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KOREAN SUMMIT NOT SUCH A SICK IDEA

Donald Kirk

Asia Times, October 23, 2009

SEOUL - Here's one way to upstage the rush to two-way dialogue between the United States and North Korea: how about a third inter-Korean summit - this one between South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak and North Korea's Kim Jong-il?

Unlikely though such a scenario might seem, the South Korean media, led by the state-owned Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), suggest the question is not entirely absurd. KBS reports that Kim Yang-gon, an influential North Korean figure on dealings with the South, has been in Singapore seeing an unnamed but "ranking" South Korean.

While South Korean sources have been saying the idea of a rendezvous between the conservative Lee and the North's Dear Leader is preposterous, the Blue House, the center of presidential power in the South, refrained from the usual denial. Instead, while Lee was in Vietnam and Cambodia, a spokesman cryptically refused to "confirm" such a meeting had happened.

No doubt about it, a Lee-Kim summit would be an ultimate expression of North Korea's desire to ease up on tensions and the South's promise to reciprocate if only Kim agrees to give up his beloved nukes. If nothing else, the conservative but pragmatic Lee would demonstrate that he's really just as interested in reconciliation as were his two left-leaning predecessors, Roh Moo-hyun, who met Kim in Pyongyang in October 2007, and Kim Dae-jung, who initiated the "Sunshine" policy of reconciliation and flew to Pyongyang for the first North-South summit in June 2000.

For the record, South Korea's Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan, talking to correspondents in Seoul, proclaimed South Korea "ready to meet with North Korea regardless of the time, venue and opportunity to discuss possible improvement of inter-Korean relations and the nuclear issue".

(...) [artículo aquí]