Bang Goes Pyongyang

...What is not at issue is that we stand at a hinge-point in world affairs, a moment whose dangers have not been seen since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis...

...While Pyongyang did, in fact, stop plutonium production, there was a hidden cost to the Albright mission: the perception that Korean problems could be settled by direct negotiation between Washington and Pyongyang, with Seoul relegated to an auxiliary status...

...Like terrorism, the scourge of weapons proliferation can be managed only through concerted international action—and, even then, only managed, not solved...

...Second, he wanted nuclear status and thought he could achieve it while the U.S...

...The national security establishment in Washington was slow to focus...

...Newly elected South Korean president Kim Dae Jung sought to reverse that trend with his "Sunshine Policy," advocting food aid for the North, family exchanges, and investment...

...Korea has been an epicenter of Asian crises since the end of the Russo-Japanese War a century ago...

...North Korea's 23 million inhabitants, cowed by a vicious security service, subsist in a collapsed economy whose antiquated industrial base produces little of interest to world markets, and whose agricultural policies have brought near-permanent starvation...

...The objectives would be to halt nuclear weapons development, return UN inspectors, end the missile tests, and destroy any existing weapons...

...Certainly Washington is distracted...

...But with the prospective collapse of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty looming, 37,000 troops in harm's way, and U.S...

...In return, Pyongyang would get guarantees of food and fuel aid, plus a UN-brokered framework for diplomatic and economic normalization—including face-to-face discussions with the U.S., aimed at a non-aggression pact...

...But North Korea's objective has not been war...

...And to be blunt, George Bush may now find himself the point man in an unsolvable problem...

...In this sense Mr...

...status as an Asian power at stake, this is not the case...

...Hence Kim's repeated pattern of "engage, escalate, and blackmail," which has thus far proved a successful formula to obtain aid...

...Beyond the North's overwhelming tank and artillery forces, its Scud and Nodong missile systems are capable of striking all of South Korea and most of Japan...

...Today's Kim—"The Great General"—is a portly, somewhat ridiculous sixtytwo-year-old in a Mao leisure suit...

...That brought then-secretary of state Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang, and an agreement to swap American "scientific missile technology" in return for a promise by Kim Jong II to abandon his "military" program...

...Though unpalatable to some—it may appear to reward bad behavior—this track could still reach the end goal of getting Pyongyang's nuclear genie back in the bottle...

...Focused on a prospective war in Iraq, buffeted by the equity markets, frustrated by Israeli-Palestinian intransigence, and a sharply partisan new Congress, not to mention the lagging "War on Terrorism"—the White House thought things couldn't get much more complicated...

...Their presence has stabilized the peninsula, providing a tripwire that guarantees American retaliation against any attack from the North...

...Half of North Korea's $1 billion annual export earnings comes from the sale of missiles and missile technology to nations like Pakistan, Syria, and others in the Middle East...

...China provides some 70 percent of the required fuel oil...

...What is left for the Bush administration are uncomfortable choices...

...Or—as seems to be happening—it can internationalize the problem, engaging China, South Korea, Russia, and the UN...

...Kim Jong Il's adroit exploitation of the administration's focus on Iraq illustrates the problem...

...Failure to act effectively, however, while moderating other contingencies—including Iraq if necessary—will be to accept a new and desperate world, in which tens of dozens of nations—not to mention terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and Hamas—obtain nuclear weapons...

...The real price for Kim is the status and security of his own nuclear arsenal...

...Why North Korea's mysterious leader Kim Jong II has decided to move now is not known...

...Additional motivation is undoubtedly found indisparaging White House descriptions of the Pyongyang regime as part of the "axis of evil," in references to Kim as a "pygmy," and in the public expressions of Washington's ability to fight and win two wars at once...

...and soon, if not already, with nuclear warheads...

...It can reject the implied kigic of the ill-advised phrase "axis of evil," and try to define the Korea problemaway...

...Kim's gambit surfaced in October, when North Korea acknowledged—and refused to terminate—a secret program to produce weapons-grade plutonium...

...military buildup in the Middle East have left the American people psychologically unprepared for a war in Korea...

...The goal is to break out of diplomatic and economic isolation and to reap some of the benefits of East Asia's remarkable economic expansion...

...The Taepo Dong-2 three-stage version, designed to strike the continental United States, will likely be operational in 2015, according to the CIA...

...It can ready Americans for a second war half a world away...

...The problem—indeed, the priority—is preparing Americans for conflict in Korea as well as Iraq, and then providing the iron spine the region and the UN Security Council may need to contain Kim Jong Il's ambitions...

