuters news agency, which filed the most breathless dispatch, quoted a senior U.S. defense official as saying, "We may be entering a kind of danger zone," because North Korea had massed 70 percent of its military force near South Korea (which in fact was nothing new) and might launch a desperate conventional attack on the South sparked by hunger and economic frustration in Pyongyang. In a precursor to concerns which later were to be widely discussed, Aspin told the reporters, "These guys are starving" and may feel that "you can either starve or get killed in a war." The Aspin briefing gave rise to a full-scale journalistic war scare”

“On November 5 a passionate column by Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post demanded that Clinton "stop talking to the North Koreans-it is time for an economic blockade-and start talk ing to the American people" about a military emergency in Asia. The administration was so jarred by Krauthammer's column that a State Department meeting was convened to discuss it. Two days later, President Clinton threw oil on the fire by warning on NBC's Meet the Press that "North Korea cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb,”

“On November 15, after fifteen midlevel meetings in New York and a host of letters back and forth to Pyongyang, the administration finally decided to put its own "package deal" on the table. The essence of the immediate bargain was North Korean resumption of regular IAEA inspections and a renewal of dialogue with the South, in return for cancellation of the 1994 Team Spirit military exercise and the convening of the long-delayed third round of U.S.-DPRK negotiations. Phase two, to be bargained in detail when American and North Korean negotiators finally began their third round, would deal with IAEA inspections of the two disputed Yongbyon waste sites, diplomatic recognition of North Korea, and trade and investment concessions from the United States, South Korea, and Japan.”

“The publicity was a bombshell in Seoul, which was always extremely sensitive to American concessions to North Korea, and especially to suggestions that South Korea was not the dominant force in policy toward Pyongyang. In addition, the proposal was anathema to President Kim Young Sam for another and highly personal reason: a "package deal" similar in name and concept had been publicly suggested in spring by his longtime rival in domestic politics, Kim Dae Jung. If he was for it, Kim Young Sam was automatically against it.”

“Kim announced that it looked to him and his people as if the United States were accommodating North Korea without even giving Seoul a role in the decision process. His eyes flashing and his gestures emphatic, Kim insisted that he, not the Americans, have the final say on whether to cancel the Team Spirit exercise, and that he be the one to announce the decision when the time came.”

“the Americans realized that Kim's objections had as much to do with appearance as with substance. A change in terminology to describe the proposal to North Korea as "thorough and broad" rather than as "comprehensive" or a "package" seemed to ease Kim's concern substantially. The White House also agreed to permit Kim to announce the final decision on postponement of Team Spirit if it came to that, and to make the exchange of North-South "special envoys" a prerequisite for the next round of U.S.-DPRK talks. The latter requirement proved to be an important stumbling block: North Korea bitterly resented being required to give in to the South's demand in order to deal with the Americans.”

“Battered by the collapse of its allies and trading partners and by economic stagnation at home, "the socialist paradise" was suffering its fourth consecutive year of economic decline. Its GNP, once on a par with that of the South, was estimated at one-sixteenth the size of the booming ROK economy, and the gap was growing rapidly.Instead of adopting a new seven-year plan with the usual emphasis on heavy industry, the party decreed a three-year period of transition, with top priority given to agriculture, light industry, and foreign trade. Behind the brave rhetoric about "socialist construction," the meaning of the shift was clear: the North's leaders had lowered their sights and were aiming at mere survival. They were failing to feed their people and to provide enough clothing and other consumer goods to avoid privation”

“we came up against considerable difficulty and obstacles in the economic construction owing to the unexpected international events and the acute situation created in the country.”

“Adding to the impact of Kim's change in direction and tone was evidence that in his eighties he was emerging from semiretirement to reassert himself in day-to-day administration. American experts interpreted this as a sign of dissatisfaction with the work of his eldest son, Kim Jong 11, who had been openly designated as his chosen successor in 1980.”

“According to a variety of North Korean and foreign sources, the younger Kim had increasingly assumed the management of governmental and party affairs. ”

“Beginning in March 1992, startled by the contrast with rosier reports that he had been receiving through official channels, Kim 11 Sung convened a series of extended Workers Party meetings on the economic situation. By the end of the year, the incumbent prime minister had been fired and Kang had been brought back for his third term in the job. In early 1993 Kim presided over an extended Politburo conference on the economic troubles, which led eventually to the new economic policies”

“Under pressure from Congress and editorial columnists not to reward Pyongyang prematurely, American officials announced that the third round of negotiations would not start until the IAEA inspections and now-contentious exchange of North-South envoys had been successfully accomplished.”

