Regional Outlook : S. Korea Sees Double as It Looks to North : A split nation is split on views. North Koreans are either brothers who want a reunion or schemers who want a war.

In the streets of the South Korean capital, under the shadow of the North Korean nuclear threat across the border, a substantial distance separates Kim Joo Ki and Kim Li Na--generationally and politically.

Kim Joo Ki, 69, the owner of a furniture firm, is convinced that the South needs to develop its own nuclear weapon as a counterthreat to the North, which he fears may be ready to blast South Korea away.

That is nonsense to Kim Li Na, 21, a history major at Ehwa Women’s University in Seoul. She says the United States and Japan are “picking on North Korea,” which she believes would never use nuclear weapons against its southern brethren.

These two South Koreans illustrate the sharp dichotomy here in attitudes toward the North. It is a tension between an emotional yearning to think the best of their fellow Koreans and a hardheaded view that the Communist regime of Kim Il Sung is dangerous, unpredictable and responsive to nothing but force.

These polarized views are evident from the South Korean grass roots to the office of President Kim Young Sam and have been blamed for sowing discord and disarray in the government’s North Korean policy.

Pyongyang’s abrupt announcement 10 days ago that it had begun removing fuel rods from an experimental nuclear reactor in defiance of international demands may unify Kim’s government around a firmer view. The president earlier this month created a special council to coordinate North Korean policy in an effort to eliminate disarray.

But in a country where everyone has an opinion on North Korea, strongly held and often passionate, unifying the disparate views may not be easy.

“The government is still cohabited by forces that are mutually suspicious,” said Lee Dong Bok, a self-proclaimed hawk who was a key architect of South Korea’s northern policy for the last 20 years before being fired in December. “It is causing a bloodletting, and it is weakening the foothold of President Kim’s government.”

The tension is evident in the very labels used to describe the two sides. Those who doubt Pyongyang’s motives and advocate a hard line, including sanctions and even military action if necessary, call themselves pragmatists and professionals. Their opponents call them outdated Cold Warriors.

Those who counsel flexibility and concessions, including generous economic aid, regard themselves as liberals. But they are criticized as romantics and amateurs.

The most prominent hawk is Lee. He was fired after revelations that he had unilaterally refused to sign an agreement with the North in defiance of orders from then-President Roh Tae Woo while serving as South Korean representative for high-level South-North talks. Many regard Kim Deok, the director of the National Security Planning Agency, as Lee’s ideological soul mate.

“We are prepared to graduate from the legacy of the Cold War, but we cannot do it unilaterally,” Lee said. “As long as one party remains Cold War-oriented . . . you have got to lock horns in some manner.”

On the other side is Han Wan Sang, former deputy prime minister and minister for unification of the two Koreas. He strongly supported a package deal giving North Korea economic aid and dropping joint U.S.-Korean war games in exchange for Pyongyang’s return to compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But Kim also fired Han in December because of suspicions that he was leaking unification board secrets to bolster his softer line.

“The idea that we can settle the nuclear issue by isolating, suffocating and sanctioning North Korea is a Cold War outdated myth,” said one analyst sympathetic to the liberal side. “North Korea is facing a crisis of the system itself. If they are suffocated, they don’t have any option but to attack in a joint suicidal-homicidal mission.”

The firings of both Lee and Han removed the government’s most glaring dichotomy between hawk and dove. But even since then, Kim has continued to waver between the two camps, confusing many here and abroad.

Analysts here were stunned when Kim, in his inaugural speech in February last year, proclaimed that “no ideology or political belief has priority over national kinship.” The implication was that North Korea is more important to South Korea than the United States is. Seoul’s “spin doctors” quickly moved in to explain that the president meant nothing of the sort.

The next month, Kim released a convicted North Korean spy in a gesture of magnanimity to Pyongyang--and the next day the Communist regime announced that it would withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty. Hard-liners here who saw the spy’s release as a unilateral concession felt vindicated, but Seoul implored Washington not to convene the U.N. Security Council to ask for economic sanctions against Pyongyang because it bolted from the nuclear-control pact.

By June, however, Kim had taken a tougher line. He declared before Asian Pacific bankers that “we will not shake hands with anyone with nuclear weapons.” When he met in August with Rhee Sang Woo, a Sogang University professor and chairman of Kim’s 21st-Century advisory committee, he was a changed man.

