No Breakthrough Seen As Koreas Open Talks

In a bid to defuse festering Cold War animosity, the prime ministers of North and South Korea began a historic round of talks this morning, trading largely incompatible proposals for disarmament and reconciliation.

South Korean Prime Minister Kang Young Hoon opened the meeting, the highest-level political contact ever made between the two rival regimes, by proposing a package of intermediate measures aimed at improving the atmosphere before specific commitments on arms reduction are made.

Kang suggested also that the north, which has the larger military force, should make the first move to disarm “to achieve an equilibrium.”

His North Korean counterpart, Yon Hyong Muk, answered with demands that South Korea cease joint military exercises with U.S. troops stationed here and that eventually all foreign troops and nuclear weapons be withdrawn from the peninsula. He described a specific plan for the two Koreas to gradually and simultaneously reduce military strength in three phases over three or four years, beginning with a cut to 300,000 troops on each side.

Although there appeared to be little hope of a breakthrough in the talks, there was some common ground in the opening positions. Both sides agreed on the need for a nonaggression pact--although Yon suggested that it should be followed with a peace treaty signed between North Korea and the United States, which fought alongside forces of the south under the U.N. command during the 1950-53 Korean War. It was the United States, not South Korea, that signed the armistice halting the conflict 37 years ago.

Another point of agreement was what Kang called “demilitarizing the demilitarized zone,” the heavily fortified no man’s land that stretches along the border.

The north also echoed South Korea’s call for a hot line between high-level military officials, increased economic cooperation and humanitarian and cultural exchanges.

South Korea’s prime minister dusted off a series of old proposals, including the holding of a “grand inter-Korean exchange” of people during selected holidays--a temporary border-opening scheme that failed because of procedural obstructions on a first attempt last month.

Kang advocated the resumption of mail and telecommunication services and rail links, which have been severed since 1948. He proposed a “basic agreement” for improving relations that included confidence-building measures such as ceasing mutual “slander and vilification” and renouncing attempts to “sabotage or overthrow each other,” a reference to South Korean fears of the north’s revolutionary aims.

Yon raised the sticky question of South Korea’s jailing of several dissidents who had made unauthorized trips to North Korea last year, saying their punishment remains a barrier to improving political relations.

On Tuesday, Yon’s delegation challenged its South Korean hosts by asking to see the families of the jailed dissidents.

In a statement issued shortly after the entourage of seven high officials, 33 aides and 50 journalists arrived at Seoul’s Inter-Continental Hotel, the North Korean delegation said it hoped to meet with “leading personalities in politics and various social strata” during its three-day stay, as well as with relatives of the families of the people--including two priests, a National Assembly member and a female university student--who were imprisoned for making the illicit trips to the north.

When asked at an afternoon news conference how the Seoul government would respond, Hong Sung Chul, minister of Seoul’s National Unification Board, said no previous mention had been made of the request during months of preparation for the talks. He suggested that straying from the program would not be permitted.

A major stumbling block in the inter-Korean dialogue in the past has been North Korea’s insistence that the Seoul government is not a legitimate representative of people in South Korea. The agreement to have the prime ministers meet here this week--and again in October in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang--was viewed optimistically as a tacit recognition of the Seoul regime’s authority.

But in expressing the desire to see other social groups--terminology understood to mean anti-government dissidents--the North Korean delegation signaled that it would take a hard line in the two days of talks.

The proposal to visit family members of people jailed for traveling to North Korea was a direct provocation similar to the one that helped derail a plan for cross-border exchanges in mid-August. At that time, North Korea requested prison visits.

On crossing the demarcation line in Panmunjom earlier in the day, the spokesman for the north’s delegation made a pointed reference to Im Su Kyung, a young female student from Seoul who captured hearts in North Korea when she attended a socialist youth festival in Pyongyang in July of last year. She was arrested on her return through Panmunjom.

“We recall with sadness the young ‘flower of reunification’ who crossed this same line last year, expressing her yearning that we would meet again in a unified fatherland,” said An Byong Su, head of North Korea’s reunification agency.

Im Pan Ho, the father of the jailed student, said that he felt no particular desire to meet with North Korean delegates or reporters but would be available if contacted--even if it meant that he was being exploited for propaganda purposes.

“I don’t know whether the North Koreans would try to use me or not, but it doesn’t matter,” Im said. “We’re all the same people, and I don’t think I could turn them away.”

The first few hours in the capitalist south, which North Korean propaganda typically paints as decadent, polluted and violent, included a road mishap that might reinforce such preconceptions for some of the northern delegates. Their motorcade of big South Korean-made sedans was involved in a three-car pileup as it entered a major intersection on the edge of central Seoul. Communist propaganda aside, Seoul is renowned for its hazardous driving.

One informed source suggested that the accident had been caused by a car carrying overzealous South Korean reporters. No one was seriously injured.

After today’s opening session, which was open to the news media, a second, closed meeting was to be held Thursday. The North Korean delegates are scheduled to pay a courtesy call on President Roh Tae Woo on Thursday afternoon.