South Korea’s President Agrees to Talks With North

South Korean President Kim Dae Jung on Sunday accepted a proposal by North Korea for the first direct bilateral talks between the nations since 1994, saying the overture marked “a substantial progression and change in our relations.”

“Since we have insisted on direct talks, we will not only attend but also engage in a sincere dialogue to attain a successful outcome,” Kim told reporters in Seoul.

The move was greeted with guarded optimism in the South, but the location of the proposed meeting remained undecided today and could prove to be a sticking point.

North Korea on Saturday proposed that vice ministers of each nation meet April 11 in Beijing to discuss fertilizer aid. The Chinese capital is where previous talks between the two countries’ Red Cross representatives have been held.

However, the South Korean government has long insisted that any direct talks should be held on the Korean peninsula, preferably in Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas. South Korean newspapers, quoting unidentified government sources, carried conflicting reports in Sunday’s and today’s editions about whether the Southern government would agree to a meeting in Beijing.

The two Koreas have been conducting a wary diplomatic courtship since Kim was inaugurated in February with a promise to initiate an era of better relations with the South’s Stalinist neighbor, including personal attendance at a summit. Kim has since loosened the stiff restrictions on private contacts between the two countries, including visits by South Korean businesspeople to the North.

But the most recent diplomatic contact between the two enemies ended in failure last month in Geneva when an attempt to have the two Koreas, China and the United States hash out a peace treaty to replace the truce that ended the 1950-53 Korean War wound up in a seemingly hopeless stalemate.

Still, leading South Korean newspapers welcomed the new effort.

“Regardless of the outcome of the talks, the fact that Southern and Northern government figures will sit down to talk . . . is itself meaningful,” said the Joong Ang Ilbo in an editorial published today.

The newspaper noted that hungry North Korea’s prime motive is to obtain 200,000 tons of fertilizer for this year’s crop. In 1995, the Pyongyang leadership agreed to “meetings for rice” talks but broke them off as soon as the South agreed to provide rice aid.

Nicholas Eberstadt, a North Korea watcher at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, called the initiative for direct talks “interesting” and a sign of how desperately the North, with its perennial food shortage and ravaged economy, needs South Korea’s help. He noted that the South Koreans’ own economic troubles might make them “less arrogant than they were 12 months ago” and that the election of Kim, a noted dissident, could make the South seem less threatening to the regime in the North.

However, Eberstadt warned that until the North can echo Kim’s promise of not attempting to reunify the Koreas by military force, hopes for meaningful talks are limited.