Kim's Great Game — page 3

The "Roh people," in fact, describes not just a government but a generation: younger Koreans who weren't alive during the Korean War and barely remember South Korea's Herculean effort to escape poverty. They came of age during the years of authoritarian rule, and they squarely blame the U.S. for supporting such military dictators as Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan. (Roh himself had a career as a human-rights lawyer who took on the South's strongman governments.) Many of these younger Koreans are quicker to direct their anger toward the U.S. than to North Korea. Washington, they suspect, keeps troops in the South solely for its own security interests, at the cost of a divided peninsula. They may fear North Korea in one part of their minds, but they hate the U.S. in another.

Kim Dae Jung's "Sunshine Policy" replaced decades of invective toward the North with a rapprochement that resulted in his June 2000 summit with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang and the Nobel Peace Prize four months later. Kim Dae Jung had to compromise with a conservative opposition, and so did Roh when he was elected on his anti-American, pro-"Sunshine Policy" platform in December 2002. But now Roh has got a free hand, thanks to a recent rise from the ashes of controversy. The opposition impeached Roh on slender charges in March; then a brand-new pro-Roh political grouping, the Uri Party, won a majority of seats in the National Assembly. A court reversed Roh's impeachment a month later, and the new, hastily reconstituted government is all of one mind: pro-Sunshine. "Anti-Americans and pro-North Koreans are now masters of the political landscape," says former government negotiator Lee.

Indeed, South Korean newspapers no longer harp on the hard life in the North but instead find lots of space to report on fledgling economic reforms or the progress of economic projects between the two countries, such as the busloads of southerners who take tours through the DMZ to the Mount Kumgang resort, built by the Hyundai Group at a cost, so far, of $568 million. Two weeks ago, the two countries announced a formal agreement to stop blasting propaganda at each other across the DMZ, which was sealed with a hearty handshake between North Korea's General An Ik San and South Korea's Rear Admiral Park Jeong Hwa. South Korean schoolbooks used to teach grade-schoolers to hate and fear "the enemy." Today's texts contain pictures of North Korean food shops ("A lot of women," reads the caption, helpfully, "are participating in economic activity") and suggest students practice writing letters to their counterparts across the border (without mentioning that North Korea prohibits mail from the South.) In today's classrooms, you can find a third-grade textbook with a cartoon of two boys from either side of the border deciding not to throw rocks at each other.

Northern Boy: I'm sorry I threw the rock at you first.

Southern Boy: I'm sorry, too. It is not right for brothers to throw rocks at each other.

Northern Boy: Our parents and ancestors would be grieved to see us fighting.

Southern Boy: Speaking of which, do you want to participate in the international Ping-Pong game together as one team? ... If we become one team, we can make up for our weakness and no other country will be able to beat us.

Teachers need little encouragement to use such texts. Park Geun Byung, a teacher at Song Chun elementary school in Seoul, uses a storybook that instructs his fourth-grade class in the tale of an evil dragon that prevents a Romeo and Juliet on either side of a river from marrying. The river is plainly the DMZ. The evil dragon is meant to represent the U.S. Park is a believer in what he calls "unification education." "Teachers," he adds, "don't have to be neutral."

What will Kim Jong Il make of Washington's move to reduce its forces in South Korea—and how will he react? "He is a brilliant strategist," says Sohn Kwang Joo, a North Korea analyst at the Seoul-based Institute of National Unification Policy, "an expert at brinkmanship. He is very focused on maintaining his regime." Kim's next task is to get through the third round of the six-party talks on his nuclear program, which is supposed to take place this month. That shouldn't be too difficult. China's main role has been to cajole Pyongyang into attending; South Korea has been reluctant to pull off its gloves; Japan has been distracted by the kidnappings of its citizens; and Russia is largely an observer. The U.S. counts the fact that the talks are continuing as a success in itself, not least of all because it adamantly refuses the only other alternative, the one that Kim really wants: bilateral discussions with Washington to discuss diplomatic recognition and a noninvasion treaty. (When Koizumi met Bush at the G-8 summit last week, he carried just such a message from Kim.)

None of this means that Kim's position is unassailable. If he launched a war against the South, the U.S.'s huge technological advantage would almost certainly be decisive, notwithstanding the cutback in American troops on the peninsula. "If North Korea attacked," says James Lilley, former U.S. ambassador to Seoul, "[it] would be blown off the face of the earth." But Kim would be mad to wage such a war. Right now, his survival skills have made him master of the moment. With the security that comes from his weapons and a changing regional attitude to his regime, Kim needs to do little more than continue to keep his adversaries off balance. In the propaganda posters that dot North Korea, Kim is always seen smiling. Now you know why.

—Reported by Chaim Estulin/Hong Kong, Mingi Hyun, Kim Yooseung, John Larkin and Donald Macintyre/Seoul and Eric Roston and Mark Thompson/Washington

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