Carter, the 39th U.S. president (1977–1981), died on Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia, at the age of 100.
During his presidency, Carter's campaign promise to withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea created tension with then-President Park Chung-hee. At their 1979 meeting in Seoul—one of the most confrontational U.S.-South Korea summits in history—Carter and Park engaged in a heated two-and-a-half-hour debate over human rights and the proposed troop withdrawal.
According to declassified White House diplomatic documents from 2018, Carter pressed Park on defense spending and human rights, while Park warned that U.S. troop withdrawal could destabilize the region. Carter later described the meeting in his 2018 memoir as "probably the most unpleasant discussion I ever had with an allied leader."
The troop withdrawal plan was eventually suspended after congressional opposition mounted and intelligence reports revealed that North Korea's military capabilities had been underestimated. However, Carter's administration faced criticism for seemingly tacitly accepting the rise of a new military government in South Korea following Park's assassination in 1979.
After leaving office, Carter increasingly focused on peace efforts on the peninsula. His most significant intervention came during the first North Korean nuclear crisis in 1994, when he made an unprecedented visit to Pyongyang to meet Kim Il-sung.
Carter's dramatic three-day visit came at a critical moment when the Clinton administration was considering military strikes against North Korea's nuclear facilities. Initially met with skepticism from the Clinton White House—concerned his intervention might undermine international pressure—Carter's face-to-face meetings with Kim yielded unexpected breakthroughs that pulled the peninsula back from the brink of war.
During their discussions, Kim agreed to freeze North Korea's nuclear activities and allow international inspectors to remain in the country. The agreement, announced live on CNN from Pyongyang, caught both Washington and Seoul by surprise but paved the way for the 1994 Agreed Framework between the U.S. and North Korea.
Carter also conveyed Kim Il-sung's willingness to meet then-South Korean President Kim Young-sam for what would have been the first inter-Korean summit. However, the plan was derailed by Kim Il-sung's death shortly afterward.
Carter continued his involvement with Korean Peninsula issues into his later years. In 2010, he returned to Pyongyang to secure the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes, an American sentenced to eight years of hard labor. The following year, he led a delegation of former world leaders to North Korea in an attempt to restart dialogue, though the mission yielded few results.
Even during heightened tensions in 2017, when North Korea conducted regular missile tests and traded threats with Washington, the then-93-year-old Carter offered to serve as a special envoy. Although the Trump administration declined his offer, Carter warned in a Washington Post op-ed about the dangers of military confrontation and advocated sending a high-level delegation to prevent a "second Korean war."
Beyond politics, Carter demonstrated his commitment to the Korean people through humanitarian work, participating in a Habitat for Humanity project in South Korea in 2001.
Critics argued that Carter's independent diplomatic efforts sometimes clashed with official U.S. policy, potentially sending mixed messages to Pyongyang.
Supporters, however, argued that Carter's willingness to engage with Pyongyang set a precedent for future back-channel diplomacy with one of the world's most isolated regimes, especially during times when traditional diplomacy had stalled.
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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