Presidential office calls Kim visit `diplomatic'

Senior officials from the presidential office yesterday said that the visit to Taiwan by former South Korean president Kim Young-sam was a purely diplomatic activity conducted by an ex-head of state and that it was incorrect to interpret the visit as having a particular political purpose.

"To define Kim's visit as a mission to `discuss the resumption of air links between Taiwan and South Korea' or to `establish a strategic alliance with South Korea's opposition' is over-exaggerating," a presidential aide with responsibility for foreign affairs told the Taipei Times yesterday.

Nothing unusual

The aide stressed that the government had welcomed Kim's visit, and that the nature of his reception in Taiwan had been no different from those of other former heads of state, including those with which former president, Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), was received during visits to the UK and Japan after leaving office.

"Taiwan criticized Japan for rejecting Lee's visit to Japan. Could we then prohibit Kim from coming to Taiwan?" the aide asked.

According to the aide, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) invited many international political leaders to witness the transfer of political power at his inauguration ceremony, and Kim Young-sam was certainly on the invitation list. Later, when meeting with Korean parliamentarians from Kim's Grand Nation Party (GNP), Chen again extended his invitation to Kim to visit Taiwan.

"But it was not until Chen's national policy advisor, Lee Tsai-fang (李在方), after shuttling between the two countries, finally pushed for Kim's visit early July that Kim agreed to visit," the aide said. "Certainly the Presidential Office knew that Kim Young-sam is a controversial political figure. But for the purpose of making more friends, we should embrace international figures who come to get acquainted with Taiwan's new government," the aide said.

The aide also told the Taipei Times that earlier this year the president also dined in the Presidential Office with a key South Korean Cabinet member in the current Kim Dae-jung government, who was on a secret trip to Taiwan.

Moreover, the aide said, President Chen has had much closer ties with Kim Dae-jung than with Kim Young-sam (since both were opposition politicians).

"In our national security system's analysis of the situation in northeast Asia, there is no suggestion to the effect that [the president] should strengthen interactions with South Korea's opposition parties so as to counterbalance Kim Dae-jung's pro-China stance."

The topics of the two meetings held between Chen and Kim yesterday and Thursday were democratic values, economic development, and substantive economic and trade relations between the two countries.

"Chen also took the opportunity of Kim's visit to announce publicly Taiwan's three conditions for the resumption of air links," a senior member of the National Security Council pointed out.

The purpose was to raise the level of talks and to avoid any misunderstanding that we intend to establish some sort of alliance with South Korea's opposition, the official said.

South Korea still wants links

The South Korean government does hope that Taiwan's new government will reverse the KMT government's decision to sever air links, the official continued. But if President Chen wants to discuss this issue, he will talk to South Korea's ruling party, he said.