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Kim Jong-Il charms S. Korean, sparking debate in Seoul

Special to World Tribune.com
EAST-ASIA-INTEL.COM
Thursday, June 23, 2005

SEOUL — Returning from his four-day stay in Pyongyang, Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young said that he found North Korea's Kim Jong-Il "quite frank and open, broad-hearted and smooth."

Chung told reporters that chairman Kim went a step further than he anticipated in addressing current issues, including the nuclear weapons problem, reducing the military tension between the two Koreas, resuming the reunion of separated families and, most of all, North Korea's return to the six-nation talks in July if the United States "recognizes and treats North Korea as a dialogue partner."

A South Korean man reads a newspaper featuring the talks between South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang on June 18.
Chung also said Kim was very "witty and humorous."

Chung's remarks immediately rekindled a long-running debate in South Korea about the personality of the North Korean ruler. The Internet pages of the Unification Ministry, political parties and media have been flooded with tens of thousands of opinions about Chung's remarks and analyses on the personality and strategies of Kim Jong-Il.

The Daily NK, an online newspaper at which many defectors work as reporters, pointed out that Kim Jong-Il's remark that he still supported the "nuclear-free Korea" policy amounted to the "deception of the century."

"Kim's father Kim Il-Sung told Jimmy Carter in 1994, when the North Korean nuclear issue was at its height, that they neither had the intention nor the capacity to develop nuclear weapons," wrote the paper.

"That was a lie. North Korea did develop the nuclear [weapons]. Now Kim Jong-Il says he supports a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. What is he saying?"

What he said, according to the paper, was that Pyongyang would return to the six-party talks if "the U.S. treated it as a dialogue partner."

This means that now that Pyongyang has a nuclear weapon, the United States should treat North Korea as a nuclear power and discuss denuclearization of the peninsula "as an equal."

North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, right, with South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young in Pyongyang.
"The U.S. and South Korea have been deceived," declared the paper.

Speaking to an acquaintance, Cho Gap-Je, former president of Monthly Chosun, attacked Chung as a "dangerous and naïve" politician who could lead people into being deceived by a swindler.

"Swindlers are smooth talkers. People, especially leaders, should not be judged by their words, but by their actions," said Cho.

Kim Dong-Gil, a professor at Yonsei University, called Kim a liar. "His father Kim Il-sung talked about peace in Korean peninsula at every possible opportunity until he invaded the South in June of 1950," said Kim. "Now the son says he supports a nuclear-free Korean peninsula because it was his father's will. Then, why did North Korea declare that it already had nuclear bombs? Isn't it contradictory and a big white lie?"

Stateside, Don Oberdorfer, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and former Tokyo correspondent for the Washington Post, also warned about the conditions Kim attached.

"Pyongyang put conditions in the past without clarifying what the conditions were," Oberdorfer said in an interview with Radio Free Asia. "We should be cautious about the conditions."

"Netizens" (South Koreans who use the Internet to participate in the political process) responding positively to the Chung-Kim meeting by far outnumbered the critics,

One netizen called hope21, wrote: "The U.S., especially President Bush and his hardcore rightists, have been trying to paint Kim Jong-Il as some sort of a monster. But Kim proved to be a better man than Bush by calling him 'His Excellency' when the His Excellency was calling him the 'Axis of Evil' or 'Outpost of Tyranny.'"


Copyright © 2005 East West Services, Inc.

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