Beyond Weapons, the Will to Fight : U.S. support for South Korea must be unambiguous in the face of Pyongyang’s threats

U.S. Patriot missiles are arriving in South Korea. Other overdue improvements in the defensive capabilities of both American and South Korean forces are also under way, all in support of what Defense Secretary William J. Perry calls Washington’s top priority of boosting military readiness in the face of North Korea’s suspected nuclear weapons program and threatening words.

The key purpose of this still relatively modest buildup is to dissuade the unpredictable Stalinist regime in Pyongyang from military adventurism based on miscalculation. But more than a simple augmentation of defensive weapons will be needed for that effort at deterrence to be effective. What’s essential is that Kim Il Sung and his colleagues believe U.S. warnings that it will fight if aggression against South Korea recurs.

The doubts lately cast on Washington’s will to act where military risk is involved--in Haiti and Bosnia, most visibly--have hurt American credibility. What has to be made unmistakably clear and believable now is that South Korea, whose independence the United States helped maintain more than 40 years ago in a bitter and costly war, is not an area of peripheral interest but a major security concern. The United States is treaty-bound to defend it, and there must be no ambiguity about its resolve to do so.

No effort should be spared to give the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea the best equipment and support available. But should it come to a North Korean invasion, the burden of fighting would fall most heavily on South Korea’s 650,000-man army. For some years Washington has been pressing for improvements in that force. Perry, on his current trip to South Korea, says he wants to review just what progress has been made. Meanwhile Kim, in an interview for his 82nd birthday, has tried to pooh-pooh suspicions that he is building nuclear weapons. The easiest way to give credence to that assurance is, of course, by fully opening North Korea’s nuclear facilities to international inspection. In the interim efforts to bolster South Korea’s security should proceed at full speed.