Amid the alarm over the news on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s waning health, a senior secretary to President Lee Myung-bak was known to have made a “quiet” trip to Washington last week to discuss a possibly imminent post-Kim era.
Kim Tae-hyo, Lee’s secretary for national strategy, met with key American security officials on the Korean Peninsula to coordinate their response to the rapidly changing new development in North Korea and their overall policy to the Stalinist country, according to Dong A Ilbo.
The security consultation between Seoul and Washington is allegedly at a final stage of fine-tuning “OPLAN 5029,” a contingency plan in the event of a drastic change in the North such as the North’s collapse.
The two sides also agreed that South Korea must take the initiative in the reunification process of the Korean Peninsula.