S. Korea Plans Ties With Hungary, Lifts Sanctions Against North

In the first sign that South Korea’s contacts with Communist nations may expand dramatically after the Seoul Olympics, Hungary and South Korea announced Tuesday that they will establish diplomatic relations within two months.

At the same time in Tokyo, Japan moved to calm fears about terrorism at the Summer Games, which open Saturday, by announcing that it will lift sanctions imposed on North Korea after its agents were blamed in the bombing of a South Korean airliner last November.

The move to set up permanent missions in each other’s capitals marks the first time that any Communist nation has agreed to establish formal relations with South Korea, where 42,000 U.S. service personnel are stationed to guarantee the country’s security against Communist North Korea.

Until Tuesday’s announcement, governments in the Communist world had recognized the North Korean government but not the South Korean.

South Korea and Hungary announced that their missions will be headed by diplomats holding the rank of ambassador, and a South Korean spokesman said the two governments will undertake negotiations soon to establish full diplomatic relations. He noted that a permanent mission is “below the level of an embassy but above that of a consulate.”

South Korean diplomats said in private that they hope to see relations established with Yugoslavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

In the last six months, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria have set up trade offices in Seoul and permitted the government-run Korea Trade Promotion Corp. to set up similar offices in their capitals. In Japan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Keizo Obuchi said his government decided to remove the sanctions against North Korea so that “the Games may be conducted with the utmost possible relaxation of tension and in the friendly and generous spirit appropriate to a festival of peace.”

Repercussions from the bombing of the airliner last November--it disappeared near the Thai-Burmese border with 115 people on board--have put a severe strain on security arrangements for the Olympics. South Korean authorities have charged North Korea with plotting terrorism to disrupt the Games after failing in a bid to be the co-host.

The United States branded North Korea a “terrorist state” and Japan enacted its sanctions after a North Korean woman confessed to helping plant a bomb on the plane under orders from Kim Jong Il, the son and heir apparent to President Kim Il Sung.

Jameson reported from Seoul and Schoenberger from Tokyo.