U.S. Won’t Invade N. Korea, Bush Assures Worried South

In a blunt speech delivered at the last frontier of the Cold War, President Bush today endorsed South Korean President Kim Dae Jung’s vision of a united Korean peninsula and called on the isolated Communist regime in North Korea to embrace freedom.

Earlier in the day, Bush stated unequivocally that the United States has no plans to attack North Korea and that it supports Kim’s acclaimed “sunshine policy” of engaging the North in dialogue.

“Make no mistake about it,” Bush said at a joint news conference with Kim. “We have no intention of invading North Korea.”

The comments marked a deliberate shift away from the bellicose to the humanitarian, as the president--mindful of accusations that he is a warmonger--spoke movingly of his concerns for the North Korean people. He described the powerful image of a nighttime satellite photograph of the peninsula showing the South “awash with light” and the impoverished North completely dark.

“We want all Koreans to live in the light,” Bush declared in the speech at a newly built train station at the edge of the demilitarized zone that has separated North and South Korea for half a century.

“My vision is clear. I see a peninsula that is one day united in commerce and cooperation, instead of divided by barbed wire and fear. Korean grandparents should be free to spend their final years with those they love. Korean children should never starve while a massive army is fed. No nation should be a prison for its own people,” Bush said.

During the second leg of his six-day Asia trip, Bush was under heavy pressure to defuse the controversy over his inclusion of North Korea in an “axis of evil” along with Iraq and Iran. His Jan. 29 State of the Union speech offended and unnerved many South Koreans, who feared that the United States would extend its anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan into North Korea.

During the joint news conference, Bush seemed mindful of a South Korean audience that today considers the North Koreans more worthy of pity than fear, and he repeatedly stressed his sympathy.

And offering his most detailed explanation of the “axis” remark, Bush said: “I love freedom. . . . I am troubled about a regime that tolerates starvation. I am deeply concerned about the people of North Korea, and that is exactly why I said what I said.”

The president also said he fully supports Kim’s efforts to continue the dialogue with the North, although he is disappointed that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il “will not accept the spirit of the sunshine policy.” He complained that out of 10 million people who have been separated since the 1950-53 Korean War, only 3,600 families have been able to participate in reunions that were agreed to in a landmark visit by South Korea’s Kim to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang in June 2000.

Despite gloomy expectations for the meeting, Kim appeared to be pleased with his discussion with Bush. He said that American and South Korean positions on North Korea are “fundamentally similar” and that he appreciates Bush’s “staunch support for our sunshine policy.”

After meeting with Kim this morning, Bush took a 20-minute helicopter ride to the DMZ, a 2 1/2-mile-wide strip fortified by land mines and razor wire. He rolled up to Panmunjon in an armored truck and viewed a North Korean village through binoculars. He then visited U.S. troops at Camp Boniface, named for one of two American soldiers who were hacked to death by North Koreans in 1976.

“Did you hear that? No wonder I think they’re evil,” Bush called out to reporters after hearing the story.

Bush arrived in Seoul on Tuesday afternoon amid a storm of indignation over the “axis of evil” speech, which many South Koreans believe undermined years of painstaking diplomatic progress. South Korea’s Kim won a Nobel peace prize in 2000 for the sunshine policy and has enjoyed international acclaim for his diplomatic skills. But the Bush administration’s tough posture toward North Korea put Kim in a bind--caught between loyalty to South Korea’s most important ally, the United States, and dialogue with the North.

“North Korea is like a brother and an enemy at the same time for South Koreans,” said Scott Snyder, Seoul representative of the Asia Foundation, a San Francisco organization that watches Asia-U.S. relations. “There is an ambivalence, but that ‘axis of evil’ comment was very black and white. It was like somebody criticizing your family.”

Going into the summit, the South Korean government was hoping to learn what specific policy the White House has in mind for North Korea. Bush has at various times demanded not only that North Korea stop making weapons of mass destruction and exporting missiles, but also that it withdraw its conventional forces deployed at the DMZ. The administration has also seemed to imply at times that reduction of conventional weapons is a precondition for negotiations, not an item on the table.

“First we need to find out what the United States really wants in terms of North Korean relations, because the remarks Mr. Bush has made seem confusing and contradictory,” an aide to Kim said Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. “At one point, he implied an attack without prior notice, and then there were remarks that the U.S. is ready to talk to North Korea at any time, any place,” the aide said.

Before leaving Seoul for Beijing on Thursday morning, the final stop on his Asia tour, Bush and Kim will have met seven times--ample opportunity, presumably, for the leaders to scope out each other’s positions.

Their first meeting, last March in Washington, was widely considered a diplomatic fiasco because Bush embarrassed Kim by publicly disparaging his efforts to negotiate with the North Korean leader. A second meeting in Shanghai in October went only slightly better.

The White House was anxious to smooth over the relationship with South Korea in this meeting, and the speech today seemed designed to be compared to Ronald Reagan’s famous 1987 speech in Berlin in which he demanded, “Tear down this Wall!”

In the symbolic highlight of the visit, he appeared jointly with Kim at the Dorasan railway station, which is intended to one day carry passengers between the Koreas. The South Korean government opened the station just last week as part of a $150-million project to reconnect the destroyed rail link between the countries. Bush is scheduled to sign a rail tie as a gesture of support for Kim’s sunshine policy. The two Kims agreed to connecting the railroad at their 2000 summit. The leaders also had agreed to build a highway linking two cities on either side of the DMZ, but only the South has completed its portion of the work.

During their Wednesday afternoon visit here, Kim showed Bush the road.

“That road has the potential to bring the peoples on both sides of this divided land together,” Bush said shortly afterward. “And for the good of all the Korean people, the North should finish it.”

“Traveling south on that road, the people of the North would see not a threat but a miracle of peaceful development: Asia’s third-largest economy, risen from the ruins of war. . . . They would see a great, hopeful alternative to stagnation and starvation. And they would find friends and partners in the rebuilding of their country.”

In Seoul, meanwhile, a North Korean soldier defected to the South near the Dorasan station. The defection took place at 11:18 p.m. Tuesday, but the announcement was delayed at the request of the U.S. Embassy because of security concerns over the president’s visit.

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Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul bureau contributed to this report.