The Cost of Sunshine

South Korea's leaders insist that the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula can be defused by maintaining peaceful dialogue with North Korea's erratic dictator Kim Jong Il. But black clouds fell across the South's "Sunshine Policy" last week. First, a special envoy sent by Seoul to Pyongyang was rebuffedthe Dear Leader, it seems, was too busy touring the nation's fallow farms. Then North Korea, responding to U.S. President George W. Bush's stern State of the Union address, turned its bellicose rhetoric up to 11, calling Bush "a shameless charlatan." The Stalinist country then appeared to put bite in its bark, reportedly...