Korea's immediate neighborhood, tied by a military alliance to North Korea. Since the announcement of the "Nixon Doctrine" in mid-1969—that Asians should provide the manpower for their own wars—the United States had appeared to be moving steadily toward disengagement. Early in 1971, over Park's vehement objections, Washington had withdrawn twenty thousand of the sixty-two thousand American troops stationed in South Korea, at the same time that it was pulling back American forces from South Vietnam. Despite the reassuring words of US political leaders and diplomats, Park took these developments as "a message to the Korean people that we won't rescue you if North Korea invades again," according to his longtime aide, Kim Seong Jin. Now on top of everything else, the White House was suddenly, and without noticeSuddenly, they showed themselves to be brothers, sisters, and cousins—all Koreans.

The first visit of North Koreans to the South, openly and in peace, since the Korean War came two months after the July 4 joint statement, which had surprised Koreans on both sides and the rest of the world. Although their leaders were privately cynical, for the ordinary people of the two Koreas, this was among the most hopeful moments in the second half of the twentieth century. There was widespread popular anticipation that the beginning of the North-South dialogue could mean the dawning of an era of peace and the reuniting of divided families and the nation.

On the roadsides leading to the center of Seoul, hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, people turned out to stare and