Time to Give Kim a Call

There are things you don’t expect to see at the world’s most militarized border in the middle of a nuclear crisis: an amusement park, for one, or busloads of snap-happy tourists. And yet, less than 24 hours after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Seoul to discuss the ongoing standoff with North Korea, I witnessed both at the DMZ just 50 km north of Seoul. After weeks of tough talk from Washington, Seoul and Pyongyang, the corn dogs and camera phones felt reassuring. If South Korea were worried about a nuclear attack, they’d close the carnival rides, right?

One of the strangest things about the latest North Korea panic is that the level of fear increases the farther you get from the Korean Peninsula. Accustomed to North Korean bluster, South Koreans have, for the most part, shrugged off recent threats of nuclear Armageddon.

Not so in the U.S., where, according to new findings from the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans think their government should take North Korea’s warnings “very seriously.” Forty-seven percent think Pyongyang is capable of launching a nuclear missile that could reach the U.S. — despite intelligence reports that suggest it doesn’t have the know-how. Kerry has thus far taken a hard line, reiterating the long-standing U.S. position that North Korea must abandon its nuclear program if it wants to talk. “We are all united in the fact that North Korea will not be accepted as a nuclear power,” he said.

(PHOTOS: North Korea Ratchets Up Tension on The Peninsula)

So what does Seoul know that Washington doesn’t? It’s not that South Koreans don’t take the threat seriously. They do. They’ve lived for decades in the shadow of a still simmering conflict. In 2010, they wept for the sailors killed in the sinking of a South Korean warship and mourned the lives lost in the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. But unlike the U.S., South Korea accepts that the North is already a nuclear power. The tour buses keep rolling because South Koreans know Pyongyang won’t launch a nuke. The regime wants to survive; a nuclear attack would be dynastic suicide.

Washington can keep its military options on the table, but it needs to take a diplomatic cue from Seoul. Fact is, two decades of U.S.-led diplomacy have done nothing to dim the North’s ambitions, because Pyongyang’s arsenal, real and imagined, has served the regime rather well. It hasn’t fed the people or fixed the country’s ailing infrastructure, but it has allowed North Korea to engage in regular rounds of diplomatic blackmail, securing food, energy and business aid (including such initiatives as the now shuttered Kaesong Industrial Zone). The U.S. insistence on denuclearization has done nothing except convince Pyongyang of the value of its nuclear program.

(MORE: U.S. and China Pledge to Work Toward a Nonnuclear North Korea. Does That Matter?)

Besides, the rules have changed. Kim Jong Un will no longer settle for sacks of grain, and his bellicose ranting is no longer the old prebargaining ploy for the resumption of six-party talks. On March 31, after a series of weapons tests, he announced a “new strategic line,” flatly ignoring Western demands by saying that he would simultaneously rebuild his country’s economy and expand its nuclear arsenal. The framing channels his revered grandfather Kim Il Sung, who linked defense and development in the aftermath of the Korean War.

For a country that sees itself as besieged by stronger, better-equipped foes, a nuclear arsenal is not just a trading card: it’s a life-insurance policy. Pyongyang saw what happened to Muammar Gaddafi when the Libyan strongman renounced his nuclear program: it stripped him of his menace and left him as little more than a buffoon in billowing robes.

Kim’s message to Washington is clear: Pyongyang is a legitimate nuclear power that wants to talk to Washington directly, not through proxies like South Korea, China or Japan. And it expects the Americans to negotiate, as they did with Iran and Pakistan. That may sound presumptuous, coming from a baby-faced dictator. The world laughed recently when ’90s basketball bad boy Dennis Rodman, playing diplomat, told President Obama to get Kim on the phone. But what’s so funny about direct talks? Right now, they’re the best way forward because the goal is no longer denuclearization but containment. This whole affair may feel like a surreal carnival at times, but while visitors to the DMZ enjoy their amusement rides and their corn dogs, Kim certainly isn’t playing around.

MORE: Why the North Korean Crisis Demands a New Diplomatic Approach