Assemblyman Cites Forecast of Kim Trip

Representative Hahn Hwa-kap of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party on Monday quoted Evans Revere, the acting U.S. ambassador to Korea, as saying that North Korea will send a positive signal regarding North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's visit to South Korea within the month.

Kim Jong-il and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung agreed last year that the North Korean leader would visit Seoul at an "appropriate time." Mr. Hahn quoted Mr. Revere as saying the repeated delays of the visit are a ploy to gain more concessions from the South.

Gerald McLoughlin, press attache at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, did not comment on all of Mr. Revere's purported comments, saying he was not aware of the conversation. But on the Kim visit to Seoul, he said, "No well-informed American diplomat, including Mr. Revere, would say that, because the story lacks all logic. We have no information on Kim Jong-il's travel plans."

Mr. Hahn said that the U.S. government views the series of incursions by North Korean ships into southern waters as an attempt to give Pyongyang leverage at an future summit meeting.

"By pressing the incursion issue the opposition party has played directly into the North's hands," Mr. Hahn said. He added that opposition leader Lee Hoi-chang's hard-line stance toward the North will inevitably make him a prisoner of his own ideals.

Mr. Hahn spoke as the opposition Grand National Party pressed its attacks on the government over the recent media company tax investigations and the tax service's request for prosecution of six newspaper companies and three owners. The opposition charges that the tax inquest is intended to muzzle the papers, some of which have been critical of the administration's method of rapprochement with the North, prior to Kim Jong-il's visit to Seoul.

by Kim Chong-hyuk