High-Stakes Talks for Bush, S. Korea’s Kim

On the face of it, there are a number of reasons why today’s summit in Washington between President Bush and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung should have its share of awkward moments.

For one thing, the Bush administration has signaled that Kim’s “sunshine policy” of engagement with North Korea is too soft on the North and doesn’t demand enough in return.

All parties need to have a “very clear-eyed view” of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, a senior Bush administration official warned Tuesday: The only reason he is finally beginning to open up to the outside world is because “a failed regime is trying to stabilize itself.”

The administration also said that it is taking a “fresh look” at two pivotal negotiations with North Korea--a 1994 agreement on nuclear energy to curb its weapons programs and a proposal last year to end missile proliferation--as part of a sweeping policy review.

Despite all this, Bush’s first summit with an Asian head of state is expected to produce congratulatory statements and symbolic gestures of unity--at least for the cameras.

“Neither side can afford a bad visit,” said Scott Snyder, Seoul-based representative of the Asia Foundation. “Behind the scenes, there may be a few course corrections, but no one’s going to bring the ship back to port.”

For Bush, the importance of maintaining a strong alliance with such a key partner is likely to carry the day, given the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, decades of cooperation with Seoul and Kim’s stature as a human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Despite ongoing U.S. concerns, the senior official said, the new administration believes that the sunshine policy is “extremely important. . . . We’re all for what Kim Dae Jung is trying to do in trying to open up the [North Korean] regime.”

Furthermore, 1 1/2 months into his job, Bush does not yet have his Asia policy team fully in place. That makes it difficult at this stage to offer a cohesive alternative to Kim’s sunshine policy, which seeks to end the North’s isolation and economic deterioration.

Kim, for his part, badly needs a U.S. stamp of approval to bolster his weak political position at home. As the South Korean economy worsens, political reform stumbles and bank and conglomerate restructuring founder, Kim is left with relatively few selling points other than his sunshine policy to keep critics at bay.

A recent poll placed his domestic popularity at 30.2%, down from 62% just after a historic summit last June with the North’s leader. “His support has dropped dramatically,” said Park Jai Chang, professor of political science at Sook Myong Women’s University in Seoul. “This meeting is critical for him.”

That’s not to say Seoul and Washington won’t be trying to stake out longer-term positions behind the scenes. Kim’s purpose in coming to Washington even before Bush’s Asia team is complete is arguably to have an early shot at convincing the president that any early doubts he may have are misplaced. His message: A continuation of the sunshine policy is the best course.

He faces a tough job ahead, however, amid growing criticism in the U.S. that Pyongyang’s Communist regime has taken Seoul and Washington for a ride, gaining aid and economic benefits without any reciprocal agreement to stop producing or exporting weapons of mass destruction.

In tough language Tuesday, the senior U.S. official said Kim Jong Il’s overtures had not yet changed the basic threat from Pyongyang.

“North Korea is a problem. Kim Jong Il is a problem,” she said. “North Korea just about a week ago threatened to restart [nuclear] testing. We sent a very strong message to North Korea: If the intention was to get our attention, it did, but in the wrong direction.”

The 1994 agreement has run into problems, so Washington is looking into whether the accord needs to be “improved,” said the official, who is involved in talks but asked to remain anonymous.

“We’re not walking away from the agreed framework, but we always leave open the possibility of improving something like this,” she said.

U.S. officials have expressed concern that North Korea has in effect been rewarded for its bad behavior. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Tuesday provided a glimpse of the administration’s carrot-and-stick approach.

“We think we have a lot to offer that regime, if they will act in ways that we think are constructive, ways that reduce the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles, and ways that help open their society and give transparency into their society,” Powell said.

At today’s summit, the intellectual and well-read Kim Dae Jung will need to suppress his natural inclination to lecture on the finer points of the sunshine policy if he hopes to impress a president whose forte is not foreign affairs, say advisors and experts. Kim also needs to concentrate on assuaging the new administration’s doubts rather than engaging in a heavy sell.

“Since his goal is to shore up support back home, I believe he’ll try and be accommodating, tone down the differences between the two countries, reassure the U.S. that he’s not being a softy or ignoring the quid pro quo,” said Kim Jong Wan, professor of international relations at Sejong Institute in Seoul. “In the end, he doesn’t want the American government to go public with any of its reservations.”

Bush and his advisors are likely to be looking for some sort of agreement from Kim that the two allies can better coordinate their North Korea policies, finesse their somewhat different objectives, perhaps even slow the pace of North-South rapprochement. Washington has been heavily focused on ending the deployment, production and export of missiles and potential nuclear weapons.

“North Korea is a threat on several fronts. We believe that the entire military presence must be taken into account, not just pieces of it,” the senior U.S. official said.

Seoul has been more concerned with rapprochement, a rail link between the North and South, more reunions of separated families, finalizing a reciprocal visit to Seoul by Kim Jong Il and building an industrial park at Kaesong in the North.

This leaves room for Washington and Seoul to concentrate on better leveraging their combined positions than they have in the past, said Donald P. Gregg, president of the Korea Society and a former U.S. ambassador to Seoul.

But “in the end, I don’t think either side will push too much at the summit,” said Chung In Moon, political science professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University. “This is just the first encounter.”

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Magnier reported from Seoul and Wright from Washington. Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.