“He told me: ‘Do not be deceived by North Korea. They are not people to be trusted,’ ” said the bemused Rhee, who has long advocated a firm line.

Even after U.S. officials began talking about cutting a package deal with Pyongyang in November, Kim continued his hawkish line, throwing out roadblocks to a deal in his meeting with President Clinton. Officials here were worried that Seoul might be sacrificed in such an agreement, especially if Washington allowed Pyongyang to keep a nuclear bomb or two in exchange for pledges not to manufacture or sell them in the future.

By December and January, as consensus grew in U.S. intelligence circles that North Korea might already have developed one or two crude atomic weapons, Kim began saying he did not believe North Korea possessed the bomb. He also said he would be willing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Il Sung to settle the issue.

Since then, South Korea has generally toed a softer line, despite Pyongyang’s recent threat to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire.” Analysts say Kim may be heavily influenced by Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who made it clear when they met in March that he opposes sanctions.

Indeed, South Korea’s ambassador to China, Hwang Byung Tai, stunned reporters at the time by announcing what seemed like a major policy turnabout: Seoul would begin giving China weight equal to that of the United States in consultations over strategy on North Korea, he said.

Kim’s aides forced Hwang to retract his statement.

Such incidents, including a similar turnabout on Seoul’s position on presidential envoy exchanges between North and South, have raised repeated charges of confusion and conflict in Kim’s policies.

Not everyone is complaining, of course. One U.S. official praised Kim’s team for taking a “very constructive and intellectual approach.” This official said past Seoul administrations were dominated by “slash-and-burn” conservatives bent on destroying the North Korean regime. The official said they sabotaged high-level contacts between Pyongyang and Washington.

Some analysts insist discord is inevitable. Although hawks and doves always existed in the past, the voices of appeasement were often repressed by military governments who used the North Korean threat to justify their existence. Kim, as the first civilian president, does not need the issue to legitimize his government.

At the same time, the policy conflicts are more visible in the more open, democratized nation: More officials leak details of meetings, and more newspapers report them. More people also play politics with the issue, criticizing Kim for being too soft or hard, too close to Washington or overly influenced by China, too neglectful of Seoul’s political interests.

Kim, who has a flair for reading the public mood, often responds to those concerns. The result can be “conducting foreign policy by reading local headlines,” as one critic told a newspaper here.

In addition, the president must tread a delicate line between two top policy concerns that in some ways conflict: resolving the nuclear issue and strengthening the nation’s international competitiveness--particularly after agreement in the Uruguay Round of world trade talks to open up markets globally, said Ahn Byung Joon, a Yonsei University professor of political science.

“If we give the impression that the nuclear issue is more important, we run the risk of arousing concern about the safety and credibility of Korean industry,” Ahn said. “President Kim can’t just take an aggressive stance. He has to please several different constituencies.”

Some hotels, such as the Westin Chosun, report that occupancy rates are down compared to last May and say the nuclear threat may be one reason. But in general there is no obvious sense of crisis: Letters of credit and tourism are up over last year.

The stock market remains as active as shopping districts, where people gaily fill coffee shops, restaurants and movie theaters. College student Chung Young Rim, 25, said her friends outside South Korea are more worried about the threat than she is.

“It seems they know more about North Korea than I do. I’m wondering if the government is hiding something from us.”

Rhee, the Sogang professor, says the new coordinating committee should make a big difference in unifying policy. The reason, he says, is highly Confucian and therefore Korean: Newly appointed Unification Minister Lee Hong Koo went to Seoul National University with fellow committee members Han Sung Joo, the foreign minister; Kim, the national security chief, and Chung Jong Uk, senior presidential secretary for foreign affairs and national security. Lee also went to the same high school as Han and Kim.

“They are all his juniors, and he is the boss,” Rhee said. “They cannot say no to him. He will be able to unify the government.”

A President on Both Sides of the Issue

There is division in South Korea between the dovish view that North Koreans are follow countrymen and the two nations should be reunited, and the hawkish view that the Communists are dangerous and unpredictable. South Korean President Kim Young Sam appears to waver from one view to the other.

Kim Young Sam:

“No Ideology or political belief has priority over national kinship.” (February, 1993)

“Do not be deceived by North Korea. They are not people to be trusted.” (June, 1993, quoted by Prof. Rhee Sang Woo)