Left Flank

As I compare the Choe Sang-hun's and Jack Kim's accounts of the second DPRK-ROK summit in Pyongyang, I can't help but think Jack Kim is a better writer. Choe's account, working from similar notes, clearly lacks...something? Oh, yes, bite!

Compare Kim's opening graphs...

Roh Moo-Hyun has billed his first trip to the communist North as a chance to end animosity born with the partition of the Korean peninsula at the end of World War Two.

But his critics say the visit is aimed more at domestic politics and expect him to tiptoe around the sensitive issues of nuclear weapons and mass human rights abuses.

North Koreans dressed in their finest waved pink and red plastic flowers and cheered on cue when Kim arrived at a main square in Pyongyang, repeating the greeting minutes later as Roh stepped out of an open car supplied by North Korea.

A portly Kim, in his trademark drab zip-up jacket and wearing platform shoes that made him appear taller than the dark-suited Roh, shook hands unsmilingly with the South Korean leader and his wife.

The two shared greetings of «nice to meet you» and then barely spoke to each other, pool reports from Pyongyang said. The pair reviewed a military guard of honor.

Kim's cool greeting was in sharp contrast to his effusive welcome for the South's then president, Kim Dae-Jung, at the first summit in 2000. Then, the two leaders rode together in cars, embraced, and harmonized in singing patriotic songs.

...with Choe's.

Stepping into the international spotlight at a delicate time for his isolated regime, the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il greeted South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun, who arrived in Pyongyang Tuesday for a summit meeting. Roh was met by the cheers of hundreds of thousands of North Koreans.

The mobilized crowd erupted into well-choreographed chants of «hurrays!» and «national unification!» as Roh rode through central Pyongyang in an open limousine with Kim Yong Nam, the North's nominal head of state but second to Kim in power.

The usually drab sidewalks of Pyongyang blossomed in color as North Koreans dressed in their holiday best waved pink and red paper flowers, according to South Korean television footage from Pyongyang. Roh, only the second South Korean president to visit Pyongyang since the two Koreas were divided 60 years ago, smiled and waved.

Roh travels with a bold initiative: if North Korea agrees to escalate down a half century of animosity with arms cuts, the South will help rebuild the North's moribund economy, creating a «joint economic community» as a prelude to eventual reunification. Roh will also test Kim Jong Il's willingness to give up his nuclear arsenal in return for economic rewards and diplomatic relations with the United States and others.

Kim Jong Il greeted and shook hands with Roh in front of a cultural hall in Pyongyang, where Roh's motorcade stopped for a welcoming ceremony. Clad in his trademark mud-colored Mao suit and unsmiling, Kim ambled down a red carpet, guiding the South Korean leader past a parade of North Korean soldiers goose-stepping with rifles tipped with bayonets.

So, were the flowers paper or plastic? And, I love the details about the Dear Leader's transformative attire! And, doesn't yellow connote caution? How long will it take South Koreans to recover from the overzealous propaganda and methods employed by successive reactionary regimes bent on sinking the DPRK into their own fiefdom?

What was that about «joint economic community»?