What President Bush said about North Korea last week will matter far less in the long run than what he heard from South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. Fortunately, both men seemed aware of the gap.
The relatively youthful, internationally untested Bush had the sense not to lecture his visitor about the villainy and unpredictability of the Pyongyang regime. That is a subject Kim knows from A to Z. Instead, Bush listened to a man for whom politics has been a life-and-death, war-and-peace matter for almost as many years as the American president has lived.
"The basic tone of the discussions was for the president to hear the views of my government," Kim told me in an extended conversation at Blair House. Bush offered "full support" for "South Korea taking the lead in dealing with North Korea" to reduce tensions on the divided peninsula, Kim added.
Bush created headlines by saying on Wednesday that he would not immediately resume Bill Clinton's efforts to get North Korea to give up its long-range missile program. The day before, Secretary of State Colin Powell praised "promising elements" in the earlier negotiations, which he implied would be resumed.
It is not surprising that Bush would emphasize the political: He will do things his way, not Clinton's. The guard has changed. Nor is it amazing that Powell would focus on a diplomatic agenda rather than on political spin.
Each dealt with the urgent rather than the important. That makes for discordance in policy. But it is a dichotomy Kim can certainly appreciate.
Kim practices the reverse approach on unification of the Korean peninsula: It is important, but not urgent. He wants no economy-wrecking, destabilizing rush to unity.
Naive Kim Dae Jung is not. Critics portray him thusly because of his unflagging determination to rope Kim Jong Il, the flaky and menacing leader of North Korea, into a slow-motion walk toward peaceful and democratic union.
When I asked how this long-shot political seduction of a suspected mass-murderer could work, South Korea's Kim gave me a textured analysis that I boil down to a neologism: Koreanness.
The hermitic Koreans, North and South, may fear and detest each other. But they fear and detest the hegemonic reach of their neighbors even more. This bonds them in a silent unity that has successfully defied the conflict between communism and capitalism.
The two Kims reached quick and surprising agreement on that much in a summit meeting last June. The South Korean pressed the view that U.S. troops should remain on the peninsula after unification "for the maintenance of the balance of power and stability in the northeast Asian region," he told me.
"Korea is in a strategic location, surrounded by Russia, China and Japan. Were the Americans to withdraw, the three countries could easily get into a fight over influence," he said.
"When I explained this to the chairman, I expected him to protest and argue. But he agreed. He actually said: 'I know your position and I agree ...Yes, we are surrounded by big countries who could get into a fight if the Americans leave.' Throughout my talk with him he had some negative things to say about the other three countries but not about the United States."
Kim Jong Il understands that North Korea "needs to build better ties with the United States ... for its survival. It needs outside economic assistance and without cooperation with the United States that will not come."
Economic support is needed to stave off a regime collapse and chaos that could engulf the South. The fear of pushing too hard is a major factor in Kim Dae Jung's disappointing soft-pedaling of the North's massive human rights abuses.
Kim gambles that he can accomplish more by avoiding confrontational rhetoric now. He can probably count on the Bush team to provide enough of that as the need arises.
Or it may just be that long shots have become a matter of habit for the 75-year-old Kim. He survived jail, exile, a death sentence from the South Korean dictatorship and at least two assassination attempts to win the presidency in 1997 and the Nobel Peace Prize last year.
Our first meeting was in a tiny exile apartment in Northern Virginia two decades ago. We met again in a Seoul hotel packed with security agents snooping on Kim as he undertook another seemingly forlorn quest for the presidency.
The fact that this latest encounter occurred at Blair House, the official U.S. residence for visiting rulers, is a sign that a visionary's long shots can pay off, over time. That may have been the most important message KDJ brought to a beginning president.
Jim Hoagland is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.
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