member and later US ambassador to Tokyo, warned of "extraordinarily adverse consequences in Japan" if troops were withdrawn without providing compensating aid as promised. The Defense Department's Morton Abramowitz said that proceeding without the compensation package would likely bring about the resignation of General Vessey, the US military commander in Korea. He added that such a move "will lose the Joint Chiefs of Staff," which had reluctantly accepted the withdrawal policy.

With Brown, Vance, and most of the others counseling delay or cancellation of the next withdrawal element, only Brzezinski addressed the real but unspoken issue. "This [withdrawal policy] may have been the wrong decision, but now it has been made. We cannot afford to go back on it," the NSC adviser said. In the end, Brzezinski devised andIl Sung also made efforts to achieve a breakthrough in ties with the United States. On May 24, 1990, the day after Dobrynin's secret meeting with Roh in Seoul, Kim delivered an important policy speech to a formal meeting of the North's legislature. Departing from his unyielding stand against the acceptance of US military forces on the peninsula, Kim declared, "If the United States cannot withdraw all her troops from South Korea at once, she will be able to do so by stages." In case Washington was not paying attention, Pyongyang used the tenth meeting of American and North Korean political counselors in Beijing on May 30 to pass along the text of Kim's speech. In the meantime, on May 28, North Korea made its first positive response