Dial back the Koreas’ volume

Not since North Korea conducted a nuclear test in October 2006 has the decibel level on the Korean Peninsula been so high. In the last few weeks, Pyongyang’s state-run media have branded South Korea’s new president, Lee Myung-bak, a “U.S. sycophant,” a “charlatan” and a “traitor” and warned the South that the North had the capacity to “reduce it to ashes.” North Korean fighter jets, meanwhile, have buzzed the demilitarized zone and Pyongyang has test-fired short-range missiles off its western coast.

Many observers have characterized the North’s latest actions as the behavior of an irrational, dangerous, surrealistically isolated regime. In reality, such moves have always been less a product of paranoia than a calculated way of making political points to the outside world. Although exasperating and alarming, there is a method to North Korea’s madness. But to understand what Pyongyang is doing, one must start with what is going on in Seoul.

In late February, Lee, a conservative business leader turned politician, became South Korea’s president following a decade-long thaw between the North and South. His two more liberal predecessors, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, had pursued a “sunshine policy” toward North Korea of diplomatic engagement, economic cooperation and humanitarian assistance with no strings attached. Convinced that engagement had been largely a one-way street, however, Lee proposed a fundamental shift, vowing to link further aid and economic collaboration with North Korean “reciprocity” on the nuclear issue.

Lee has proved true to his word. South Korea voted for a U.N. resolution condemning North Korea’s human rights record. Then the chairman of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff declared that the South would consider launching a preemptive strike on North Korea’s nuclear facilities if they became a military threat.

To the North Koreans, these actions -- which previous South Korean administrations had avoided for fear of angering Pyongyang -- represented a diplomatic betrayal, and the push-back began almost immediately.

“It is the traditional method of . . . our revolutionary armed forces,” Pyongyang thundered in the same commentary that denounced President Lee, “to return fire and counter any hard-line steps with the toughest measures.”

Such a reaction was almost entirely predictable. Indeed, for many years, North Korea has adopted a strategy of tit for tat -- responding positively to conciliatory overtures but extremely sharply to pressure, to emphasize that it will not bow to coercion and that it is strong enough to demand respect and attention from the international community.

When the Bush administration sought to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program in late 2002 and early 2003, for example, the North reacted by restarting its frozen plutonium reactor. After the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions following the North’s July 2006 missile tests, Pyongyang defied the international community and tested a nuclear bomb that October.

But when, less than a month later, the Bush administration abandoned its previous policy by holding a bilateral meeting and promising to resolve a dispute over North Korean funds frozen in Macao -- addressing long-standing North Korean demands -- Pyongyang promptly agreed to return to the six-party talks on the nuclear issue. Barely four months later, in February 2007, a deal to end the nuclear program was concluded.

Pyongyang’s response to the tough talk from Seoul, and especially the threat of preemptive strikes, fits into this pattern. “You have a four-star South Korean general talking about preemptive military strikes,” noted one former senior U.S. State Department expert on Korea. “What else is the North supposed to do?”

The North-South flare-up comes at a crucial time, with South Korea’s Lee arriving in Washington this week and U.S.-North Korean negotiations on the nuclear issue at a sensitive stage.

For months, Washington and Pyongyang have struggled to implement the February 2007 deal, under which the North committed to disable its nuclear facilities and provide a full accounting of its nuclear materials in return for fuel oil, other assistance and a U.S. promise to end sanctions. The original deadline for achieving these goals was Dec. 31, 2007.

Nearly four months later, both sides are increasingly frustrated. With food shortages growing in North Korea, Pyongyang complains that it hasn’t received all the aid it was promised and that the U.S. is dragging its feet on easing sanctions. Washington, in turn, charges that the North hasn’t laid all of its cards on the table, including details of Pyongyang’s possible nuclear links with Syria.

Still, for all the harsh rhetoric toward Seoul, North Korea has been careful to reaffirm its desire for better ties with Washington. The North declared that Pyongyang “keeps its doors open to the U.S., a hostile country, to improve relations with it.”

For his part, with few other viable options and looking to burnish his foreign policy legacy, President Bush is eager to avoid renewed confrontation and to secure a denuclearization deal. The hard-line posture of the new South Korean government, however, threatens to undermine this goal.

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There’s more than a little irony in this. In the first six years of the Bush administration, Lee’s liberal predecessors pushed for greater engagement with the North, often putting them in conflict with Washington’s more confrontational approach. Now the roles appear reversed -- the U.S. seeking to implement the 2007 nuclear deal with Kim Jong Il amid Seoul’s new get-tough attitude.

Thus, much depends on Lee’s meeting with Bush. In a goodwill gesture, the White House has invited Lee to Camp David, a privilege it declined to offer to his predecessors despite their repeated requests. The tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang certainly complicate this diplomacy. But the North’s saber-rattling has put the ball squarely back in the U.S.-South Korean court. It will be up to Lee and Bush to craft a response that will keep the nuclear negotiations and North-South rapprochement on track -- or face an increasingly dangerous situation on the Korean Peninsula.