Secret Minutes of 2007 North-South Summit Could Affect Outcome of South Korean Presidential Election
South Korea’s presidential election, slated for December 19, is showing growing signs of being an election to avenge the deaths of two past presidents – Park Chung-hee, who was assassinated 33 years ago, and Roh Moo-hyung, who committed suicide five years ago. The fierce election battle has gradually created a political environment in which conservatives are finally regaining their lost awareness of the hard realities faced by the nation, putting them on a footing to face up to their left-wing, North-leaning foes.
In the coming election, Park Guen-hye, leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, is clashing head-on with Moon Jae-in, a lawyer-turned politician who served as the chief of staff to President Roh. Ms Park, a daughter of the slain president, is regarded as a conservative representing the government party, while Moon, representing the leading opposition Democratic United Party, honors the policies of Presidents Roh and Kim Dae-jung. Specifically, Moon has made a public commitment to realize the objectives set out by Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il in their joint declaration of 2000 as well as the objectives agreed to by Roh Moo-hyung and Kim Jon Il in their joint declaration of 2007.
Up until this point, the focal point of the election had revolved around which side could provide more lucrative pork barrel spending. Recently, however, the focus has shifted dramatically to issues of national defense and the South’s relations with the North. The catalyst to this change was the revelation of the secret minutes of discussions held between Roh and Kim Jong-il back in 2007. Allow me to explain how this sudden turn of events occurred.
In October of that year, Roh attended a North-South summit in Pyongyang with General Secretary Kim, after which he had pertinent legislation passed by the South Korean Parliament in order to seal the minutes for 30 years. The only document released concerning the summit was the October 4, 2007 declaration, in which both leaders agreed, among other things, to end hostile relations while working closely together to achieve reunification of the Korean Peninsula. They also agreed to set up joint fisheries areas and “peaceful” waters alongside the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a disputed inter-Korea maritime demarcation line in the Yellow Sea.
Roh committed suicide by leaping into a ravine near his home on May 23, 2009 as prosecutors launched a full-fledged investigation into various allegations, including the illegal acquisition of US$6 million in political funds after leaving the Blue House. I was quite surprised at the time that Roh’s successor, President Lee Myung-bak, instructed authorities to organize a state funeral for his predecessor, who took his own life in order to avoid interrogations amid suspicion of activities that could have easily been seen as not being in the national interests. As was expected, when the prosecution shut down investigations into Roh’s case, a host of matters pertaining to Roh, including the minutes he had sealed, were hushed up.
“A Traitor’s Conspiracy”
In point of fact, however, copies of the minutes, which exceeded 100 pages in length, actually were kept at the National Intelligence Service (NIS). Jeong Moon-heon, a Saenuri member of the National Assembly who somehow got hold of a copy, brought the matter to the attention of the National Assembly Steering Committee, asking how it should be handled. Chun Young-woo, top secretary to President Lee for foreign and security affairs, is said to have objected to making the minutes public at that time on the grounds that they would seriously impair South Korea’s national dignity.
Incidentally, President Lee is known to have read the minutes long before this latest turn of events – around late 2008 or early 2009. The North-South dialogue had been suspended because a South Korean citizen visiting Mount Kimgang was shot dead by North Korean forces. Despite this incident, the North continued to press Seoul to honor “the agreements” reached between the two heads of state during the 2007 summit. Lee understandably became alarmed and had the minutes in question brought in to determine what the agreements signified.
Lee was absolutely appalled by the content, but nevertheless decided against making the minutes public. That Lee was extremely reluctant to take Roh to task despite the nature of statements Roh made would seem to indicate that, as president, Lee likely was unable to figure out what his nation’s real national interests are, or should be.