“they were barred from taking sophisticated measurements at key points in the seventh and most sensitive site, the plutonium reprocessing plant. While the North Koreans produced legalistic justifications for its refusal to permit the measurements, IAEA officials concluded that its real purpose was to apply pressure in connection with its dispute with the South”

“the agency could not verify that there had been no diversion of nuclear materials to bomb production.”

“As before, the North-South dialogue had broken down, pressures from all sides were building up against Pyongyang”

“Pyongyang enhanced its bargaining power whenever its cooperation with the IAEA diminished and the threat increased that it might proceed to manufacture nuclear weapons.”

“North Korea repeatedly declared that "sanctions are a declaration of war.”

“better than even" chance that North Korea already had the makings of a bomb (though State Department and U.S. national laboratory analysts hotly dissented), and it was the basis for numerous public statements along similar lines by the secretary of defense, the CIA director, and other senior U.S. government officials. (Much later, after the crisis was over, the CIA "reassessed" its methods of observation and concluded that the lower figure cited by North Korea, 60 days, could well have been right. If this were the case, the theoretical weapons potential of North Korea's plutonium was considerably smaller than had been stated at the time.)Others believed, even at the time of the crisis, that the U.S. intelligence estimate was, in the words of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a "worst-case scare-nario"-that it was highly unlikely that North Korea could have unloaded so many rods so quickly”

“Clinton's national security adviser, Anthony Lake, told me, that the president often received diametrically opposite estimates on North Korea from the CIA and the State Department on the same day.”

“From Pyongyang's viewpoint, however, this was a no-win proposition: if it was established that Pyongyang had not diverted nuclear fuel clandestinely to manufacture plutonium in the past, its nuclear threat would diminish and with it the country's bargaining power; but if the supervised unloading established that Pyongyang had lied and produced more plutonium than it had admitted, it would lose face and the hunt would be on for the missing nuclear material.”

“What they want us to be is a man without defense secrets, just a naked man. We cannot accept that. We would rather accept a war. If they decide to make war, we accept the war, the challenge we are prepared for." In case anyone failed to get the point, North Korea issued a formal statement on June 5 announcing that "sanctions mean war, and there is no mercy in war.”

“In 1994 roughly 65 percent of North Korean forces, including 8,400 artillery pieces and 2,400 multiple rocket launchers, were estimated to be stationed within sixty miles of the DMZ, compared with 45 percent a decade earlier. U.S. estimates were that in case of war, North Korea could pound Seoul with five thousand rounds of artillery within the first twelve hours, causing havoc, death, and destruction in the capital despite the fierce counterattack planned by U.S. and ROK forces.At the same time, Luck was impressed with the fundamental weakness of the North Korean capacity to sustain a long war. Privation was taking a serious toll on its military, despite the fact that Pyongyang was estimated to be spending about 25 percent of its GNP on maintaining its huge force of 1.1 million troops. North Korean military pilots had long been able to fly only a few hours a year because of the desperate shortage of fuel”

“chairman General John Shalikashvili summoned every active four-star general and admiral in the U.S. military, including several brought from commands across the world, to a Pentagon conference room on May 18. The subject was how the entire U.S. military would support Luck's war plan for Korea, with troops, materiel, and logistics”

“Everyone was conscious that this was no paper exercise but "a real meeting of real war fighters to decide how they were going to fight a war," ”

“If war broke out in Korea, his military leaders told him, they estimated it would cost 52,000 U.S. military casualties, killed or wounded, and 490,000 South Korean military casualties in the first ninety days, plus an enormous number of North Korean and civilian lives, at a financial outlay exceeding $61 billion, very little of which could be recouped from U.S. allies. This horrendous tragedy would be by far the gravest crisis of Clinton's sixteen-month-old presidency,”

“the administration suddenly veered back toward diplomatic efforts, offering to convene its long-postponed third round of high-level negotiations with Pyongyang despite the unloading of the nuclear reactor.”

“They have triggered this, not the United States or anyone else," Clinton told reporters. "I just don't think we can walk away from this."Looking back on the crisis, Perry identified the defueling of the North Korean reactor as the turning point, when it appeared that dialogue and "preventive diplomacy" had failed and when U.S. strategy shifted to "coercive diplomacy" involving sanctions. In the view of American military planners, the unloaded fuel rods represented a tangible and physical threat that the DPRK could move ahead to manufacture nuclear weapons. If not stopped near the beginning, they believed, North Korea eventually could possess an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons, which it could use for threats and blackmail and even to sell to high bidders in the Middle East. That simply could not be permitted to happen. Thus, despite the serious risk of war, "we believed that it was even more dangerous to allow North Korea to proceed with a large-scale nuclear weapons progra”

“the isolated country was relatively invulnerable to outside pressures, since it had so little international commerce and few important international connections of any sort.”

