Pyongyang’s point man on inter-Korean issues was found to have made a secret visit to South Korea's presidential office in 2007.
 
Former chief of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) Kim Man-bok made the revelation in a memoir he co-authored with former Unification Minister Lee Jae-jeong.
 
According to the memoir, North Korea’s Workers’ Party Secretary Kim Yang-gon visited Seoul for two days ahead of the second inter-Korean summit between then-South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun and then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
 
Kim Yang-gon was accompanied by two other senior North Korean officials—Choi Sung-chol, Deputy Director of the United Front Department of the North's ruling Workers' Party of Korea, and Won Dong-yon, the vice chairman of the North’s Asia-Pacific Committee.
 
The former South Korean spy agency chief said Roh received the North Korean delegation at the presidential office on September 26, 2007.
 
The memoir also quoted Kim Jong-il as saying that he maintained a positive view of the June 15 Joint Declaration between former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung and himself during the first inter-Korean summit in 2000.
 
The former North Korean leader, however, is said to have added that the declaration had remained empty rhetoric for the following years as the South failed to take an autonomous stance from the U.S., which he claimed was necessary to ease military hostility between the two Koreas.
 
According to the memoir, Roh responded to the remark by saying that it is a fact that South Korea had long depended on the U.S. and is a pro-American country, noting it is impossible for any South Korean government to sever relations with the U.S. overnight.