As I was coming out of the Kremlin Palace a.er meeting Mr. Gorbachev, I turned to Bo Hi Pak, who had accompanied me, and gave him a special instruction.

       “I need to meet President Kim Il Sung before the end of 1991,” I told him. “!ere’s no time. !e Soviet Union is going to end in the next year or two. Our country is the problem. Somehow, I need to meet President Kim and prevent war from occurring on the Korean peninsula.”

       I knew that when the Soviet Union collapsed, most other communist regimes in the world would also fall. North Korea would #nd itself forced into a corner, and there was no telling what provocation it might commit. North Korea’s obsession with nuclear weapons made the situation even more worrisome. To prevent a war with North Korea, we needed a channel to talk to its leadership, but we had no such channel at that point. Somehow, I needed to meet President Kim and receive his commitment not to strike #rst against South Korea.

       !e Korean peninsula is a scaled-down version of the world. If blood were shed on the Korean peninsula, it would be shed in the world. If reconciliation occurred on the peninsula, there would be reconciliation in the world. If the peninsula were uni#ed, this would bring about uni#cation in the world. Beginning in the late 1980s, however, North Korea had been working hard to become a country possessing nuclear weapons. Western countries were saying that they would stage a #rst strike against North Korea, if necessary. If the situation continued to the extreme, there was no telling what desperate move North Korea might attempt. I knew I somehow needed to open a channel of communication with North Korea.