Seoul, Moscow Pledge to Cooperate on Reunification of 2 Koreas : Detente: Gorbachev and Roh also agree to seek reduced tensions in Asia and boost economic ties.

South Korea and the Soviet Union, celebrating their establishment of diplomatic relations after years of animosity, pledged Friday to work together toward the eventual reunification of Korea and the reduction of tension in Asia.

South Korean President Roh Tae Woo said that his country’s new relationship with the Soviet Union, long the patron of rival North Korea, marked “the end of an era that brought about unspeakable trauma to mankind and the unnatural division of nations and peoples.”

Speaking at a Kremlin banquet in his honor, Roh said, “A new era of reconciliation and cooperation is dawning on the Korean Peninsula and in the Asia-Pacific region.”

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, no less ebullient, told reporters earlier, “I want the peoples of Korea to move more quickly towards each other,” and he promised Soviet support for the hesitant dialogue begun recently by North and South Korea.

But Gorbachev added, “The process of reunification would have advanced faster if military confrontation had decreased and, especially, if there were already a desire now to make the Korean Peninsula a nuclear-free zone.”

The Soviet leader’s comment was also directed at the United States, which maintains nuclear weapons and 43,000 troops in South Korea.

Roh, for his part, spoke of a mutual desire to overcome “the unfortunate past,” noting not just the Korean War and the prolonged period of hostility that followed but also the 1983 shooting down of a South Korean airliner with 269 people aboard after it strayed into Soviet airspace.

A joint declaration by the two presidents committed their countries to cooperate in “the removal of the confrontational mentality and the elimination of the Cold War in Asia.”

Roh, speaking at Moscow State University, said that such cooperation between Moscow and Seoul would influence relations throughout the Asia-Pacific region, bringing it the “new order and new peace” now evident in Europe.

“The Korean people watched with excitement when the wall between Eastern and Western Europe was broken and when Germany was unified,” Roh said, praising the role of perestroika in promoting the changes in Europe. “Korea is the only remaining divided nation in the world, but the resolution of the Korean problem need not be overly complex.

“When South and North Korea establish a cooperative relationship premised on the recognition of outstanding realities, reconciliation between the two sides can be achieved at a rapid pace. Koreans in the south and the north can nurture an environment conducive to unification, once they perceive each other as partners in a community.”

Roh said that Seoul does not expect, or want, Moscow to break off its long relationship with Pyongyang and hopes that Soviet influence will encourage the north to join “the global wave of openness and reform.”

North Korea, which had Soviet backing during the 1950-53 Korean War and has had extensive military and economic support since, reacted angrily to the first meeting between Gorbachev and Roh in San Francisco during Gorbachev’s visit to the United States last summer and to the subsequent establishment of diplomatic relations.

But Asian diplomats here said that Pyongyang appears to have accepted the move and is maneuvering to develop a new relationship with Seoul and to improve its ties with other countries, notably Japan.

In addition to the political declaration, South Korea and the Soviet Union signed a series of economic agreements to promote their rapidly growing trade by allowing South Korean firms to invest here on the same terms governing Soviet enterprises.

The agreements will protect capital investment and allow the repatriation of the funds invested and of profits, bar double taxation and encourage scientific and technical cooperation.

Trade, which totaled $160 million in 1988 and $600 million last year, is expected to exceed $1 billion this year and grow to $10 billion to $15 billion by 1995.

South Korean businessmen, who have flowed into Moscow and Leningrad and virtually every city in the Soviet Far East, are talking of building petrochemical complexes in Siberia, modernizing the Soviet telephone system, establishing a business park in Leningrad and selling $1 billion worth of consumer electronics here in the next year.

For South Korea, the Soviet Union represents a vast and almost virgin market, eager for its products and services and able to pay with almost unlimited natural resources. For the Soviet Union, South Korea is an active partner interested in virtually any deal, big or small, consumer or industrial.