DPRK-ROK Relations - 1950-1994 - Kim Il-sung
The reunification of the two Koreas was seen as a difficult goal by both the North and South. Although P’yongyang and Seoul agreed in principle in 1972 that unification should be achieved peacefully and without foreign interference, they continued to differ substantially on the practical methods of attaining reunification; this area of disagreement has not narrowed in subsequent years. Inter-Korean dialogue in North Korea was the responsibility of the State Security Department.
North Korea’s goal of unification remains constant, but tactics have changed depending on the perception of opportunities and limitations implicit in shifting domestic and external currents and events. From the beginning, North Korea has insisted that an inter-Korean political formula should be based on parity or equality, rather than population. Because South Korea has more than twice the population of North Korea, a supreme Korean council set up according to a one-person, one-vote formula would give South Korea a commanding position. Another constant was P’yongyang’s insistence that the Korean question be settled as an internal Korean affair without foreign interference.
P’yongyang’s position that unification should be achieved by peaceful means was belied by circumstances surrounding the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 and by subsequent infiltrations, the digging of invasion tunnels under the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and other incidents. North Korea’s contention that the conflict was started by South Korea and the United States failed to impress South Korea’s population and has been proven false by Soviet archives.
The war, in effect, reinforced the obvious ideological and systemic incompatibilities that were in place at the time of the division of the peninsula in 1945. At the 1954 Geneva Conference, North Korea proposed the formation of an all-Korean commission to achieve unification and a single, elected legislature; the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the Korean Peninsula; and the formal declaration by outside powers of the need for peaceful development and unification in Korea. P’yongyang also proposed that the armies of both countries be reduced to 100,000 persons each within a year, that neither side enter into any military alliance, and that measures be taken to facilitate economic and cultural exchanges. The sincerity of these proposals was at best debatable, but the positions taken by North Korea in the early Cold War years clearly reflected confidence and competitiveness with South Korea in military, economic, and political terms.
Inter-Korean affairs became more complex in 1970 and 1971, in part because of the U.S. decision to withdraw some of its troops from South Korea and because of moves by the United States and China to improve their relations.
In August 1971, amid signs of a thaw in the Cold War and an uncertain international environment, the Red Cross societies of Seoul and P’yongyang agreed to open talks aimed at the eventual reunion of dispersed families. These high-level talks—between Kim Il Sung’s brother and the chief of the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency—were held alternately in the two capitals and paralleled behind-the-scenes contacts to initiate political negotiations, reportedly at South Korea’s suggestion.
The talks continued to make progress and resulted in a joint communiqué issued on July 4, 1972, in which the two countries agreed to abide by three principles of unification: to work toward reunifying the country independently and without foreign interference; to transcend differences in ideology and political systems; and to unify the peninsula peacefully without the use of armed force.
Officials exchanged visits, and regular communications were established through a North-South coordinating committee and the Red Cross. Despite the various committees set up by the 1972 communiqué, it quickly became obvious to both sides that they had fundamentally divergent approaches. North Korea’s position “front-loaded” all significant concessions from the South, including the withdrawal of all foreign troops from South Korea, while the South sought to build transparency and trust first through confidence-building measures and “low politics” cooperation.
These initial contacts broke down in 1973 following South Korean President Park Chung-hee's announcement that the South would seek separate entry into the United Nations, and after the kidnapping of South Korean opposition leader Kim Dae-jung--perceived as friendly to unified entry into the UN--by South Korean intelligence services. There was no other significant contact between North and South Korea until 1984.
At the Sixth Party Congress in October 1980, Kim Il Sung proposed the establishment of the Democratic Confederal Republic of Koryo, which would be based on a single unified state, leaving the two systems intact and federating the two governments. The Supreme National Assembly, with an equal number of representatives from North and South and an appropriate number of representatives of overseas Koreans, would be formed with a confederal standing committee to “guide the regional governments of the North and the South and to administer all the affairs of the confederal state.” The regional governments of the North and South would have independent policies—within limits—consistent with the fundamental interests and demands of the whole nation and would strive to narrow their differences in all areas. But South Korea rejected the confederation as a propaganda ploy.
In October 1983, a bomb blast in Rangoon, Burma, decimated South Korean president Chun Doo Hwan’s cabinet and very nearly killed Chun himself. A Burmese court determined that North Korean terrorists carried out this despicable act. The North Koreans presumably acted on the assumption that killing Chun would have an effect similar to the 1979 assassination of South Korean president Park Chung-hee: that is, the removal of the maximum leader causes deep disorders to the political system; they were probably right.
