N. Korea Agreed to Papal Visit, South’s Kim Says

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has agreed to invite Pope John Paul II to visit North Korea, South Korean President Kim Dae Jung told his Cabinet on Friday.

Coming a day after the Southern leader returned from a historic summit in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, the announcement kept South Koreans debating whether Kim Jong Il’s new openness is a propaganda ploy to extract aid or represents a tectonic policy shift by his hermetic, hard-line regime.

There was no comment from the Vatican as it had not received any invitation, a spokesman said.

Kim Dae Jung, a Roman Catholic, first floated the notion of a papal visit to one of the world’s last devoutly Communist enclaves during a meeting with the pope April 5. The pope’s reply: “It would take a miracle.”

The Southern leader said that when he suggested the papal visit to his Northern counterpart, Kim Jong Il first inquired about the pope’s age. Upon hearing that the pontiff is 80 and still travels, Kim Jong Il declared, “Let him come.” At the Cabinet meeting Friday, Kim Dae Jung instructed his foreign minister to convey this statement to the Vatican.

The news was treated as a bombshell on front pages in South Korea, where a vibrant Christian community has long accused the North of suppressing religious freedom and virtually exterminating the Roman Catholic faith. Although John Paul has been to the South twice--once in 1984 and once in 1989--many people were dubious that a papal visit to the North would come to pass any time soon.

“Emphasis should be put on the word ‘miracle,’ ” said Father Basil Price, a Jesuit priest, professor emeritus at Sogang University and 40-year resident of South Korea. “What’s he going to do up there? There are no Catholics.”

Meanwhile, Seoul wasted no time Friday in demonstrating to Pyongyang that rapprochement brings rewards.

South Korea announced Friday that it will speed up delivery of 100,000 tons of fertilizer promised North Korea. An additional 100,000 tons has already been sent.

North Korea hastened to show that it too could deliver on its promise to reduce tensions on the peninsula.

On Thursday, all along the 150-mile-long demilitarized zone, or DMZ, the North stopped broadcasting all anti-South Korean propaganda and instead played Pyongyang Radio reports about the summit. The South quickly followed by silencing its own loudspeakers.

Also Thursday, a Southern fishing boat from the port of Inchon became entangled in a net, drifted into Northern waters and was picked up by a North Korean patrol boat and escorted to a military base. The fishermen reported that they were questioned gently, treated kindly, given a bed for the night and escorted safely back into Southern waters Friday morning.

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff office called the North Korean behavior “unprecedented.”

In the past, many fishermen who have strayed into Northern waters have been picked up by the North and then have simply disappeared. They are among more than 100 South Koreans believed to have been abducted by the North, including professors, technical specialists and the crew of a Korean Airlines flight hijacked in 1969.

Before the summit, relatives of the abductees petitioned Kim Dae Jung’s government to plead their case with North Korea, but there was no word as to whether the issue had been raised.

Meanwhile, people separated from their relatives in the North deluged the Korean Red Cross office with applications to be among the unspecified number of families chosen to exchange visits Aug. 15 under the summit agreement.

But with a total of 148,000 applicants registered as of Friday, disappointment seemed inevitable. A government source guessed that only a few hundred people might be allowed to meet, though many more could at least learn the fate of relatives missing for five decades.

In 1985, only 50 people from each Korea were allowed to meet relatives in Pyongyang, and people with good government connections topped both countries’ lists. This time, the South will give priority to applicants older than 70, with a computer picking the winners at random.

Less problematic is a plan to reconnect two railways severed by the Korean War. Only about 22 miles of track would have to be laid to reconnect the peninsula through the DMZ, allowing trains to run unfettered from the southern port of Pusan all the way to Paris.

North Korea could receive up to $100 million a year in transportation fees, while Southern industry would see the costs of shipping its goods to Europe, Russia and China fall by as much as 30%, according to the Seoul government, which has been studying the issue for years. Barring military and political obstacles, construction could be completed in less than a year.

When the issue was raised during the summit, Kim Jong Il suggested that his military might be deployed to construction duty, Southern officials reported. This would help solve another problem: how to downsize North Korea’s 1.1-million-strong army without creating politically dangerous unemployment. About 30% of the country’s army is already in construction units.

On Friday, Kim Dae Jung called President Clinton to brief him on his talks with Kim Jong Il, according to the South Korean president’s press secretary, Park Joon Young.

During the 22-minute conversation, Clinton congratulated Kim--who shed nearly 5 pounds during the three-day summit from the sheer effort of the negotiations--on his “great achievement,” Park said. Clinton also thanked Kim for having raised the issues of the North’s nuclear and missile programs, and for the close contact the South Koreans have maintained with the U.S. about the summit, according to Park.

Kim told Clinton that he had agreed with Kim Jong Il on the need for the Koreas to solve their own problems. But the South Korean president urged North Korea to pursue friendly relations with the U.S. and Japan, Park said, adding that Kim expects to see Northern overtures to those two countries soon.

Inside the Blue House, the South Korean president’s residence, officials were happily perusing North Korean newspapers that reported the summit with banner headlines, giant photographs of the handshakes and bearhugs between the two leaders and surprising candor.

“It basically reported exactly what happened without their propaganda tone,” a Blue House official said. “It’s a big change for them.”

Rodong Shinmun, the North’s main government newspaper, printed in a large front-page box the full text of the five-point agreement signed Wednesday by the two Kims. The agreement commits the two Koreas to reconciliation, cooperation and reunions of separated families.

For North Korea, which rations information, this was seen as an important commitment to making good on the “great leader’s” historic pledges. Moreover, for the first time, the newspaper used the words “Republic of Korea” to refer to the South, which the North has never recognized as a sovereign nation.

In the South, a poll by the Joong Ang Daily newspaper found that Kim Dae Jung’s popularity had soared from the 45% range on April 13--when his party failed to gain a majority in parliamentary elections--to 71%. The poll found that 73% of the 1,003 Southerners surveyed also believed that North Korea will change.

Kim Jong Il scored a stunning public relations victory with his courteous behavior during the summit, but that does not mean North Korea has reached a political turning point, said Lee Chung Min, professor of international relations at Yonsei University.

In the past six months, the North has mounted a charm offensive by also seeking to improve relations with Italy, Australia, Germany, Japan and the Philippines and by pursuing membership in international bodies.

“There is one common thread to all of these changes: They are all external,” Lee said. “That’s the best way for Kim Jong Il not only to build his image abroad but to get aid without changing North Korea. . . . With a stroke of the pen, he is transformed from a hermit to a potential Mikhail Gorbachev.”

But Lee argued that Kim Jong Il is not prepared to embark on the sweeping reforms initiated by the Soviet leader whose country was dismantled--even if he does invite the pope to visit.

Pyongyang was once the hub of Korean Christianity, but after the peninsula was divided, the Communists began a crackdown.

“We believe that in the early 1950s, Christian believers, if discovered, were executed,” said Father Kim Dae Min of the National Reconciliation Committee of the Seoul Archdiocese. “We believe there were many martyrs.”

In 1988, the North changed its constitution to allow religious freedom, and it built one Catholic and one Protestant church in Pyongyang. But the country has no Catholic archdiocese and no permanent priests, only occasional visitors from South Korea and China, Kim said.

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Chi Jung Nam in The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.