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| Donald Gregg |
Based on his experience as Washington's top envoy to Seoul from 1989 to 1993, Gregg, 87, has stressed the importance of dialogue between the two Koreas for years.
He says Seoul's need for greater engagement with Pyongyang has become especially essential these days to avoid being isolated in the region amid the growing Washington-Tokyo alliance.
"I'm like a broken record ever since I've been coming here. I keep saying we've got to talk to the North Koreans, not fight them," he said during an interview with The Korea Times at the Millennium Seoul Hilton, Tuesday.
Gregg, who also was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer from the 1950s to 1980s, served as the CIA's station chief in Seoul from 1973 to 1975.
After his retirement as a diplomat, he visited Korea as the chairman of the board of the Korea Society, a U.S.-based non-profit organization which promotes the Seoul-Washington friendship. He held the post until 2009.
He said the hegemonic struggle between the U.S. and China reminds him of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905).
"(South) Korea historically calls itself a shrimp among whales. The thing you can do to break that is to get together with the North," he said.
Gregg added it is possible that the Korean Peninsula will "emerge as the geographic center of Northeast Asia" if the two Koreas manage to mend relations. He pointed out that Russia seeks to build a pipeline and a railroad traversing the two Koreas as part of its Eurasia energy initiatives.
"It's time for the Koreans to take their own destiny in their own hands and find what they can do to reach out to each other."
His openness toward North Korea conflicts with his career under the government of President Ronald Reagan, a Republican.
Gregg was a National Security Council advisor (1979-1982) and National Security Advisor to U.S. Vice President George H. W. Bush (1982-1989).
He called himself "a skunk at the garden party" among Republican Party members who maintain hard-line stance toward Pyongyang.
In a letter he sent to U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden in 2009, he proposed inviting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to Washington for an "orientation tour." The plan did not succeed because of opposition from Republican leaders.
Regarding U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's remark on Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Monday, Gregg said, "It's a very complicated issue."
Kerry mentioned Washington's motives to deploy the disputed advanced U.S. missile defense system.
China and Russia claim THAAD's long-range tracking radar could be used to spy on their military activities, although the U.S. has repeatedly said that its primary purpose is to deter North Korea's attacks.
Gregg is on six-day trip to South Korea until Saturday.
He visited here this time partly to publicize the newly published Korean-language version of his memoir, "Pot Shards."
It deals with the incidents that he dealt with during his service years. They include preventing the then-military government twice from killing Kim Dae-jung, a democracy fighter who later became president.
