Clinton Tries to Allay S. Korea’s Fears

President Clinton moved Thursday to try to calm fears in Seoul about the deepening United States dialogue with North Korea, personally promising South Korean Foreign Minister Han Sung Joo that “we’ll be there with you,” according to Han.

The President’s remarks, at the end of a White House meeting, were the latest and most significant in a series of efforts by the Clinton Administration to reassure South Korea that its ties with the United States will not be harmed by the talks with Pyongyang.

“The (South) Korean public needed a little assurance,” Han told The Times in an interview after the White House meeting. “South Korean people have been used to an almost exclusive relationship with the United States over the past 50 years. It takes repeated reassurance to adjust to a new situation in which the United States talks to North Korea.”

Last month, U.S. and North Korean negotiators in Geneva agreed on the outlines of a possible settlement of the long dispute over Pyongyang’s nuclear program. The issue arose last year when North Korea threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and refused to account for material that could be used for nuclear weapons.

As part of a nuclear accord, the Administration said it is prepared to move toward setting up liaison offices for the United States in Pyongyang and for North Korea in Washington, the first step toward establishment of diplomatic ties.

“They (the South Koreans) are really very worried,” one Washington-based diplomat said. “The State Department has been doing its best to reassure them, to say the talks with North Korea are just exploratory and that the liaison offices won’t be opened now. But ever since the talks began, it has been consistent North Korean policy to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul.”

Han agreed that the talk of liaison offices had been particularly unsettling to South Koreans.

“When they heard about liaison offices, they jumped to the conclusion that this means normalization of relations,” he said. “They have been used to thinking of (Korean diplomacy) as a zero-sum game. They think if it is a gain for North Korea, it must be a tremendous loss for us.”

The South Korean foreign minister was hurriedly dispatched to Washington this week after the Administration announced that it was holding new, working-level talks with North Korea this weekend, including discussions in Pyongyang about the liaison offices.

During his two days here, Han also met with Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Defense Secretary William J. Perry and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake. He said he was pleased by Christopher’s public assertion that the United States will give “primacy” to its relations with Seoul.

Han said Clinton was “very reassuring” about all the issues that have unsettled South Korea.