Seoul, South Korea – When North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il sits face to face with his South Korean counterpart this week, the communist dictator may have someone else in the back of his mind, whom he fears and wants to make friends with the most: President Bush.
Kim sees the summit with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in Pyongyang starting Tuesday as a chance to accelerate a thaw in his relations with Washington amid progress in U.S.- led efforts to rid the North of nuclear weapons, analysts say.
“Kim Jong-Il wants to convey his sincerity to Bush at a higher level that he strongly wants improved relations with the United States,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies. “In this respect, the South-North summit can be an important tool.”
Kim’s choice of timing for the second-ever summit with the South demonstrates his intention.
He could have met Roh whenever he wanted, as the South’s leader has said he was ready to meet Kim “anywhere and at any time.” But Kim waited, finally agreeing in August to the landmark event, citing “the improving regional situation.”
Few doubt Kim was referring to a markedly increased friendliness between the North and the United States in recent months, along with progress in six-nation negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear-arms development.
The budding detente was made possible when Bush softened his policy on North Korea after the country’s first-ever nuclear test in October 2006 and his party’s defeat in the midterm elections the following month.
Bush accepted a key North Korean demand to resolve a banking dispute that had stalled the nuclear talks for more than a year. He sent his chief nuclear envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, to Pyongyang in June.
Direct U.S. talks with the North, which Bush had abhorred, are no longer unusual.
Kim responded by shutting down the country’s sole functioning nuclear reactor, opening its nuclear complex to international monitoring and agreeing to disable the facilities by year’s end.
“The main driving force that moved North Korea is the change in the U.S. position,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Dongguk University. “The South-North summit isn’t simply about inter-Korean affairs. The most decisive reason for the North’s agreement to the summit is that it is seeing the summit as a steppingstone for improving relations with the U.S.”
