Feb. 26 ? Japan and South Korea are trying to minimize the rift that they see left behind by President Bush's harsh rhetoric toward North Korea during his trip to Asia last week.
Analysts here say Bush's comments, in which he castigated the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, and repeated his judgment that the government is "evil," have further impaired prospects of renewed cooperation by Pyongyang.
North Korea has reacted angrily to Bush's statements, calling the U.S. president the "kingpin of terrorism" and describing his trip a "war junket."
But officials in Tokyo and Seoul have seized upon the invitation repeated by Bush to hold talks with Pyongyang as evidence the U.S. administration is less antagonistic toward North Korea than the president's words suggest.
A spokesman for the presidential Blue House in Seoul said Bush's assurance that the United States does not intend to invade North Korea is "a big help in dispelling our worries."
A spokesman for the Japanese Foreign Ministry said today that Tokyo has "a sincere hope dialogue will be resumed" between the United States and North Korea.
But President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea acknowledged Monday that Bush's stance had increased tensions to a "critical" point. After the president's State of the Union address on Jan. 29 labeling North Korea, Iran and Iraq an "axis of evil," Kim said, "We had faced a critical moment. North Korea must have felt a great threat after President Bush's axis of evil remarks."
"A war can break out if two parties reject each other," Kim told a group of government and civic leaders in Seoul.
Seoul, whose residents make up nearly half the population of South Korea, is 34 miles from the border with North Korea and a vulnerable missile target if war were to break out. Bush's tough tone toward North Korea produced anti-American demonstrations in Seoul by protesters who support Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine policy" of seeking reconciliation with the North.
Howard H. Baker Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Japan, met with Japanese and American reporters this week to promote a positive view of the president's Asian trip.
"I think clearly he got their attention," Baker said today of Bush's remarks on North Korea. "I think they're thinking about it. They don't like it, but I think they're thinking about it. They may be on the brink of deciding well, you know, we're about to mess up again and we're about to lose what we thought we had advanced. I think he'll make them focus on the importance of addressing these issues. I think the president realized his objective."
The North Korean reaction came not only from the usual voice, the Korean Central News Agency, but also in a weightier statement from the Foreign Ministry. The statement, issued as Bush ended his trip, complained that the president's comments were "an insult to the national feelings of the Korean people" and "outrageously slandered" the country.
Bush, in remarks before and during his visit to Seoul last Wednesday, called the North Korean government "despotic," repeated his demands that Pyongyang pull back its weapons from the border, criticized Kim Jong Il as a man without "a good heart," and ? after peering through bulletproof glass toward the North, where a museum holds axes used to kill two U.S. servicemen 25 years ago ? mused, "No wonder I think they're evil."
Despite Bush's insistence that he is open to talks with Pyongyang and supports Kim Dae Jung's conciliatory efforts, his remarks were an embarrassing setback to the policies that won the South Korean president a Nobel Peace Prize.
Critics of Bush say he has ensured there will be little progress by personally criticizing Kim Jong Il, an affront to a country that has little except its swollen pride.
Former president Jimmy Carter called Bush's approach "overly simplistic and counterproductive." In Atlanta last week, Carter said, "I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement."
Commentaries in the press here have generally agreed. "The Bush administration is trying to play the role of 'bad cop,' " foreign affairs columnist Yoichi Funabashi wrote in the daily Asahi Shimbun. "But America's allies will not follow a United States which takes the law into its own hands as the guardian of virtue in controlling evil."
Bush "says he is willing to talk to the North, but he is not willing to make it a priority," said Ji Yeon Yuh, an assistant professor of history at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., writing in the Daily Yomiuri newspaper. "When Bush labeled North Korea part of an axis of evil, he heightened the potential for military conflict. The losers in any such conflict would be the Korean people."
"If the North turns a deaf ear to dialogue proposals, it would be all but impossible to predict what actions President Bush will take," said Sah Dong Seok, political editor of the Korea Times in Seoul.
Baker, while playing down the threat posed by the Bush administration, acknowledged that he worried about miscalculation.
"Usually great conflicts start by accident, and I fear that there is some sort of enormous military strength in North Korea," Baker said today while meeting reporters. "You've got an unstable domestic situation there. You've got uncertain leadership there. That is the most dangerous part of the relationship."
Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.