North Korea Plays a Dangerous Game : Nuclear issue won’t--and shouldn’t--go away

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s program to monitor North Korea’s nuclear facilities has gone blind. The automatic cameras and other surveillance devices the IAEA has at North Korea’s identified nuclear-related sites are out of film and batteries, and maintenance of the equipment is prevented by Pyongyang’s refusal to allow the IAEA unrestricted access to other suspected nuclear facilities. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary William J. Perry warns that a “very big stick” may soon have to be used to force North Korea’s compliance with international nuclear rules. The unmistakable smell of a brewing crisis is in the air.

On Feb. 21 the IAEA board of directors will hear a report from its specialists and then be asked to consider whether North Korea has cheated on its obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, whether in other words it is embarked on a secret program to build nuclear weapons. American intelligence agencies, admittedly handicapped by trying to determine what has been going on in the world’s most closed society, believe that it has. High U.S. officials think that North Korea may already have put together at least one nuclear device. The critical need now, Perry said at his confirmation hearing last week, is to keep that one from becoming dozens.

The IAEA could and almost certainly will ask the U.N. Security Council to impose economic sanctions against North Korea to get it to comply with the treaty. The success of any sanctions will depend foremost on China’s cooperation. If China joins in denying its neighbor such strategic materials as oil, North Korea’s already enfeebled economy will be weakened still more.

Perry suggested that enlisting Beijing’s help is more urgent right now than putting pressure on it to improve human rights. That thought, floated just one day after the Clinton Administration took a tough line on human rights abuses in China, seemed to signal a readiness to ease up on pressures over human rights in exchange for China’s help in bringing Pyongyang into line. Hypocrisy? Maybe, but also a sure indication of how great a worry North Korea’s nuclear program has become.

It would be a mistake, however, to regard all this as just another chapter in the nearly half-century-long history of U.S.-North Korean animosity. North Korea’s deviousness and recalcitrance on the pro- duction of nuclear weapons represent instead a fundamental challenge to the international order.

At stake are the integrity and in fact the survival of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, the only effective global program for limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. If Pyongyang successfully defies the IAEA and drops out of the treaty, it’s almost certain that other countries--Iran, for starters--will follow. After that, the stampede would be on.

There are reasons to be concerned, as some in South Korea and Japan are, about the consequences of pushing Kim Il Sung’s unpredictable regime too hard at this time. But there are reasons to fear even more doing nothing while North Korea proceeds apace with its nuclear plans. Pyongyang is being asked only to respect its international responsibilities, nothing more. It has had more than enough time to decide to do so.