Dialogue was renewed in September 1984, when South Korea accepted the North's offer to provide relief goods to victims of severe flooding in South Korea. Red Cross talks to address the plight of separated families resumed, as did talks on economic and trade issues and parliamentary-level discussions. However, the North then unilaterally suspended all talks in January 1986, arguing that the annual U.S.-R.O.K. "Team Spirit" military exercises were inconsistent with dialogue. There was a brief flurry of negotiations that year on co-hosting the 1988 Seoul Olympics, which ended in failure and was followed by the 1987 bombing of a South Korean commercial aircraft (Korean Airlines flight 858) by North Korean agents.
The act was linked to North Korea. The motive for that act was more murky, perhaps intended to dissuade foreigners from coming to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. If so, it bespoke desperation and a purely malicious and gratuitous terrorism emanating from P’yongyang.
South Korea pursued an active diplomacy toward China, the Soviet Union and then Russia, and various East European countries, saying it would favor trade and diplomatic relations with “friendly” communist regimes. This policy bore fruit in 1988, when most communist countries attended the Seoul Olympics, with only Cuba honoring the North Korean “boycott.” The Olympics went off without widely predicted terrorist activity.
In July 1988, South Korean President Roh Tae-woo called for new efforts to promote North-South exchanges, family reunification, inter-Korean trade, and contact in international forums. Roh followed up this initiative in a UN General Assembly speech in which South Korea offered for the first time to discuss security matters with the North.
Seoul began to speak more openly about the rising level of direct and indirect inter-Korean trade, much to the displeasure of P'yongyang, which claimed that Seoul had fabricated these trade stories. By 1988, however, Seoul began to reduce tariffs and other duties to liberalize trade with P'yongyang. Trade statistics provided by Seoul and P'yongyang on north-south trade were largely unreliable as each government had its own reasons for reporting high or low figures. Much of the trade was conducted through third parties.
P'yongyang's response to Seoul consisted of three points -- asking for the repeal of the National Security Act, which designated P'yongyang an enemy, making a declaration of nonaggression, and establishing a "Peaceful Reunification Committee." Over the next few months, Roh's government attempted to make progress toward satisfying each of these requirements. In his October 18, 1988, United Nations speech, Roh advocated convening a six-nation consultative conference to achieve a permanent peace settlement in Korea and called for establishing a partnership with P'yongyang. In his 1989 New Year's address, Kim Il Song extended an invitation to the presidents of the major South Korean political parties and religious leaders, including Cardinal Kim Soo Hwan, Reverend Mun Ik-hwan, and Reverend Paek Ki-wan, for a leadership-level inter-Korean reunification meeting to be held in P'yongyang. However, any meaningful inter-Korean dialogue bogged down at P'yongyang's objections to the annual United States-South Korean Team Spirit military exercises.
Initial meetings that grew out of Roh's proposals started in September 1989. In September 1990, the first of eight prime minister-level meetings between North Korean and South Korean officials took place in Seoul. The prime ministerial talks resulted in two major agreements: the Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, Exchanges, and Cooperation (the "Basic Agreement") and the Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula (the "Joint Declaration").
The Basic Agreement, signed on December 13, 1991, called for reconciliation and nonaggression and established four joint commissions. These commissions--on North-South reconciliation, North-South military affairs, North-South economic exchanges and cooperation, and North-South social and cultural exchange--were to work out the specifics for implementing the Basic Agreement. Subcommittees to examine specific issues were created, and liaison offices were established in Panmunjom. However, in the fall of 1992 the process came to a halt because of rising tension over North Korea's nuclear program.
The Joint Declaration on denuclearization was initialed on December 31, 1991. It forbade both sides from testing, manufacturing, producing, receiving, possessing, storing, deploying, or using nuclear weapons and forbade the possession of nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities. A procedure for inter-Korean inspection was to be organized, and a North-South Joint Nuclear Control Commission (JNCC) was mandated to verify the denuclearization of the peninsula.
On January 30, 1992, the D.P.R.K. finally signed a nuclear safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as it had pledged to do in 1985 when it acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This safeguards agreement allowed IAEA inspections to begin in June 1992. In March 1992, the JNCC was established in accordance with the Joint Declaration, but subsequent meetings failed to reach agreement on the main issue of establishing a bilateral inspection regime.
The collapse of East European communism grievously damaged North Korean diplomacy, as Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, and other states opened diplomatic relations with Seoul.
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