It was South Korean journalist Cho Gab-Je who reported on the content of the minutes. Based on his interviews with those who read the minutes, Cho recently published a hastily-compiled book entitled A Traitor’s Conspiracy (One Korea Daily News Co., Ltd., Tokyo). The gist of Cho’s report follows:
The North-South Summit lasted some four hours on the afternoon of October 3, 2007, during which Roh took two thirds of the time to state his case. The minutes are based on transcriptions of recordings done by the South Korean side. Roh started off his conversation with Kim by first referring to US bases in the South:
“We are putting up a good fight in the South. A decision has been made to transfer urban US forces in the South to rural areas. The right to command war-time operations will revert to the South. Recent polls in the South show the US as the greatest threat to our (South Korean) security, followed by Japan. Then comes the North.
“You couldn’t have imagined this a mere ten years ago. This is the result of all the hard work (I) myself have done in terms of diplomacy and the promotion of mutual cooperation among all Koreans.”
In other words, Roh was proudly harping on the extent of his anti-US, anti-Japanese scheme in Kim’s presence.
While the international community was then – and is now – strongly on its guard against the North’s nuclear program, Roh failed to urge Kim to abolish nuclear weapons. In point of fact, Roh did not even take up the pertinent matter of issues relating to highly enriched uranium. On the contrary, he made the following proposal to Kim:
“Why don’t the three of us – President Bush, General Secretary Kim, and myself – hold a tripartite conference in order to officially end the Korean War and sign a peace treaty?”
The US has made clear its readiness to sign a peace treaty only after North Korea abandons its nuclear program. But Roh proposed to the North a declaration of the official end of the Korean War and a signing of a peace treaty without demanding that the North abolish its nuclear weapons. If such logic were allowed to prevail, there could have been a possibility of the North achieving its long-cherished ambition of seeing the US-South Korean alliance disbanded through the peace treaty, with the US forces finally pulling out of the Korean Peninsula. No wonder Kim Jong-il showed interest in what Roh had to say.
Furthermore, in order to be able to announce some concrete results from the summit in his statement the next day, Roh proposed North-South cooperative projects estimated to run in the range of several trillion won as part of a massive assistance program. Kim’s response was measured:
“There will be a presidential election in the South 12 months from now and a new administration will come to power. Are you saying you can still go ahead with such a commitment?”
To this, Roh replied: “That is why we should be laying the groundwork now, don’t you see?”
Handing over the South’s Capital to the North
Cho reports that South Korean government officials who have read the minutes have said such things as, “We were hardly able to read through them because of the humiliating nature of the content”; or, “Roh’s remarks are almost traitorous.” I would view these as quite natural reactions.
There were also some outrageous remarks as regards the NLL, the military demarcation line in the Yellow Sea west of both Koreas:
“In the South, there still are those who assert that the NLL is a territorial line. I propose that there be an economic map in place of the existing security map.”
Roh continued with his previous remarks by making clear he had no intention of defending the NLL, and, when he finished, Kim said to him, as though he were giving an order: “Very well, scrap all of your NLL-related laws then.”
The NLL is the first line of defense for Seoul, the South’s capital. A number of shooting incidents have been instigated by the North over the many years in which the South has stood in defense of the demarcation line. If, as the late president proposed, the NLL is to be reduced to a mere joint fisheries area, it would be tantamount to handing over the South Korean capital to the North.
Roh’s remarks, bordering on the traitorous, were clearly not in the best interest of South Korea. But the good news is that the people of the republic have begun, albeit rather belatedly, to be aware of the facts in this case. Naturally, the tide is now turning against Moon, because as the South side’s chairman of the Committee to Promote the Dialogue between Roh Moo-hyung and General Secretary Kim Jong-il, Moon is generally recognized as the man who scripted the series of talks between Roh and Kim.
With new suspicion arising concerning his involvement with the Busan Savings Bank, Moon’s image as a lawyer living in virtuous penury has begun to crumble under its own weight. The missile test announced by the North will also prove disadvantageous to Moon.
Given Moon’s anti-Japan views, the fact that he is increasingly in jeopardy in the presidential election can well be viewed positively as far as Japan is concerned. Thanks to this development, a further deterioration of Japan-South Korea relations, already in their worst state in ages, may well be prevented.
(Translated from “Renaissance Japan” column no. 538 in the December 13, 2012 issue of The Weeky Shincho)