THE RISING EAST
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By Richard Halloran
As the United States, Japan and South Korea prepare for a second round of negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear ambitions, the options for resolving this dispute seem to have sorted themselves into five possibilities: one unlikely, another unacceptable, a third unproductive, the fourth unrealistic and the last unappealing.
President Bush set the issue in context last week. In his address to the United Nations, the president did not mention North Korea but asserted that the spread of weapons of mass destruction must stop because "outlaw regimes that possess nuclear, chemical and biological weapons — and the means to deliver them — would be able to use blackmail and create chaos in entire regions.
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"These weapons could be used by terrorists to bring sudden disaster and suffering on a scale we can scarcely imagine," the president said, contending that this "is a peril that cannot be ignored or wished away. If such a danger is allowed to fully materialize, all words, all protests, will come too late."
North Korean soldiers march through Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Square to mark the country's 55th birthday on Sept. 9. Chinese influence over the renegade nation appears to be increasing.
Diplomats from Seoul, Washington and Tokyo are scheduled to meet in Tokyo this week to align their bargaining positions in a collective endeavor to persuade Pyongyang to give up plans to acquire nuclear arms.
No date has been set for renewing negotiations with North Korea, but Chinese diplomats, who took the lead in arranging the first meeting in Beijing in late August, have made subtly, but unmistakably, clear that they will insist that the reluctant North Koreans show up, perhaps in November.
Chinese influence over North Korea, once thought to be limited, appears to have become stronger as North Korea has become weaker. China is Pyongyang's main supplier of food, fuel and other economic aid. Marcus Noland, a North Korea watcher at the Institute of International Economics in Washington, wrote recently that North Korea is "once again on the precipice of another famine."
The first negotiating session ended with the United States and North Korea having laid out their demands: The United States wants North Korea to give up its nuclear programs, "verifiably and irreversibly," in return for diplomatic recognition and economic aid. North Korea wants an ironclad pledge that the United States will not attack it.
The sticking point, which makes a compromise unlikely, is that each wants the other to make the first concession. North Koreans appear to be paranoid that the United States plans to strike and says it wants a nonaggression pact before it gives up its nukes. The United States points to agreements North Korea has broken and wants nuclear disarmament before diplomatic and economic relations.
Another school says no compromise is possible, so North Korea should be ignored except for a warning of devastating retaliation if Pyongyang threatens to use nuclear arms. Three potential consequences make that unacceptable:
• South Korea, Japan and Taiwan might want nuclear arms.
• North Korea would sell nuclear weapons and missiles to terrorists or rogue governments.
• The already crumbling barriers to nuclear proliferation would vanish.
The unproductive option would be to impose economic sanctions on North Korea. That would be useless because Pyongyang's economy has been declining for a decade despite outside help and modest reforms. Moreover, if "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il really cared about his people, much of this misery would not have happened.
The fourth option is regime change, which takes two forms: The first would see Kim Jong Il and his entourage replaced with leaders who would dismantle the nuclear programs, undertake economic reform and seek reconciliation with South Korea. The second would be the collapse of North Korea and reunification like that between West and East Germany after the Berlin Wall came down.
Both forms of regime change are unrealistic, the first because political controls in Pyongyang are so strong and the second because China will not allow North Korea to collapse — and because South Korea is not ready to assume that burden.
Last is the unappealing military option. The United States and South Korea could launch a strike that would destroy North Korea's nuclear facilities and much of its artillery and tanks in tunnels along the border with South Korea.
Cruise missiles and smart bombs would cripple the North Koreans, mostly by closing the exits of the tunnels to bury whomever and whatever was inside. Even so, enough North Korean soldiers, rocket launchers, guns and tanks might survive to fire on Seoul and its suburbs, causing casualties.
All in all, the prospects for finding a way out of this confrontation are, in a word, unpromising.
Richard Halloran is a former New York Times reporter in Asia.
