South Korea’s New President Suggests Talks With North Kim Dae-Jung May Meet Kim Jong-Il

President-elect Kim Dae-jung of South Korea Friday proposed direct talks with North Korea, saying he may even meet with reclusive leader Kim Jong-il.

The idea of the North’s communist leader meeting with Kim’s predecessor was almost unthinkable. Outgoing President Kim Young-sam and North Korea’s Kim share deep personal animosities.

But today is a new day in South Korea following Kim Dae-jung’s epochal victory in Thursday’s presidential election. And while there is concern about what the new leadership from the ranks of the political opposition means for the nation’s severe economic problems, many believe the new president, more moderate in his position and approach to the North, will help thaw relations with Pyongyang.

At his first high-profile news conference, the president-elect said, “Through direct dialogue with the North, we shall search for a way to settle our problems between our two separated people … I, therefore, propose to North Korea a resumption of the inter-Korean dialogue.”

He said he would like to send an envoy to meet North Korean leaders and then perhaps meet “communist party leader Kim Jong-il.”

In an apparent effort to put to rest any worries that he will be soft on North Korea, he reiterated his support for a strong defense, a strong military and a strong alliance with the United States.

One of the world’s most isolated countries, North Korea is viewed as a huge security risk in this region. Talking with the leader of North Korea - a man who is thought never to have met a U.S. official - is viewed as an important step in demystifying and understanding the world’s last Stalinist state.

North Korea’s official news agency, considered a barometer of the government in Pyongyang, did not comment on the election. Recently the news agency said that Kim Dae-jung and the current president should be relegated to “the trash heap of history.”

Despite those harsh words, Kim Dae-jung is believed to be more willing to embrace the North, and the North is deemed less antagonistic toward him than toward previous South Korean leaders.

Because of the decades-old tension between the two halves of the peninsula, and the 1 million soldiers along its border, the United States maintains 37,000 troops here.

“It’s now an ideal time to open dialogue between North and South,” said Park Jai-chang, professor at Sook Myung Women’s University in Seoul. “There are good reasons that a new era” may be at hand.

In addition to the election of a candidate viewed as distant from the establishment, Park said the “shifting atmosphere” caused by the economic meltdown here may also draw the two Koreas closer. South Korea has been in an economic crisis for more than a month as its financial markets plunged, the value of its currency relative to the dollar nose-dived and it agreed reluctantly to a painful austerity program to receive a record $57 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

North Korea’s economy has been rocked by droughts and floods.

“Both parts of the peninsula - North and South - are having difficulties,” Park said, adding that that may make it easier for Pyongyang to come to the peace table.