“He immediately dispatched a letter to Clinton telling him he had decided to go to Pyongyang in view of the dangers at hand. Clinton, on the advice of Vice President Gore, interposed no objection to the trip as long as Carter clearly stated that he was acting as a private citizen rather than as an official U.S. envoy.”

“As prepared for the Security Council, the sanctions resolution would have given North Korea a thirty-day grace period to change its policies, after which such relatively lightweight measures as a ban on arms sales and transfers of nuclear technology to Pyongyang would take effect. This would be followed, if necessary, by a second group of more painful sanctions, including a ban on remittances from abroad, such as those from pro-North Korean groups in Japan, and a cutoff of the vital oil supplies furnished by China and others. A potential third stage, if the others failed, was a blockade of shipping to and from North Korean ports.”

“Russia was in the process of attempting to rebuild relations with North Korea, which had nearly been destroyed in the abrupt 1990 Soviet turn toward South Korea.”

“Tokyo had been severely criticized in the West for failing to assist the American effort in the 1991 Gulf War, despite its dependence on gulf oil.”

“The Japanese political system was in an especially volatile and vulnerable state. At the time of the crisis, the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party had splintered and lost power, and the eight-party coalition government of Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata was in danger of collapsing. Its continuation in office depended on the acquiescence of the Japan Socialist Party, which had historically close relations with Pyongyang”

“remittances from Koreans in Japan to North Korea, which were estimated at about $600 million annually.”

“transfer of suitcases full of currency to electronic transfers through Switzerland, Hong Kong, and other financial capitals.”

“China, the main source of North Korea's energy and food imports, was by all estimates the most important Asian participant in the sanctions discussion. Since China had a veto in the UN Security Council, no sanctions resolution could be adopted without its acquiescence. While reluctant to use the veto, China consistently opposed sanctions against North Korea, saying that negotiations provided the only solution.At the same time, the Chinese were privately irritated by North Korea's actions and apprehensive that its policies could lead to a disaster on China's borders. A key moment came on May 29, when Clinton, in a reversal of previous administration policy, announced he would grant U.S. most-favored-nation trade status to China without human rights conditions. This made it more attractive and politically acceptable for Chinese leaders to cooperate with the United States on the Korea issue.”

“avoid voting on sanctions in the UN Security Council-and that was to persuade North Korea in advance that it could not count on a Chinese veto, and therefore North Korea would have to defuse the situation on its own.”

“Therefore Beijing strongly urged Pyongyang to take action to accommodate international opinion on the nuclear issue in its own interest or face drastic conse quences without Chinese protection. Many diplomats believe this warning had a substantial impact.”

“freeze further development of the reprocessing plant and all the rest of its nuclear program when binding commitments were received for delivery and financing of the LWRs.”

“This is a good idea. We can definitely accept it if the United States really makes a firm commitment that we can trust.”

“It gives me a headache when people demand to see something we don't have," said Kim. "It's like dogs barking at the moon. What would be the point of making one or two nuclear weapons when you have ten thousand plus delivery systems that we don't have.”

“largest civil defense exercise in many years to mobilize its citizens in case of war. Reacting to the growing atmosphere of crisis, the Seoul stock market dropped by 25 percent in two days and jittery South Koreans were jamming stores to stockpile rice, dried noodles, and candles.”

“46 percent of a nationwide sample of public opinion sponsored by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal said North Korea's nuclear development was the "most serious foreign policy issue facing the United States today," outdistancing the next most serious issue, instability in Russia, by more than three to one.”

“The predominant opinion of national columnists and commentators was that the United States should take a tough line with Pyongyang. Among the most prestigious voices were those of two former Bush administration officials, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former undersecretary of state Arnold Kanter, the official who had met the North Koreans in New York in early 1992. In The Washington Post on June 15, the day Jimmy Carter crossed into North Korea, they advocated a U.S. military strike to destroy the reprocessing plant at Yongbyon unless the DPRK was prepared to permit "continuous, unfettered" international monitoring.”

“as many as 1 million people would be killed in the resumption of full-scale war on the peninsula, including 80,000 to 100,000 Americans, that the out-of-pocket costs to the United States would exceed $100 billion, and that the destruction of property and interruption of business activity would cost more than $1,000 billion (one trillion) dollars to the countries involved and their immediate neighbors.”

“I always got this feeling that the North Koreans studied the desert [Operation Desert Storm against Iraq] more than we did almost," said a general with access to all the available intelligence. "And they learned one thing: you don't let the United States build up its forces and then let them go to war against you.... So I always felt that the North Koreans were never going to let us do a large buildup. They would see their window of opportunity closing, and they would come." Adding to this officer's apprehension was a chilling fact not well known outside the U.S. Command: at Panmunjom in May, a North Korean colonel told a U.S. officer: "We are not going to let you do a buildup.”

“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.”