The peacemaker - role Jimmy Carter played in 1994 North Korea crisis

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1997 by Don Oberdorfer

In early June, as Clinton opted for sanctions, former President Jimmy Carter reentered the Korea saga to play a historic role. Carter had received invitations from Kim Il Sung in 1991, 1992, and 1993 to visit Pyongyang, but each time he had been asked by the State Department not to go, on grounds that his trip would complicate the Korean problem rather than help to resolve it.

As the sanctions drive got under way, Carter expressed his growing anxiety in a telephone call to Clinton. Briefed on June 5 by Gallucci, who was sent to Plains, Ga., for that purpose, Carter learned to his dismay that there was no American plan for direct contact with Kim Il Sung. He immediately dispatched a letter to Clinton telling him that he had decided to go to Pyongyang in view of the dangers at hand. Clinton, on the advice of Vice President Gore, interposed no objection to the trip as long as Carter clearly stated that he was acting as a private citizen rather than as an official U.S. envoy.

Even as these developments were taking place, North Korea was also beginning to sketch out areas of conciliation and compromise. On June 3, Pyongyang broadcast an unusual statement in the name of its chief negotiator. Kang Sok Ju announced that North Korea was prepared to dismantle its reprocessing plant ("radio-chemical laboratory") for manufacturing plutonium in connection with the replacement of its existing facilities by a light-water reactor project. This went one step beyond a written statement by Kim Il Sung to The Washington Times on his April 15 birthday, when he said the reprocessing plant "may not be needed" if the light-water reactors were supplied. In the swiftly moving tide toward collision, neither statement received much international attention.

In the meantime Carter, accompanied by his wife Rosalynn and a small party of aides and security guards, had crossed the DMZ on June 15 on his way to see Kim Il Sung. Carter found walking across the dividing line at Panmunjom, then being handed over by U.S. and South Korean military to North Korean military "a bizarre and disturbing experience, evidence of an incredible lack of communication and understanding." He was well aware of the risk to his reputation, believing that "the chances of success were probably minimal because so much momentum had built up on both sides of the sanctions issue."

In his initial meeting in Pyongyang, Carter found Foreign Minister Kim Yong Nam so uncompromising and negative that the former president awoke at 3 a.m. believing it likely that North Korea would go to war rather than yield to international sanctions.

The next morning, Carter met with Kim Il Sung. For Kim, the meeting with the most prominent American ever to visit the DPRK was the culminating moment of his two-decades-long effort to make direct contact with American ruling circles. The Great Leader greeted his visitor with a booming welcome, a hearty handshake, and big smile, which was returned by Carter's characteristic toothy grin.

When the talks began, Carter explained that he had come as a private citizen rather than as a representative of the U.S. government, but that he had come with the knowledge and support of his government. The presence of Dick Christenson, the Korean-speaking deputy director of the State Department's Korea desk, was testimony to the semiofficial nature of the mission. Carter emphasized that the differences in the two governmental systems should not be an obstacle to friendship between the two nations, a point he repeated several times. If the current nuclear issues could be resolved, he said, then high-level negotiations on normalizing relations could move ahead.