...Without doubt the most repressive regime on earth, Kim inherited power on the death of his father, "Great Leader" Kim II Sung, in 1994...

...Were the pace of escalation slower or the decisions to take these steps made by a more stable government, the options would be broader...

...That must not happen...

...The latest confrontation is rooted in a 1994 agreement in which the United States agreed to supply oil for the North's power plants, and Japan and South Korea committed to building two "heavy water" nuclear reactors, all in return for Pyongyang suspending development of nuclear weapons...

...Then, under pressure from South Korea, China, and Russia, Washington agreed to direct face-to-face talks on the nuclear question only—which may yet prove a tactical error...

...Unfortunately, free enterprise is anathema to the Korean Worker's Party and would bring demands for freedoms—assembly, speech, private ownership—that Kim's cultish autocracy could not tolerate...

...the United States, together with Japan, South Korea, and China, supply much of the food...

...Instead, trying hard to remain focused on Iraq, the administration's Korea stance has moved through a series of tactical refinements—dare I say, retreats...

...Also well known is his weakness for the Swedish bikini team, a penchant for junk food (pizza, McDonald's hamburgers), and his passion for Hennessy Paradis cognac at $630 a bottle...

...Though military uniforms remain crisp and creased, it is reported that some subsist on boiled grass, and school children sometimes read by the only illumination available—the spotlights playing on statues of the Great Leader in town squares...

...Clearly, this had not escaped Pyongyang's notice...

...His designs were made clear: First, he sought economic aid and non-aggression assurances from the United States...

...It would be a world of brinksmanship and bluff, undoubtedly leading to miscalculation...

...It would be a mistake to see Kim's North Korea only as a U.S...

...But the conclusion drawn north of the DMZ was that minimal reciprocation coupled with credible threat and bluff could, and did, bring a cornucopia...

...But they have...

...So how does this rapidly failing state manage to continue...

...And finally, 37,000 American troops sit directly in North Korea's cross hairs...

...Given its past support of terrorist acts in South Korea, Burma, and Japan, it is certainly possible that, were its nuclear ambitions not curtailed, a hard-pressed Pyongyang might sell directly to terrorist groups like al-Qaedaa nightmare scenario which compels Washington to give this crisis the highest possible priority...

...Washington's intense preoccupation with Iraq, the demonization of Saddam, and the U.S...

...At first Washington refused to call the situation a "crisis," despite mounting panic in the international community...

...There's a question to be asked as to how, with fundamental policy direction unclear, decision makers allowed rhetoric to drive policy, entangling Washington in its own pronouncements and triggering an unwanted crisis...

...What to do...

...But they also hard-wire Washington for political-military blackmail—an art Pyongyang has refined and perfected...

...Kim would be nothing more than grotesque residue from the collapsed communist imperium were his army of 1.2 million not the world's fourth largest...

...But while President Bush's muscular idealism seems right for today's challenge, non-proliferation has proven a treacherous business, particularly when coupled with delicate regional political-military relationships...

...1r...

...was otherwise occupied...

...He stands five feet three inches tall, sports high-heeled shoes, and a bouffant hairdo...

...And thus if there is hope for Pyongyang abandoning its nuclear weapons program, China is key—not only because it provides most of North Korea's fuel and food, but also because it is a rising power with a major stake in regional stability...

...Offensively configured, about750,000 troops along the DMZ are poised to devastate Seoul, just thirty miles away, with high-explosive conventional artillery, chemical, and biological warheads...

...One diplomatic possibility would be to place the North Korea issue before the five permanent members of the Security Council and urge creation of a working group, also including South Korea and Japan...

...problem—it is surely an international problem...

...When North Korea called for talks, Washington—correctly—refused, saying those in the region should take the lead...

...Bush is not unlike Woodrow Wilson, another reluctant internationalist...

...Lost in the shuffle has been the White House's shiny new strategy of preemptive self-defense, the policy designed to justify a strike on Iraq because it might have weapons of mass destruction...

...That impressed me in conversations with Kim II Sung in 1994, during a visit of former U.S...

...Then word slipped out that all options, including military, were on the table...

...Sentiment in the South was euphoric, with many suggesting the dawn of a new era...

...And so here we seem to go again...

...officials to Pyongyang...

...Washington is correctly seized with the vital importance of limiting the dissemination of mass weapons...

...Kim's weakness for film is well known—with a video library topping twenty thousand titles, his favorites include Friday the 13th, teen slasher flicks, and anything with Elizabeth Taylor...

...Not long afterward North Korea tested a ballistic missile, over-flying Japan on the pretext of space exploration...