Trust, but Verify : Will a pullout of U.S. troops, nukes open up North Korea?

The last point of direct military confrontation between American and communist forces is Korea, where U.S. and North Korean armies are separated only by a narrow demilitarized zone across the waist of the mountainous peninsula. Now, nearly 40 years after the end of a brutal, three-year war that repelled North Korea’s aggression and preserved South Korea as an independent country, Washington is ready to take two steps that reflect its assessment of a changing strategic threat.

It plans to further reduce U.S. troop strength in South Korea, from 43,000 now to 30,000 by 1995.

And, after negotiations with the government in Seoul, it reportedly intends to remove from Korea not only all artillery and sea-based nuclear tactical weapons, as President Bush earlier announced, but all strategic nuclear bombs as well.

Will the security of South Korea, a close ally of the United States, be weakened as a result? There is no reason it should be. With 650,000 highly trained and well-equipped men under arms, South Korea possesses formidable defense capabilities.

Meanwhile, the U.S. nuclear weapons that for decades have been seen as a key deterrent to renewed aggression from Pyongyang will remain in the strategic equation. In a crisis, North Korea would still be vulnerable to U.S. nuclear strikes by planes and missiles based far away.

North Korea, which is known to be pursuing its own program to develop nuclear arms, has long demanded the removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from South Korea before it would agree to open its facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Removal of all U.S. nuclear weapons from the peninsula could put pressure on Pyongyang to make good on its conditional pledge; that certainly is a goal. Of course, international inspection by itself does not guarantee that a country isn’t pursuing a covert nuclear program. Recall the case of Iraq, which, like North Korea, is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

For years Iraq opened its nuclear facilities to inspectors from the atomic energy agency, who came, saw what Iraq intended them to see and left apparently satisfied that Saddam Hussein’s nuclear aims did not exceed peaceful applications. But all the while, as we now know, Baghdad was investing enormous effort in the development of nuclear weapons, a program whose true dimensions are only now coming to light.

The lesson is that on-site inspectors, through no shortcomings of their own, can be fooled. In the example of Iraq, the deception ended only when the inspectors arrived a few months ago armed with solid intelligence information about what to look for.

North Korea, the world’s most closed society, is known to be working hard in the nuclear area. How far it has progressed isn’t clear.

South Korea won’t be put at risk when all U.S. nuclear weapons are removed from its soil. But South Korea--and Japan--could face an escalated danger if North Korea acquires a nuclear arsenal.

The goal of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula is a worthy one. What must be insisted on is a Korea that is verifiably free of nuclear weapons on both sides of the tense demilitarized zone.