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American Morning
President Bush Arrived in Seoul, South Korea Early This Morning
Aired February 19, 2002 - 07:08 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: On now to President Bush's next stop on his Asian tour. The president arrived in Seoul, South Korea early this morning, the second leg of his six day swing across Asia. And he's not backing down from the tough talk that put North Korea on the short list of countries that represent an axis of evil. But he is prepared to do some damage control.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'll take it. You want me to take it, Jack?
CAFFERTY: Go ahead.
COOPER: All right.
Senior White House correspondent John King is traveling with the president and we go to him now -- John.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Priority one in Seoul is repairing a rift in a critical alliance and explaining just what he meant by this.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction while starving its citizens. States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.
KING: The remark not only angered North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, but also rattled the South. President Kim Dae-jung has staked his legacy on engaging the communist North, his sunshine policy.
SAMUEL BERGER, FORMER CLINTON NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: To the extent that we are saying that he's engaged with evil, it tends to undercut the rationality of engagement. So I think it's very important that we get on the same page with the South Korean and Japanese on the Korean Peninsula.
KING: South Korea makes no secret of its disappointment.
YANG SUNG-CHUL, SOUTH KOREAN AMBASSADOR TO U.S.: Those escalation rhetorics, we're concerned, because it not only touches North Korea, but also sensibilities and the sensitivities of the South Korean people.
KING: The Bush White House is unapologetic.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: We believe that you can have a policy that speaks the truth, speaks clearly about the North Korean regime and yet leaves open the possibility of dialogue.
KING: One senior U.S. official calls it a good cop, bad cop approach. South Korea focuses on more personal issues like improving economic ties and reunions of families divided by war five decades ago, Washington on security concerns like the North's sales of ballistic missile technology and the 37,000 U.S. troops still stationed in South Korea.
But where the White House sees a necessary balancing act, many critics see a miscalculation, especially because Kim Dae-jung is in his final year in office.
MICHAEL O'HANLON, SENIOR FELLOW, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: The big concern is sort of the ticking clock, wasting time in this war of the words, which probably will not lead to any conflict in the short-term, but it could be passing up a big opportunity for improved relations and taking the next step.
KING: Mr. Bush will not back away from his tough talk, but he will embrace the sunshine policy and say he is prepared to immediately open a dialogue with the North.
(on camera): But many of those who favor engaging the North believe the damage is done and that Mr. Bush might have played into North Korea's hand by giving it an excuse not to negotiate with an administration that labels it "evil."
John King, CNN, Tokyo.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CAFFERTY: And later today the president will have lunch with some of the 37,000 U.S. troops guarding the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas -- Jack.
CAFFERTY: All right, Anderson.
Kim Jong Il, the leader of North Korea, a country described as a hermit kingdom because of its isolation from the rest of the world, the leader may be a man nobody knows, but he apparently knows a lot about us, as in the West, fascinated by some of the things that are Western in nature.
Joining us now to talk about the leader of North Korea and about President Bush's inclusion of that country on the list of countries that represent an axis of evil, Mike Elliot of "Time" magazine. Good morning.
MICHAEL ELLIOT, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Good to see you, Jack. CAFFERTY: Talk to me a light about this guy. None of us know very much about him, but apparently he's fascinated with a lot of the things in the West, right?
ELLIOT: He's an extraordinary person who, I suspect, among world leaders is probably the people that, people have to guess most about to kind of figure out what he is. He was born, we think, in Russia. He's only traveled outside North Korea once, to our knowledge, to China. And yet he seems to have this absolute fascination with Western movies, Western women, we suspect, Western musicals. He's said to have authored six operas when I was checking my research yesterday.
But he, but as you rightly described it, it's a hermit kingdom and everything that we, a lot that we know about this guy is, frankly, guesswork and speculation.
CAFFERTY: One would have to, I mean, wonder out loud if he's also aware that we get enough to eat in this country.
ELLIOT: Well...
CAFFERTY: For example.
ELLIOT: For example...
CAFFERTY: Yes?
ELLIOT: ... because North Korea, of course, in the last seven or eight years, has gone through an unbelievable famine, a really extraordinary famine, I mean a really extraordinary famine.
CAFFERTY: Yes, horrible.
ELLIOT: And even as recently as last year, you were getting reports, and this is four or five years after the famine really broke, that there was still very, very visible malnourishment in the streets. He's never been to South Korea. Kim Dae-jung went to...
CAFFERTY: Went there, right.
ELLIOT: Right.
CAFFERTY: We'll talk about the sunshine policy that the South is trying to use to engage North Korea and its government in a couple of minutes.
President Bush clarified, at least in my mind, some of what he was getting at in this axis of evil reference to North Korea, Iran and Iraq during the news conference yesterday that he held while he was still in Japan. Let's listen to a little bit about what the president had to say and we'll get Mike's comments on it afterwards.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: In the war against terror, one of the worst things that could possibly happen is al Qaeda like organizations becoming allied and operationally attuned to nations which develop, which have a weapon of mass destruction.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAFFERTY: Now, that's a little scary, and suddenly, at least I understood more clearly what the president meant.
ELLIOT: That's the point.
CAFFERTY: Right?
ELLIOT: That's the point. That's the point.
CAFFERTY: These guys, the terrorists cells, people like al Qaeda are going to align themselves with these governments that have the things they've been trying to get a hold of for years.
ELLIOT: And aren't too squeamish about who they sell it to, I mean, basically.
CAFFERTY: Right.
ELLIOT: I mean North Korea we know has rather sophisticated ballistic missile technology, has a rocket that when they tested it in '98 and '99, went way further than anyone expected it to. And it's pretty clear that during the 1990s they were trying to develop a nuclear weapon program and may still be doing so.
So, seeing as we know that they are not at all squeamish about who they sell their technology to, seeing as we know they run smuggling operations, seeing as we know they print counterfeit hundred dollar bills, or have done in the past, I guess the president's point is we have to watch states like this to see what they do with their military technology.
CAFFERTY: What is it, in your mind, that would preclude Kim Jong Il and the rest of the North Korean power structure from understanding the stark differences between the standard of living in their country and the standard of living in almost any Western democracy and agreeing to do something to improve the lot of its citizens? I mean why are they holding onto this arcane and archaic way of doing things and watching their people literally starve to death?
ELLIOT: I think it's an extraordinarily difficult question to answer because it seems to kind of admit of no rational explanation. This is a country that was formed in war, that was formed very much on the sense of self-reliance, that they could do everything themselves, that they kind of stood for themselves alone. And on top of that, and let's not forget this, it's a dictatorship. So when we say, when we say why don't the North Koreans understand this, that and the other, we kind of too quickly gloss over the fact that this is a true, true dictatorship on the part of its leader and its military rulers.
CAFFERTY: And they're not going to surrender power without a struggle probably. I need a short answer to this, but how difficult has President Bush's comments about North Korea made things for the government of South Korea?
ELLIOT: Very difficult. No question about that. They are absolutely committed to a sunshine policy and gradual easing of tension and eventual reunification.
CAFFERTY: Look for anything meaningful to come out of this visit there?
ELLIOT: I think the president, President Bush will go out of his way to try and shore up the South Koreans because their noses were obviously put out of joint.
CAFFERTY: Mike, it's good to see you. Thanks.
ELLIOT: Good to see you, Jack.
CAFFERTY: Michael Elliot, "Time" magazine.
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