N. Korea Tensions Focus of Talks

WASHINGTON —  President Clinton and South Korea’s popular president, Kim Dae Jung, met Friday for lunch and a low-key working session largely devoted to divining the latest rumblings and threats from North Korea.

Kim’s one-day visit to Washington came as the mercurial regime in the North has once again raised military tensions on the combustible Korean peninsula--and raised hackles among policymakers in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo.

In the last two weeks alone, North Korea has fired on South Korean navy ships, detained a U.S. woman on still-unexplained charges and stormed out of diplomatic talks in Beijing designed to reunite families separated during the Korean War.

More worrying, U.S. officials said that the government in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, also appears to be preparing to test a long-range ballistic missile that might be capable of reaching Alaska or Hawaii. A U.S. envoy has told the Communist leadership that such a launch would derail all ongoing talks with Washington, Seoul and Tokyo and would jeopardize any rapprochement with the West.

“We made it crystal clear to the North Koreans that there will be serious consequences” if they launch, State Department spokesman James Foley said Friday.

But a senior administration official said after the two-hour White House meeting that Clinton and Kim had ruled out abandoning the landmark 1994 agreement under which Pyongyang pledged not to develop nuclear weapons in exchange for two light-water nuclear reactors financed mostly by South Korea and Japan.

The United States is providing the North with 500,000 tons of heavy fuel annually until the reactors are up and running. South Korea announced Friday that it will lend $3.2 billion to the consortium building the reactors. Japan’s upper house of parliament voted Wednesday to approve $1 billion for the project.

Officials said Clinton also told Kim of U.S. concerns about South Korea’s own missile-development program. In an apparent violation of a 1979 pledge by Seoul to limit potentially destabilizing weapons, the South tested a ballistic missile in April that U.S. officials believe could reach Pyongyang.

Clinton and Kim face mounting pressures at home to defend their policies toward North Korea.

Critics in Congress accuse Clinton of bowing to blackmail by providing a ruthless Stalinist regime with food, oil and other aid. Kim’s critics similarly argue that his attempts to engage a bellicose neighbor with a “sunshine policy” of tourism, trade and economic development are both naive and ineffective.

Kim, 74, met late Friday with William J. Perry, who traveled to Pyongyang in May as Clinton’s special envoy. The former Defense secretary is completing a major review for the White House of U.S. policy toward North Korea.

North Korea’s enigmatic leader, Kim Jong Il, has yet to respond to a letter from Clinton that Perry delivered. Officials said Clinton offered to normalize diplomatic relations and to end strict U.S. trade, travel and other sanctions in exchange for a verified halt to North Korea’s missile exports and development of nuclear weapons.

“We didn’t really expect the North Koreans to turn around on a dime and give us their response back,” a senior State Department official said. “That would have been completely out of character with the way the North Koreans negotiate.”

Instead, in keeping with its harsh negotiating style, Pyongyang soon sparked a crisis.

In early June, North Korean patrol boats crossed into disputed boundary waters in the Yellow Sea. After an eight-day standoff, they opened fire on South Korean warships. A North Korean torpedo boat was sunk in the ensuing firefight, and at least 20 North Koreans were reported killed, marking the most serious naval clash between the two countries since the Korean War ended in 1953.

More alarms rang several days later when U.S. officials warned that spy satellites showed North Korea was refurbishing a launch pad and might be preparing to test an advanced ballistic missile this summer. North Korea’s test last August of a less powerful, three-stage missile over the Sea of Japan shocked Tokyo and caught U.S. intelligence and military officials by surprise.

Nicholas Eberstadt, a visiting fellow at Harvard University, said North Korean officials may have decided that better relations with the West are not in their interest because they have spent decades justifying their harsh rule by warning of outside enemies. In any case, he added, Clinton and Kim shouldn’t be surprised by the latest provocations.

“Seoul and Washington would be poorly prepared if they didn’t take all this as North Korean politics as usual,” he said. “North Korean officials seem to think they do rather well when they create a situation of high tension and white knuckles. Unfortunately, they have the means to create high tension and white knuckles.”