Expecting the Crazy Cousin to Blow : South Korea’s leaders see the North’s full-scale collapse as inevitable and need lots of reassurance of U.S. protection.

How can any trip to South Korea’s capital city be complete without experiencing the amazing, enormous Lotte department store? To anyone who has been ignored, if not actually dissed, by American sales clerks, it’s a moving experience. But even better to get there right as they open--when the doors swing wide, the crowd rushes in and the sales staff line up like Rockettes and gracefully bow low as if to say: “You wonderful customers are the reason for our jobs; we honor you.”

However, the bustling Lotte also serves to remind one that in so many other respects, South Korea, the world’s 12th-largest economy and America’s 7th-largest trading partner, need not bow low these days to anyone. Can this fascinating nation be South Korea? Two former presidents are standing trial for corruption; government privatization programs are underway big-time, as is a heated National Assembly campaign for elections April 11. What a distance from the time when South Korea was a brutal military dictatorship in everything but name. Insists President Kim Young Sam, who, political opponents charge, has some campaign-contribution questions of his own to answer: “It’s unfortunate to put two previous presidents on trial, but the process of our reform cannot be reversed. We have made a decisive departure from authoritarianism. Never again in this country will there be a coup. This process cannot be reversed. Never again! Never again for any president to attempt to amass his own wealth by misusing his office.”

This was a passionate Korean president who spoke to me Thursday at his official residence, the Blue House. But when Kim turned to the topic of North Korea, his nation’s near-psychotic neighbor, the ebullient politician’s voice suddenly dropped, as if he were talking about a troubled and embarrassing relative in the next room. “The crisis facing North Korea is very serious,” he said. “There is very little possibility of that society being resuscitated. The North’s problem is not a situational one but a structural one. It’s . . . a totally deteriorated communist regime. Temporary aid won’t solve their problem; North Korea just cannot sustain itself. Someday it will crash. Whether it’s a crash landing or a soft landing, we just don’t know.”

Right, but when it does collapse, will anyone pitch in? Would Beijing? Tokyo? Said President Kim, when I asked about Seoul’s rapidly improving relations with China: “Yes, I think they can be useful; we are closely having a dialogue with the Chinese leadership. However, the North Korea issue is basically a Korean issue and Pyongyang is a regime with no hope for the future. So I worry about the unexpected emergency arising out of all this uncertainty.” And Tokyo-Seoul relations are not good. Nothing new here, of course, but they are now bickering over almost everything, from the disputed nationality of two rocky islets in the sea between the two countries, to the wartime “comfort-women” issue. Japanese Foreign Minister Yukihiko Ikeda, shaking his head woefully, conceded in an interview 10 days ago that such issues “have been a headache. We’ve been racking our brains over them.” So when President Kim says that South Koreans “must prepare for the uncertainty,” he means pretty much by themselves.

Not entirely, of course, thanks to the 37,000 American troops and their associated weaponry, including Patriot missiles, in the South. Like the Japanese vis-a-vis China, the South Koreans are dependent on the U.S. security guarantee vis-a-vis North Korea. But their obsession with this problem had fed Korea’s unhappiness with President Clinton when he didn’t include South Korea in his quick trip to Japan and Moscow in two weeks. Said Kim on Thursday: “For the U.S., Korea is an important ally. But for us, the United States is the most important ally. The situation in North Korea is abnormal and unpredictable. It’s a matter of vital importance for the president to include Korea on his trip.”

Thus it was with elation and relief that the South Koreans reacted to the White House announcement Friday that the president had changed his mind and was in fact accepting the government’s invitation to add Seoul to the Tokyo-Moscow trip. The Clinton administration deserves applause; the South Koreans won’t lose face in Asia because of a White House snub and, more important, showing the American flag in the South on April 16 just might reduce the prospect of war. On Friday, the vice defense minister of North Korea, which has put an estimated million troops on the 38th parallel, said: “The point now is not whether a war will break out . . . but when it will be unleashed.” He was probably not looking for laughs. So the president’s pre-Tokyo visit to our warmest Asian ally is a comfort to the South Koreans. We helped them in a big way once before; we would do it again. But they can never hear that message repeated often enough. Nor can the North Koreans.