The summit will be the first such meeting since Korea was divided following the 1950-53 war. In that conflict, a massive invasion army, led by Washington and flying the flag of the United Nations, was fought to a stalemate by national liberation forces based in the north. Around 37,000 U.S. troops remain in the south today; Together with the 600,000-strong south Korean army, they carry out annual exercises aimed at the north.

The workers state in north Korea has survived Washington's hostility and a recent deep economic crisis precipitated by a combination of drought and floods. North Korea remains on the U.S. State Department's list of "terrorist nations."

Throughout the peninsula the demand for reunification of the divided nation enjoys popular backing. Reflecting that fact, the opposition Grand National Party in the south immediately accused President Kim Dae-jung of aiming to change "the circumstances in the ruling party's favor" by "announcing the summit talks just three days before elections" for the National Assembly.

On the same day that the talks were announced, a controversy relating to the historic oppression of the Korean people by imperialism flared up in Japan as well.

The Korean national struggle, which set the scene for the post–World War II developments, was directed first at Tokyo's colonial rule. Japan occupied the country and maintained a brutal domination over its people for 50 years until 1945. Today, Koreans face national discrimination in Japan.

"Atrocious crimes have been committed again and again by sangokujin and other foreigners," said Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo on April 9 in a speech to soldiers in the Japanese army. "Sangokujin," meaning people from third countries, became a term of racist abuse in the post-World War II period, directed at people from the former colonies of Taiwan and Korea. "We can expect them to riot in the event of a disastrous earthquake," said Ishihara.

The remarks recalled the events of 1923, which began with a devastating earthquake that struck Tokyo and Yokoha and took 100,000 lives. Unfounded reports of riots among Koreans, many of whom had been brought to Japan as indentured labor under Tokyo's colonial regime, sparked off a pogrom in which hundreds were killed.

"These remarks bring the nightmare home to us of the groundless, hostile rumor of the 1923 earthquake by which many innocent comrades were victimized just because they were foreigners," read a statement by the Korean Resident Union in Japan, which represents 600,000 people. Most of the less than one percent of the Japanese population that is classified as non-Japanese is of Korean origin.

Isihara has staked out other reactionary positions. He uses the derogatory term "Shina" when referring to China, has described the Rape of Nanking, the 1937 massacre in which the Japanese army slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians, as a lie, and has called on Tokyo to arm with nuclear weapons.  
 
 
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