By
The Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea - President Kim Dae-jung heads to Washington this week for talks with President Bush amid controversy over U.S. plans for a missile defense system and North Korea's warnings that it may resume long-range missile tests.
During Kim's five-day visit, the two leaders also will discuss U.S.-South Korean trade and slowing economic growth. Kim is seeking support for his economic reform program, which has led to layoffs as well as criticism that it is not comprehensive enough.
That Bush and Kim, who departs Seoul today, have arranged to meet so early in the Bush presidency shows how closely the allies align policy toward the communist North. Kim's U.S.-backed policy of engaging the North helped launch an unprecedented reconciliation process last year that offers the best hope for peace for the Koreas in half a century.
Still, the process is vulnerable. Kim faces pressure from domestic critics who grumble that wealthy South Korea is too generous in its dealings with North Korea, which relies on outside food aid for survival.
"I think sometimes there are gaps" in the South's policy of expecting North Korea to reciprocate gestures of friendship, Yim Sung-joon, South Korean deputy minister for foreign affairs, said yesterday at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Seoul.
The North, meanwhile, has become increasingly critical of what it perceives as the new Bush administration's hard-line policy. One of its chief complaints, shared by China and Russia, is that Bush is determined to push ahead with a missile defense system.
Some South Korean activists also oppose the U.S. plan on the grounds that it could disrupt rapprochement with North Korea.
"This gives the impression that the Bush administration's goal is a return to the era of high tension and confrontations at the expense of sound steps taken toward peace and Korean reunification," a coalition of 300 leaders of religious, environmental and other community groups said in a statement released yesterday in Seoul.
Mindful of the sensitivity of the issue, the South Korean government has been guarded about its stand on missile defense.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said last week that Seoul was "cautious but sympathetic" to U.S. motives for the project, which is designed to thwart any threat from nations such as North Korea.
Another source of concern is a U.S.-led consortium that is building two nuclear reactors in North Korea to alleviate its energy shortages. Under a 1994 deal with Washington, Pyongyang agreed to freeze its suspected nuclear weapons program in exchange for the reactors and an annual supply of heavy fuel oil until they are completed.
But funding, contractual and other problems have jeopardized the project, prompting the North to threaten to pull out of the deal.
Stanley Roth, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state, said there were grounds for optimism in ties with North Korea despite the strains and holdups on the North's part.
"There have been delays, but this has always been characteristic of every negotiation with (North Korea) and may be attributable to bureaucratic problems and negotiating style rather than malign intent," he wrote in a recent analysis.
