North Korea: Can This Be Love?

Can the long cold war between the United States and North Korea that followed the costly hot war they fought from 1950 to 1953 at last be approaching an end? Maybe, but as always when trying to figure out what the rulers of the world’s most secretive political system are up to, caution is called for.

There have been repeated false starts over the years toward improving U.S.-North Korean relations. Now, with the backing of South Korea’s democratic government, the Clinton Administration is quietly talking with North Korea about a range of substantive issues, including the eventual establishment of full diplomatic relations. The talks are preliminary, and any realistic examination of North Korea’s diplomatic record can only encourage doubts about making real progress. Still, the world has changed radically in the last few years, and a radical change in North Korea’s foreign policy can’t be ruled out.

Certainly the north’s isolation has been growing. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s pragmatic move away from Maoist ideology, the totalitarian regime in Pyongyang can no longer count on the automatic, if not necessarily enthusiastic, political support of its northern neighbors. Its supposedly “self-reliant” economy, never robust, is a shambles, with the specter of mass hunger now stalking the country. North Korea desperately needs to end its economic and political ostracism. Better relations with the United States, and through the United States with South Korea, are a key.

Washington, while prepared to give much, is also rightly asking for much: North Korea’s abandonment of its nuclear weapons program and verification of that fact by international inspections. Is dictator Kim Il Sung willing to drop the project on which he has spent so much of his country’s scarce resources? If he is not, the International Atomic Energy Agency is ready to ask the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions that could leave North Korea even more on its own.

The Administration is doing the right thing, not least by getting South Korea’s concurrence in the approach to Pyongyang. It’s time to normalize relations with North Korea. But that can happen only if the north commits itself to a responsible course in its region’s affairs.