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2 Roh hopes for a
miracle By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - With nothing to lose but his
legacy, South Korea's embattled President Roh
Moo-hyun is hoping for a miracle to revive his
lost popularity - and the "democracy movement"
that he believes would vanish under a conservative
successor.
He may be on the way to getting
what he needs with North Korea's invitation to the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to send
in a team to discuss and verify the shutdown of
the
5-megawatt reactor at the nuclear complex at
Yongbyon, fulfilling the first phase of the
six-nation nuclear deal of February 13.
South Korean officials are cautious about
Pyongyang's intentions - Chun Yung-woo, the
South's chief nuclear envoy, warned reporters not
to get "excited" in view of North Korea's failure
to shut down the reactor as called for within 60
days after the signing of the agreement.
Nonetheless, the sense is that the North will come
through, however belatedly, and then wait for the
South to ship in 50,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil
and 400,000 tonnes of rice as promised.
The peripatetic US envoy, Christopher
Hill, arriving here from a conference in Ulan
Bator via Beijing, was upbeat, saying he believed
the process could begin to move "quickly" after
getting by a few technical problems. He hoped,
moreover, for another round of six-party talks on
the next, far more difficult phase - getting North
Korea to come clean on its entire nuclear
inventory and abandon the whole show in exchange
for an enormous infusion of aid.
The news
at least of North Korea's acquiescence to letting
in an IAEA team for the first time since expelling
the last inspectors at the end of 2002 came as Roh
was casting about for a lifeline to rescue his
presidency.
He's hoping a miracle,
possibly in the form of a summit with North
Korea's ailing leader Kim Jong-il, will add some
luster just in time to bolster the campaign of
whomever the quarreling factions of his
fragmenting political party put up to run against
the conservative candidate.
Chances for a
summit, however unlikely, increased perceptibly
with the transfer of US$25 million from North
Korean accounts in Macau's Banco Delta Asia to
North Korea - via the Federal Reserve Bank in New
York and a Russian bank. North Korea refused to
talk about the reactor until getting the money -
and entree into an international finance system
that has shunned the North while the bank was
blacklisted by the Treasury Department for serving
as a conduit for US$100 "supernotes" counterfeited
in Pyongyang.
Roh outlined his hopes in an
interview with Hankyoreh Sinmun, the muckraking
leftist newspaper that was founded as a critic of
conservative governments and for the past decade
has been one of the strongest advocates of the
policies of Roh and his predecessor, Kim Dae-jung.
The summit with Kim Jong-il "must happen
after the North begins its denuclearization
process," Roh told Hankyoreh. "When that happens,
I will most certainly meet Kim Jong-il."
Regardless of the outcome of the election,
Roh figured that his successor would have no
choice but to accept whatever document he and the
North Korean leader signed.
The
implication was that Roh hoped to work out a
historic statement similar to that signed by Kim
Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il when they met in
Pyongyang for the first and so far only
inter-Korean summit seven years ago.
Roh's
interview was timed to coincide with a four-day
celebration of the anniversary in Pyongyang, to
which 284 South Koreans flocked on a charter
flight from the South. Led by a retired Seoul
National University professor, the South Korean
delegation featured an assortment of artists,
actors, and religious and political leaders, some
of them considerably more dedicated than the
government to reconciliation with the North.
Talk of a summit, though, was premature if
not taboo in Pyongyang. A North Korean official
denounced as a breach of protocol a call by a
former South Korean unification minister, Jeong
Se-yun, at a welcoming dinner for "a second
inter-Korean summit" and deleted that remark from
a tape, according to a pool report. The
festivities, moreover, broke up early after North
Korea refused to seat three members of the
conservative Grand National Party who had joined a
delegation otherwise made up of leftist activists
and Uri Party hacks.
Participants happily
signed on to a declaration for "national unity
based on the spirit of national independence and
out of brotherly love", but none had a chance of
meeting Kim Jong-il, who rarely receives visitors
at the best of times.
Lately, Kim has been
cutting down on sorties to military units and
projects in the countryside amid reports that he
is suffering from assorted illnesses, notably
diabetes and a heart condition. No one knows his
real condition, but much speculation centers on a
team of six German doctors that was recently in
Pyongyang, possibly to examine if not operate on
his heart.
There seems to be no doubt that
the portly leader, who may be the only overweight
person in North Korea, has diabetes, and the
question is whether he would be too ill for a
summit even if he wanted one.
Such
concerns contrast with the picture of good health
that Kim projected when he received Kim Dae-jung
seven years ago and agreed on a return visit to
South Korea. The summit marked the high point of
Kim Dae-jung's presidency, but he has never
hidden
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