Asia Times: Bush takes a peep at 'evil' empire


	February 21, 2002	atimes.com

The Koreas

Bush takes a peep at 'evil' empire

SEOUL - South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and United States President George W Bush agreed after talks on Wednesday to resolve the issue of North Korea's weapons of mass destruction and conventional weapons through dialogue.

The two leaders also agreed to cooperate in the US-led campaign against terrorism, officials said. In particular, the presidents agreed that their countries would hold security talks with North Korea at any time and at any place without preconditions, and they called for Pyongyang to immediately engage in such talks.

The two said that the North's weapons of mass destruction threaten not only the Korean peninsula but also the world and that South Korea and the US would work together to prevent the deadly weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists.

The administration of previous US president Bill Clinton was on the verge of a deal with North Korea that was designed to curb its development and exporting of ballistic missiles and missile technology. But the deal was never completed and the Bush administration rejected the framework on the grounds that it would have been impossible to verify under the terms negotiated by the Clinton team.

Bush also expressed his desire to maintain the Kim Dae-jung administration's "Sunshine" policy toward North Korea to ensure peace and stability on the peninsula. President Kim indicated that the Seoul-Washington alliance is essential to stability not only on the peninsula, but also in Northeast Asia.

Kim has staked his legacy on his "Sunshine" policy toward the North, hoping to set the two countries on a path toward reconciliation. Kim is barred from seeking a second five-year term and elections are due in December with the transition to a new government scheduled for next March.

Bush is on the second leg of an Asian tour that began in Japan and will take him to China on Thursday. Bush's recent branding of North Korea as part of "an axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq set off fears of a heightening of tension in the region, and with his visit the president clearly sought to assure South Korea and other allies that Washington is not hell-bent on military action.

Bush's tough approach on North Korea contrasts with a more accommodating policy from Clinton, who tried to draw the North into the international community. His stance has prompted street protests and a scuffle in the South Korean parliament.

Bush's visit to Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing initially was scheduled for October, but was postponed because of the terrorist strikes on the US. The US-China summit comes at a symbolic moment - 30 years after the groundbreaking visit to China by former president Richard Nixon - and a time when US officials say Washington's prestige and influence in the region is at its highest point since the Vietnam era. VIDEO It also comes months in advance of the 16th Communist Party Conference, at which Chinese President Jiang Zemin is widely expected to be succeeded by the country's Vice President Hu Jintao.

In remarks prepared for delivery late on Wednesday at the Dorasan train station, which is a few hundred yards from the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates South Korea from the North, Bush said, "No nation should be a prison for its own people. My vision is clear. I see a peninsula that is one day united in commerce and cooperation instead of divided by barbed wire and fear."

The train station is the last stop on the South Korean side of the Unification Railway. South Korea completed the project in February under a June 2000 agreement to reconnect the peninsula through rail and highway. North Korea has yet to begin construction of the road and railway, making the project in the South a dead end.

Bush urged North Korea to finish the road and unite with the South. "Traveling south on that road, the people of the North would see, not a threat, but a miracle of peace and development," the president said. "The people of the North would see more than physical wealth; they would see the creativity and spiritual freedom represented here today. They would see a great, hopeful alternative to stagnation and starvation," he said.

North Korea, meanwhile, continued to accuse Bush of war-mongering. "If the US imperialists and Japanese reactionaries should provoke the second Korean War, to the end our military and people will attack them with 100 times to 1,000 times of revenge," Radio Pyongyang said in a commentary monitored by the Radiopress agency in Tokyo.

On Wednesday Bush visited a US-manned position at the Ouellette observation post on the DMZ after his talks with Kim. Dressed in a green army jacket with a US flag sewn on the arm, Bush peered through binoculars from a sand-bagged bunker at the barren North Korean landscape.

The DMZ, the two-and-a-half-mile-wide, 151-mile-long border is thick with mines and guarded by nearly 2 million troops on the two sides. The United States has stationed 37,000 troops in South Korea.

"The axes that were used to slaughter two US soldiers are in the peace museum," Bush told reporters. "No wonder I think they're evil." In August 1976, 30 North Korea soldiers attacked and killed two US soldiers supervising tree-trimming work in the DMZ. They used the work party's axes to slay the two men. The axes are exhibited over the border in what North Korea calls a "peace museum", visible from the bunker.

Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell had lunch with a dozen US soldiers at the observation post. Bush flew to the DMZ by helicopter from the South Korean capital, Seoul, just 30 miles from the border.

Excerpts from Bush's speech

The following are excerpts from Bush's prepared remarks at the Dorasan train station, as provided by the White House:

"We gather today surrounded by reminders of the challenges to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. President Kim has just shown me a road he built, a road for peace. And he has shown me where that road abruptly ends - right at the DMZ. That road has the potential to bring the peoples on both sides of this divided land together. And for the good of all the Korean people, the North should finish it.

"Traveling south on that road, the people of the North would see not a threat, but a miracle of peaceful development - Asia's third-largest economy, risen from the ruins of war. The people of the North would see more than physical wealth; they would see the creativity and spiritual freedom represented here today. They would see a great, hopeful alternative to stagnation and starvation. And they would find friends and partners in the rebuilding of their country."

"My vision is clear: I see a peninsula that is one day united in commerce and cooperation instead of divided by barbed wire and fear. Korean grandparents should be free to spend their final years with those they love. Korean children should never starve while a massive army is fed. No nation should be a prison for its own people."

"People on both sides of this border want to live in freedom and dignity, without the threat of violence and famine and war. I hope that one day soon this hope will be realized. And when the day comes, all the people of Korea will find in America a strong and willing friend."

(Asia Times Online/Asia Pulse/Yonhap)