North Korea Sought Talks and Attached a Hefty Price Tag, South’s Ex-Leader Says

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea repeatedly but unsuccessfully pushed for a summit meeting with the former South Korean leader Lee Myung-bak, demanding a huge aid package, including $10 billion in cash, as an incentive, Mr. Lee says in a memoir to be published next week.

Mr. Lee, president from 2008 to 2013, says in the book that he rejected the overture, which began in 2009, because he wanted to break the pattern of rewarding the recalcitrant government in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, simply for agreeing to talk.

“The North believed that the South Korean president always wanted an inter-Korean summit with Chairman Kim Jong-il, but I thought we should correct this North Korean belief before we could improve South-North relations,” Mr. Lee says in his 800-page memoir, titled “The Times of the President.”

Kim Jong-il died in December 2011, bequeathing the stewardship of his country to his son Kim Jong-un.

North Korea did not immediately comment on Mr. Lee’s memoir.

The New York Times