Unlikely Champion for N. Korea

South Korea’s President Kim Dae Jung has delivered two key messages during what has become a triumphal state visit to the United States, which includes a stop in Los Angeles today and Saturday. He wants American businesses to expand their investments in his country as it works its way back to the robust economic health that, until last year, had placed it among the world’s dozen richest nations. And he would like to see Washington ease its sanctions on North Korea in an effort to lure that floundering and self-isolated state into adopting more conciliatory policies.

Kim is likely to see the expanded investment because South Korea’s long-term growth prospects are good and he has won international respect for his decisiveness in moving to reform and liberalize the economy. But the change in policy toward North Korea that he proposes is almost certain to be slow in coming. Responsibility for that lies largely with Pyongyang.

The calamity that has fallen on North Korea, due in part to natural disasters but in the main to failed ideology-driven programs, has brought only cosmetic changes in the Stalinist regime’s foreign policy. North Korea lacks the means to adequately feed its people, heat and light its buildings and keep its transportation system running. It has quietly abandoned its boast of being self-reliant and instead pleads with the world for food to avert mass starvation. The United States, South Korea and Japan have responded with notable generosity. Pyongyang’s answer has been to accuse its benefactors of plotting against it and worse. The hands that feed North Korea’s hungry have found themselves repeatedly bitten.

There are many things that are unknown about North Korea, the world’s most closed society. What is apparent is that North Korea is not in any way like China in the 1970s when Beijing was preparing to put aside decades of animosity and begin a long march toward political and economic reform. Pyongyang remains unremittingly suspicious of the outside world, in mortal fear of anything that might challenge the regime’s rigid control over the lives of its 22 million people.

President Clinton has reiterated that the United States supports a policy of reciprocity toward North Korea: Goodwill would be met by goodwill. It remains to be demonstrated that Pyongyang is ready to make even the minimal effort that requires.