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06/10/94 JIMMY CARTER TO VISIT SOUTH KOREA AND NORTH KOREA (Text: Announcement by Jimmy Carter 6/9) (200) Atlanta -- Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and his wife have been invited to visit South Korea and North Korea. They will go as private citizens.
Following is the text of the June 9 announcement: (begin text) STATEMENT FROM FORMER U.S.PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER ANNOUNCING HIS PLANS TO VISIT KOREA My wife Rosalynn and I will be visiting North Korea and South Korea next week. We will be going as private citizens, representing the Carter Center. The initiative for this trip has been from Korea, not Washington, and I will have no official status relating to the U.S. government. Since 1991, I have received numerous invitations to make this visit, and on one occasion sent a Carter Center advance team to both countries to prepare for my prospective trip. As is the case with other international issues since leaving the White House, I have attempted to stay adequately briefed on the Korean situation. My hope is to discuss some of the important issues of the day with leaders in the area.
(Emphasis mine)
Freelance diplomacy
That was the situation when Carter called President Bill Clinton on June 1, 1994, to express his concern about the crisis. The White House arranged for Amb. Robert Gallucci to go to Carter's home in Plains, Georgia, to brief the former president on June 5. Gallucci, who had been trying without success to put more American give into the diplomatic give-and-take, recited the history of the diplomatic effort in some detail, including the administration's internal differences. Far from mollifying Carter, this meeting convinced him of "the seriousness of the problem" and the need to communicate directly with Kim Il Sung-"the only person in North Korea who could change the course of events." After the briefing Carter sent a letter to President Clinton saying he intended to go to North Korea.
To North Korea, which had just been denied a meeting with an assistant secretary of state, a visit by a former president, especially one who had tried to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula when he was in office, was a token of American respect. Carter was someone Kim Il Sung could do business with.
To the Clinton administration, the Carter mission was a gamble. If he freelanced, he could always be disowned, but not without political repercussions. Even if he succeeded, the administration would be open to criticism by Republicans and South Koreans who disparaged Carter's willingness to take risks for peace. Yet turning down the former president was also risky, especially if it came to be portrayed publicly as a missed opportunity to avoid war. In the end Carter won Clinton's assent.
Carter flew to Washington June 10. He was met at the airport by National Security Adviser Anthony Lake and National Security Council staff member Daniel Poneman. Lake tried to make clear, says a top official, that "Carter's role was to offer [the North Koreans] a way out. It was not to offer them a new American policy that turned everything around." Lake told Carter that he had no authority to speak for the United States, that he was going, in Carter's words, "without any clear instructions or official endorsement."
Carter then received another lengthy briefing from Gallucci and others. It covered the technical issues-what was permitted under the nonproliferation treaty and what was not, where the North Korean program stood--and differing views on the relative importance of ascertaining how much plutonium the North may have reprocessed in the past or curtailing its current program. It also dealt with whether Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il was running things in Pyongyang.