Look Who's Got The Bomb

KREMLIN PRESS SERVICE/ITAR-TASS/REUTERS
Leader Kim Jong-il has brazenly built nukes forbidden in a 1994 agreement

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The conundrum of Kim, who succeeded his father Kim Il Sung eight years ago as North Korea's absolute ruler, has flummoxed Washington for years. The xenophobic leader can veer from aggressive hostility to quiet bids to mend relations with the outside world, particularly if other nations help leapfrog his poverty-stricken people into the modern era. Like his father, when Kim has been most desperate for foreign aid, he has used the rattle of nukes to frighten the U.S. and its allies into buying him off.

It was exactly that sort of brinksmanship that produced the 1994 agreement. When North Korea announced it would no longer abide by the nonproliferation treaty, the Clinton Administration effectively purchased peace by promising financial aid if North Korea would quit developing nukes. South Korea and Japan, the regional neighbors most eager to quell North Korea's malign power, gladly put up most of the cash. Critics complained the U.S. was giving in to nuclear extortion. North Korea, they warned, would unveil a threatening new capability whenever it wanted more aid. The latest disclosure proved the hard-liners right about one thing: Kim could not be trusted to live up to his agreements.

Yet all summer, even as the CIA tracked his nuclear activities, Kim was showing signs of opening the North's barbed-wire gates, economically and diplomatically. He edged in the direction of primitive market reforms and announced a grandiose scheme for a private-enterprise zone along the border with China. Just as intriguing was the sudden burst of sunshine from Pyongyang diplomats as they clamored to hold talks with Seoul, Tokyo and even Washington. Soon after a shoot-out with Seoul's patrol boats that left five dead, the North scheduled its first tete-a-tete with the South in nine months.

Then came Kim's strange confessional meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in September. Although U.S. envoys by then had briefed Koizumi on the CIA discovery, it's unclear how hard he pressed Kim on the issue. The Korean leader one-upped his counterpart by apologizing for kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens decades ago to train North Korean spies. He perhaps hoped the startling act of contrition would open the way to more aid from Japan. Koizumi said last week he would keep working to normalize relations.

The Bush Administration remains deeply skeptical about Kim's motivations, and debate rages over what his acknowledgement of the nuclear program portends. He remains firmly in charge of his country, but there's no question that it is in dire shape. Few have enough to eat, and 45% of children under the age of 5 suffer chronic malnutrition. Farms lie fallow without fertilizer, and at least 6 million of North Korea's 22 million people depend on international food aid. Most factories are closed and rusting for lack of power, and the only things lit at night in the North's drab cities are grandiose statues of Kim Il Sung. Hospitals have no heat, no disinfectant, no anesthetic, no rubber gloves. Kim devotes nearly a third of North Korea's GDP to military spending, and finances ridiculous Pharaonic projects, such as the 105-story Ryugyong hotel that towers unfinished over Pyongyang.

Some experts suggest that as North Korea's rigid system breaks down around him, Kim is reaching clumsily for reform. Many in South Korea and Japan interpret last week's confession as a clearing of the decks, kicking over the old framework to negotiate a new, more stable one. But others point to Kim's history of trading momentary friendship and empty promises for monetary assistance: he's just giving the world another head fake.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shrugged off any notion that Kim's confession augurs real change. "I don't think there's any way in the world anyone could say it's a good sign," he said. In the short term, hard-liners inside the Administration will resist rewarding Kim for giving up weapons. While the U.S. is not prepared to fight a three-front war, there are plenty of Bush advisers who believe North Korea's arsenal can't be dismantled without regime change and they will come back to the argument once Iraq is behind them.