Pyongyang demanded $10 billion for summit: Ex-Seoul leader

Late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il repeatedly pushed for summit talks with South Korea before his 2011 death, but also demanded $10 billion and large-scale shipments of food and fertilizer, a former South Korean president said in a memoir to be published next week. Parts of the memoir by ex-President Lee Myung-bak, provided to reporters in advance, reveal that senior intelligence officials from the two Koreas made secret visits to the rival countries to explore summit possibilities in 2010, when two deadly attacks blamed on Pyongyang killed 50 South Koreans. Lee said that a Pyongyang envoy who visited Seoul that year was later publicly executed after returning to the North.

One possibility is that the North Koreans are in the early stages of an effort to restart the reactor after an almost five-month hiatus in operations.

An analysis issued by 38 North, a North Korea monitoring project at Johns Hopkins University

The memoir comes as both countries float the idea of a possible summit between Kim’s son and current leader Kim Jong Un, and Lee’s successor, President Park Geun-hye. Reports also suggest that North Korea may be trying to restart a nuclear reactor that can yield plutonium for atomic bombs. It would be the third such meeting since the two Koreas were divided 70 years ago, although chances seem low as the countries bicker over the terms for a meeting. The first summit in 2000 prompted an era of cooperation between the rivals, but it also became a source of criticism in South Korea. Conservatives said that Seoul’s then “sunshine policy” of providing generous economic aid to Pyongyang with few strings attached propped up the North’s nuclear and missile development.

Asia-Pacific north korea