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South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun will make his first trip to America next week. It's not likely to be a happy introduction to the joys of Stateside travel. The highlight of his itinerary is a summit with President George W. Bush, during which they must try to hammer out a mutually agreeable strategy for defusing the North Korean nuclear threat. Although Roh and Bush may get along fine personally—both are plainspoken men who quickly get to the point—they are poles apart on how to convince North Korea to scrap its nuclear program.

Roh was elected last December on a nationalistic platform that positioned South Korea not as a subservient U.S. ally but as a proudly independent player, determined to mollify North Korea through economic and diplomatic engagement. But Roh's "Peace and Prosperity Policy" toward the North won't play well in the post-Iraq war White House, where hard-liners are deeply skeptical that bargaining with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il will be any more fruitful than bargaining with Saddam Hussein—a suspicion confirmed late last month when talks between the U.S. and North Korea in Beijing ended acrimoniously.

In those ill-fated talks, the North claimed to have the Bomb already—and insisted on a U.S. security guarantee, normalized relations and economic aid as the price for giving it up. "They're up to their old blackmail game," Bush said. Rather than pay up, Washington hawks now hope to persuade China, Japan and South Korea to rein in Pyongyang with economic sanctions, perhaps even a blockade that would halt Kim's arms and drug sales, the regime's main sources of hard currency.

North Korea warned last week that it would consider sanctions "the green light to a war." And South Korea, which faces Kim's artillery batteries across the Demilitarized Zone, has long argued against provoking the North by playing tough. Might Roh finally relent, joining Bush in a bid to sever the North's financial lifelines? Not likely, says Chuck Downs, author of Over the Line, a study of North Korea's negotiating tactics, "Their ace in the hole is South Korean fear."

But the North's claim that it is armed and dangerous—and would consider selling its weapons-grade plutonium overseas—may backfire, scaring even Kim's would-be friends into siding with the U.S. Russia has already said it might consider sanctions, and China is finally losing patience with the North. Nobody welcomes the prospect of Kim touching off an Asian arms race in which countries within range of North Korean missiles, like Japan, seek doomsday weapons of their own.

All of which leaves Roh in an awkward position during his White House visit. While campaigning for President, Roh promised to maintain peace on the peninsula at almost any cost, but the North's brinkmanship makes it tougher to argue for dangling carrots instead of wielding sticks. Seoul still wants further discussions and thinks the U.S. might eventually convince Kim to disarm by accepting the North's latest demands for economic assistance. But Washington isn't biting. Even U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, widely seen as relatively moderate, has refused to embrace the North's blueprint. "This proposal is a nonstarter," says an Administration official. The result? "Roh is conflicted," says Victor Cha, a Korea expert at Georgetown University. "He has no choice but to take a harder line if he wants to retain any shred of credibility."

During talks last month between Pyongyang and Seoul, South Korean officials warned they might, in fact, make their own economic aid contingent on better behavior. According to a South Korean official, the message from Seoul was "we will no longer automatically supply everything to our brethren. We will not provide a blank check." Adds the official: "I think they got the message."

If Roh is indeed toughening his stance, he'll have something to talk about with Bush. But if he goes to Washington merely to push for engagement, the visit could be an embarrassing rerun of former President Kim Dae Jung's White House misadventure in 2001. That summit went off the rails when Bush aired his long-standing doubts about negotiating with the North. "If you think President Bush is suddenly going to change his position because of Roh Moo Hyun—that's just not going to happen," says a Bush Administration official.

Indeed, some analysts say that by agreeing to last month's talks with Pyongyang, Washington was merely buying time to build international support for hardball measures. Bush wants the United Nations Security Council to take up the matter of the North's withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a step that could lead to international economic sanctions. The U.S. will have an easier time in the U.N. if Seoul and Washington present a united front. About to embark on his first visit to the White House, Roh must have a sense of what he's up against. If not, he need only ask French President Jacques Chirac what it's like to try to convince Bush that the best way to disarm a rogue dictator is through more talk, and less action.

• John Larkin / Seoul
• To ease the nuclear threat from Pyongyang, the U.S. and South Korea must work together. Fat chance