NEWS ANALYSIS : Death Leaves U.S. Across Table From Unknown Foe

The death of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung could not have come at a worse time for the United States in its efforts to stop Pyongyang from acquiring nuclear weapons.

It means that the leadership in Pyongyang will be struggling to sort out its internal politics over the next few crucial months--just when North Korea is facing major decisions about the future of its nuclear program, about the disposal of highly radioactive nuclear fuel and, more generally, about its relations with the rest of the world.

If Kim’s eldest son, Kim Jong Il, emerges in control in Pyongyang, he will usher in the world’s first Communist dynasty. No other Communist leader has ever passed on power to a child. At the very least, that transition will mean months of uncertainty for the United States.

“Even if Kim Jong Il takes the reins of power, we won’t know for a while how solid his leadership is or whether he will last,” Leonard Spector, a nuclear specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Saturday. “Clearly, there’s a faction in Pyongyang that wants to push this (nuclear weapons program) forward.”

And so it may be one of history’s unending ironies that Kim’s death is being greeted by the United States with more than a little regret.

When President Clinton, at an economic summit in Naples, Italy, expressed “sincere condolences” to the people of North Korea about Kim’s death, he was being more than just polite. The North Korean leader who has been viewed since the beginning of the Cold War as one of America’s leading adversaries became, in his final days, the man with whom U.S. policy-makers hoped to make a deal.

True, Kim had fought one bloody war against the United States and its South Korean allies and staunchly opposed U.S. policy in Asia for more than four decades. But he was considered the only one in Pyongyang with the unchallengeable authority needed to cut off North Korea’s developing nuclear weapons program before it destabilizes the entire region of East Asia.

Consider the plight the United States and its principal allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, now find themselves in:

* On Saturday, talks in Geneva between the United States and North Korea about the nuclear program were temporarily halted, only a day after they had started. In a startling symbol of their disarray, North Korean negotiators apparently found out about Kim’s death when a U.S. official woke up one of his counterparts in the early morning hours and told him to turn on CNN.

* Even if the talks start up again, they may not go anywhere for a while. Kim’s death means that North Korea could well have either erratic leadership under Kim Jong Il or an unstable or paralyzed leadership over the next few months.

“I can’t know what impact this will have on our discussions,” Assistant Secretary of State Robert L. Gallucci said Saturday. He said U.S. officials will stay in Geneva and “try to resume the talks, if that’s possible.”

* Meanwhile, thousands of highly radioactive nuclear fuel rods, enough to make about five bombs, are cooling off in pools alongside North Korea’s 25-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. Something has to be done with them within the next few months before they begin to corrode.

If arrangements the United States is seeking for the disposal of this spent fuel are not made at the Geneva talks, then the rods could well be turned into weapons-grade plutonium at North Korea’s reprocessing plant.

* And even if the immediate crisis involving the fuel rods is resolved, the new North Korean leadership will have to be persuaded to give up its other nuclear installations, including a reprocessing plant and a huge, 200-megawatt reactor now under construction at Yongbyon, which could produce enough plutonium for eight to 10 nuclear weapons a year.

According to David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, the earliest possible start-up date for this larger reactor is late 1995, although Defense Secretary William J. Perry said recently that the new reactor will take a few more years to complete.

The immediate worry for U.S. policy-makers is that North Korea will succeed in turning its plutonium into usable nuclear weapons. As far as U.S. officials know, that hasn’t happened yet; there is no sign North Korea has tested any nuclear device.

But if it does, Asian neighbors such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan could try to develop nuclear weapons too. And other nations with active nuclear programs, such as Iran, could follow North Korea’s example by successfully defying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the international regime that seeks to prohibit any new nations from joining the nuclear club.

The long-range problem is even worse--that North Korea will not only make its own nuclear weapons but use its facilities to produce nuclear fuel for export to such potential customers as Iran, Iraq and Libya.

In the face of these gloomy prospects, what hope does the Clinton Administration have for peacefully defusing the North Korean crisis?

First, it is possible that Kim Jong Il may turn out to be something less than the demon that Western intelligence agencies have depicted.

Some Western analysts have suggested that Kim Jong Il favors a greater degree of economic reform than his father permitted. Maybe he had the world’s worst case of the monarchical syndrome in which children of dynastic leaders are forced to wait until well into middle age to take over a parent’s throne.

But, of course, the available evidence suggests that Kim Jong Il is not just some North Korean version of England’s Prince Charles. Intelligence specialists believe that the younger Kim has been directly responsible for acts of terrorism, including the 1983 bombing in Burma, now Myanmar, that killed 17 South Korean officials and the bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987.

A second possibility for a peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis is that someone else in Pyongyang may take over the reins of power instead of Kim Jong Il. This scenario, however, carries its own dangers. Korean history is replete with examples of bloody power struggles and coups. No one wants civil war or chaos in a country with North Korea’s nuclear potential.

For the past several years, U.S. intelligence agencies have been bitterly divided over the question of whether there are competing factions within North Korea’s seemingly monolithic leadership.

State Department officials, and some outside experts on North Korea, have long argued that there are reformers and hard-liners in Pyongyang. According to this line of argument, the reformers are eager to bargain away the nuclear program for diplomatic recognition and economic help.

But other U.S. intelligence specialists at the CIA and the Pentagon contend that the differences within the North Korean leadership are minimal and that it is misleading to talk of any serious “reform” faction in Pyongyang.

These analysts believe that Kim Jong Il and other North Korean leaders have no intention of bargaining away their nuclear program, because they see nuclear weapons as a guarantee of their own survival.

The Clinton Administration now faces a number of tricky foreign-policy questions concerning North Korea that extend well beyond the nuclear dispute.

For example, suppose Kim Jong Il makes a bid for international recognition of his leadership, perhaps by offering to meet with U.S. officials or by going forward with the summit meeting with South Korea later this month that his father had planned.

Should the United States try to deal with him and encourage its allies to do so, at the risk of giving him the sort of legitimacy that could help him consolidate his power? Or should the Administration hold back and avoid Kim Jong Il, at the risk of alienating him permanently?

For the time being, the Clinton Administration seems to be trying to avoid confronting that decision. The written statement issued by the President on Saturday sent condolences “to the people of North Korea” and did not mention Kim Jong Il.

“Right now, our (the United States’) job is to keep things just as cool as possible,” Spector of the Carnegie Endowment said.

But before long, the United States is going to have to make some choices. Just when the Clinton Administration hoped it might have a chance through the Geneva talks of easing the crisis over North Korea, the problem seems to be growing bigger rather than smaller.