North Should Talk With U.S., Says S. Korea’s Kim

SEOUL —  South Korean President Kim Dae Jung urged North Korea on Wednesday to accept President Bush’s offer of a dialogue and to live up to earlier promises made to South Korea before the window of opportunity for negotiations closes.

In an interview with The Times, his first with the foreign press since last week’s meeting here with Bush, Kim offered unusually blunt words about North Korea. Normally eager not to offend the famously thin-skinned regime in Pyongyang, he expressed clear frustration with its foot-dragging.

“The North must make a decision. It is their choice,” said Kim, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to engage the Communist North in dialogue. “We believe the Bush administration is sincere about wanting a dialogue. It is in the best interest of North Korea to pursue it.”

Kim also said there are no substantial differences of opinion between him and Bush on the subject of North Korea, although he admitted he had been taken aback to hear Bush brand North Korea as part of an “axis of evil” along with Iraq and Iran. “When I first heard this quote, I fully understood what he meant,” he said. “But with regard to that particular wording, it was unexpected.”

Offering behind-the-scenes insight on how the two leaders had bridged what had appeared to be a gaping chasm between the United States and South Korea, Kim said he reminded Bush that President Reagan had once labeled the Soviet Union an “evil empire” but kept the door open for a dialogue that eventually was successful.

“Although I understand fully why the North Korean leadership is not very likable, it is in the interests of global peace to pursue the policy of dialogue,” Kim said he told Bush. “I did not fail to point out that we are not naive about North Korea.”

North Korea has indignantly rejected any dialogue with the United States.

Clearly infuriated by Bush’s criticism during his Seoul trip of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the official newspaper Rodong Shinmun reported Wednesday that North Korea “does not feel any need to have such a useless dialogue.”

North Korea has been denouncing Bush with increasingly virulent language over the past week--at one point calling him “a politically backward child”--but has refrained from any criticism of South Korea. To veteran North Korea watchers, this is a sign that North Korea is on the verge of reopening the dialogue with South Korea.

“This augurs a very positive development which I think will come soon,” Kim Dae Jung said in the interview. But he said that negotiations between the Koreas alone will not accomplish much without the participation of the United States.

“What North Korea wants to achieve most is the stability of their system and economic recovery,” he said. “The United States is the only country that can guarantee these.”

Playing the role of elder statesman and historian, the 77-year-old Kim said he also spoke to Bush about the devastation of the 1950-1953 Korean War.

“What we are worried about is that if a war broke out in Korea, everything we built over the past 50 years will be reduced to ashes,” Kim recalled telling Bush.

He said that by the end of Bush’s 40-hour visit to South Korea, which included a trip to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, “President Bush did not change his view of the North Korean leadership at all, but he was very enthusiastic about dialogue. . . . He understood the South Korean people do not want a war at any cost.”

As for South Korea, Kim said his government fully understands and supports the United States’ concerns that North Korea is developing weapons of mass destruction and exporting dangerous missile technology.

“The issue of North Korean weapons of mass destruction must be resolved. . . . It must be resolved through dialogue,” said Kim, who reiterated his commitment to working closely with the United States, which maintains 37,000 soldiers in South Korea.

The interview took place in the Blue House, the presidential residence in Seoul, through an interpreter.

Kim’s acclaimed “sunshine policy” sent hopes soaring for a rapprochement between the estranged Koreas. Breaking the ice after 50 years of estrangement, Kim traveled in June 2000 to Pyongyang for a landmark meeting with North Korea’s Kim. In October of that year, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited North Korea, and it looked as if the Clinton administration or a Democratic successor would soon establish relations with the isolated regime.

But Bush rejected President Clinton’s approach, adopting a tougher line. An initial meeting at the White House last year with South Korea’s Kim ended in embarrassment after Bush publicly disparaged the sunshine policy. Whether as a result or not, the dialogue between North and South Korea stalled shortly afterward.

Now in his last year in office and barred by the constitution from seeking another term, Kim is clearly worried that time is running out.

Polls show opposition leader Lee Hoi Chang, a critic of the sunshine policy, running a solid 10 percentage points ahead of any candidate from Kim’s party. Borrowing a line from Israeli statesman Abba Eban about the Palestinians, many Korea analysts are saying lately that the North Koreans never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Kim, although excruciatingly careful not to offend North Korea, is increasingly outspoken in his frustration.

In the interview, he enumerated the many commitments that Pyongyang hasn’t honored: The heart-wrenching reunions of separated Korean families stopped a year ago. The North Koreans have balked at promises to rebuild their share of the railroad and highway that would link up the Koreas, to open an industrial complex near the border and to allow South Korean tourists to cross the DMZ. Kim Jong Il has not yet reciprocated Kim Dae Jung’s trip to Pyongyang with a visit to Seoul.

“There is a higher probability that the North Koreans can make some kind of agreement while I am still president of Korea,” Kim said. “That would at least give them a firm foundation to go forward with the next government.”

He suggested that the North Koreans should stop looking backward to what had happened during the Clinton administration and deal with the fact that Bush is president. “I believe the North Koreans should pick up the best offer on the table,” Kim said.

In the aftermath of Bush’s visit, few in Seoul are predicting that North Korea will relent on its refusal to talk with the U.S. Although the Bush administration has said repeatedly that it will meet at any time and in any place with North Korea, the U.S. president’s harsh criticism gave mixed signals. Among other comments, Bush called North Korea a “despotic regime.”

A Western diplomat here who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Bush’s trip was a success in smoothing over hurt feelings between the United States and South Korea but that the insults did little to advance a dialogue.

“Bush did not offer any helpful inducements to coax North Korea off of its limb,” the diplomat said.

Shin Jung Hyun, a professor at Kyunghee University in Seoul, said: “It looks like some economic talks will resume between North and South Korea, maybe the family reunions. But it will be a long time before North Korea talks with the United States.”