Surreal, Dizzying, Murky: New Politics of the Koreas : Geopolitics: The bottom line is that between North and South, not much is clear.

As 1991 comes to an end, politics in Korea adds a surreal touch to a year of dizzying reversals. George Bush goes from master of the Gulf War to Hooveresque author of a deep recession. Mikhail Gorbachev goes from master of the universe to next year’s visiting professor. The Rev. Sun Myung Moon shows up in Pyongyang to toast Kim Il Sung for his stable rule, greet his 42 relatives and pledge joint efforts for Korea’s reunification.

The last time that Moon saw the North, he was fleeing repression (his story) or charges of fornication (Pyongyang’s story).

Korea is either locked in a time warp or about to join the “new world order”: Take your pick. On any day of the week, it is a veritable museum of the Cold War, with more than a million soldiers confronting each other along the wintry DMZ. Yet earlier this month, the prime ministers of North and South Korea pledged themselves to a historic piece of paper calling for a nonaggression pact, wide-ranging exchanges and a nuclear-free peninsula.

The era of post-communism finds North Korea flying red flags and predicting that history moves from capitalism to socialism, not the opposite (reversing the East European dictum that capitalism is the highest stage of socialism). Washington says that North Korea’s economy is bankrupt and awaits its collapse, meanwhile calling its expensive nuclear program the greatest threat to East Asian security. Moon departs Pyongyang, making way for Erich Honecker to take up residence.

North Korea sallies forth amid all of these contradictions with blasts at American imperialism and weekly invitations to influential Americans like Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.), who just wound up a visit (after getting a statement from Kim Il Sung that the North Koreans neither have nor want nuclear weapons, such things being too expensive and inherently unusable). Pyongyang excoriates the “fascist clique” in Seoul, while signing an agreement to stop the mutual vilification that has continued nonstop since 1945. Seoul keeps citizens who have visited the North in jail under its national security law (which deems North Korea to be an “anti- state organization”), while toasting Pyongyang’s hospitality toward top South Korean businessmen working out joint ventures.

On this side of the Pacific, things Korean don’t get any less murky. Solarz cited “incontrovertible” evidence that North Korea is producing an atomic bomb. But after participating in several sessions at Washington think tanks over the past few months, it is apparent to me that no one knows what’s going on.

Satellite photos show a lot of activity at the site of North Korea’s nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, but this evidence is subject to widely varying interpretations and allows no firm timetable: Some experts predict one or two years, others five, still others 10, before a bomb is ready. Some say that the North Koreans can’t build a bomb.

What really frightens Washington is not certainty but uncertainty: After getting entry to Iraq’s nuclear facilities, U.S. officials learned how much satellites can miss. Since North Korea has put massive installations underground since the Korean War, almost any scenario is imaginable.

One thing is clear: North Korea has gotten a lot of attention and mileage out of its Yongbyon shenanigans; it demanded and got American withdrawal of nuclear weapons from the South. Or is it clear? The Pentagon has wanted out of tactical nuclear weapons for some time, because high-yield conventional explosives and precision targeting yield the same result without the attendant “fallout.” Anyway, the nuclear weapons in South Korea were obsolescent; there are still plenty of up-to-date weapons just off Korea’s shores.

The Bush Administration recently halted any further pullout of American troops from South Korea, citing the North’s nuclear program. Insiders say that the decision came because Seoul wants American forces to stay, fearing not Pyongyang but Japan. Washington announced a major military exercise in South Korea in early 1992, and part of its mission is to pressure Pyongyang on its nuclear program. Insiders say that President Bush fears not North Korean nuclear weapons, but any rationale for Japan to go nuclear. Take your pick.

South Korean President Roh Tae Woo hails the recent pact with the North as ushering in the era of reunification. Insiders say that he wanted the agreement to shore up his party for elections next year. Kim Il Sung says the 1992 military exercise is a powder-reeking prelude to an attack on the North. Insiders say Kim has made one concession after another because his world is collapsing around him.

What’s the bottom line? Put your money on the insiders. And look for the Rev. Moon to return for Kim’s 80th birthday in April--it takes one “great leader” to know another.