washington —
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has a complex legacy on the Korean Peninsula, former U.S. officials say, including the vital role he played in defusing a crisis between the United States and North Korea in 1994.
Thomas Hubbard, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 2001 to 2004, told VOA Korean by phone Wednesday that Carter’s interventions in North Korea significantly lowered tensions, despite somewhat negative reactions from President Bill Clinton’s administration.
“His initial involvement in the early 1990s when he went to North Korea, met with Kim Il Sung, he opened an opportunity that lowered the chances of war and led to the Agreed Framework,” said Hubbard, referring to Carter’s meeting in June 1994 with late North Korean founder Kim Il Sung.
Hubbard was a principal negotiator of the Agreed Framework signed by the U.S. and North Korea in Geneva in October 1994, aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
VOA Korean sought comment from the Permanent Mission of North Korea to the United Nations, but did not receive a response.
Carter, who was the 39th U.S. president and served from 1977 to 1981, visited Pyongyang as North Korea’s declaration of withdrawal from the International Atomic Energy Agency created the first major crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
He crossed the inter-Korean border in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) from the South Korean side with his wife, Rosalynn, and held talks for two days in Pyongyang with the North Korean leader.
Carter was the first former U.S. president to visit the isolated country and to meet North Korea’s head of state.
Controversial mission
At the time, North Korea threatened to expel IAEA inspectors, demonstrating its intent to develop nuclear weapons, and the United States pushed for U.N. sanctions on North Korea. It was speculated that Clinton was planning a preemptive attack on North Korea.
After the talks between Carter and Kim, North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for a resumption of dialogue with the U.S. The breakthrough led to the first nuclear deal between the U.S. and North Korea in 40 years, although the agreement fell through in 2003.
Daniel Russel, former assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said in an email to VOA Korean on Monday, “It is not hyperbole to say that it felt like the brink of war. We were right at the edge of the cliff.”
As a young diplomat, Russel and then-U.S. Ambassador to South Korea James Laney helped prepare Carter for his trip across the DMZ.
North Korea warned that sanctions would be treated as “an act of war” and started the process to withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Russel said.
“The immediate crisis was averted. We had been really close to a war, and Jimmy Carter saved us from that,” he said.
Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, said Carter’s mission was “ultimately successful, but the Clinton administration was unhappy because Carter didn’t try to get any constraint on North Korea’s nuclear program as part of a resolution of that immediate conflict.”
Hubbard offered a similar view.
“What made it controversial, I think, is that Carter accepted some positions that went beyond the Clinton administration’s positions with North Korea, and then he announced them publicly on CNN before even informing us,” Hubbard said. “That was quite a shock.”
CNN, which closely followed Carter’s visit to Pyongyang, first reported that Carter told the North Koreans the U.S. had stopped pursuing international sanctions against North Korea, which Clinton soon flatly denied.
Carter visited North Korea twice more in 2010 and 2011 on private humanitarian missions. While his visit in 2010 secured the release of American teacher Aijalon Mahli Gomes, who had been imprisoned in North Korea for seven months, he failed to meet with Kim Jong Il, who succeeded his father, Kim Il Sung, on either trip.
While his post-presidential efforts on the Korean Peninsula are more widely known, Carter’s presidency had another moment of controversy, as his push for the withdrawal of U.S. ground troops from South Korea shook the U.S.-South Korea alliance.
Push for human rights
When he assumed the presidency, Carter was determined not to overlook the human rights abuses of U.S. allies. He found it problematic that the United States would support a country under a repressive government. To him, South Korea was such a country then.
“One of the big things Carter campaigned on was human rights,” Samore said. “At the time, South Korea was ruled by a military government, and he wanted to reduce relations with countries that were not democracies.”
The former president, who pledged to withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea during his presidential campaign, had a war of words with then-South Korean President Park Chung-hee over the issue during his 1979 visit to South Korea, according to diplomatic documents from both countries.
According to a declassified document from the White House, Park criticized the planned withdrawal of U.S. Forces Korea, arguing the idea itself had emboldened North Korea. To this, Carter suggested that South Korea should increase defense spending.
Joseph DeTrani, former special envoy for the Six-Party Talks with North Korea from 2003 to 2006, told VOA Korean on Monday by phone that one of the factors behind Carter’s decision was the burgeoning U.S. relationship with China, which fought against the U.S. during the 1950-53 Korean War in support of North Korea.
“We were normalizing relations with the People’s Republic of China. There was a sense that war was not going to break out on the Korean Peninsula,” said DeTrani, who also served as director of East Asia operations at the Central Intelligence Agency.
“Those people who follow developments on the Korean Peninsula felt that was not the right decision,” he said.
U.S. troop withdrawal from the East Asian ally was ultimately not realized, largely over opposition from the U.S. Congress and the military.
“President Carter was interested in waging peace everywhere, wherever there is conflict. He didn’t believe there was the necessary need for Americans to station so many troops in so many places,” Yawei Liu, senior adviser on China at the Carter Center, told VOA Korean by phone on Monday.
Carter died Sunday at his home in Georgia at age 100. The official state funeral for Carter will be held January 9 in Washington.
South Korea’s foreign ministry expressed condolences at Carter’s passing.
“He was particularly interested in promoting peace on the Korean Peninsula and actively worked on it,” it said in a statement released Monday.
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