N. Korea’s Latest Provocation May Be Last Straw

For more than five years, North Korea has been skillfully balancing twin policies of begging and brinkmanship, but it may have gone too far Monday by launching what appears to be a new, longer-range ballistic missile, part of which is believed to have flown 828 miles, sailing over the main Japanese island and landing in the Pacific.

Japan immediately condemned the test as “a very dangerous act” and said it “cannot be tolerated.” Private Japanese military analysts and media suggested that the launch might prompt Tokyo to sign up for a joint antiballistic missile defense program that the United States has been promoting. Japan had been reluctant to commit to the joint Theater Missile Defense program for fear of offending China.

The Clinton administration also deplored the test but insisted that the matter will not be allowed to derail its Korea policy, including a historic 1994 agreement to provide the North with two nuclear reactors and fuel oil in exchange for Pyongyang agreeing to abandon its plutonium weapons program.

However, the chairman of the U.S. House Appropriations subcommittee that will handle money for the program said the test virtually assures that Congress will refuse to fund the project.

Nongovernmental analysts accused North Korea of trying to blackmail the international community. Some charged that the administration has allowed Pyongyang to get away with similar extortion in the past, probably encouraging the regime to try the same tactics again.

The missile test, North Korea’s first since it fired a Rodong missile into the Sea of Japan in 1993, strengthens these critics, who are wary of the administration’s attempts to offer incentives for the repressive, Stalinist regime to stop sponsoring terrorism, ice its nuclear program and, it is hoped, eventually embrace gradualist Chinese-style economic reforms.

The launch came just as a round of U.S.-North Korean talks in New York appeared to be making progress, with reports that the North had agreed to allow civilian inspection of a huge underground dig that is underway at a supposedly shuttered nuclear site. The talks resumed Monday with the missile test on the agenda, but there was no immediate word on the outcome.

The test follows the June incursion of a North Korean spy submarine into South Korean waters. It is thus a second slap in the face to South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, whose “sunshine policy” of engagement with the isolated, unpredictable North is designed to lead the way to lifting U.S. economic sanctions against Pyongyang.

The incident comes amid renewed concern about starvation in North Korea, which has claimed as many as 800,000 lives a year, according to recent estimates.

U.S. officials said they were not surprised by the test of the missile, believed to be a new two-stage Taepodong 1 missile capable of traveling 1,240 miles--twice the range of the Rodong. State Department spokesman Lee McClenny said the administration had warned that a test could come at any time.

‘Sky’s the Limit’

However, arms control specialist Henry D. Sokolski said the test is significant because it indicates that the North Koreans have mastered the “staging” technology that is key to sending missiles a great distance.

“Now the sky’s the limit,” said Sokolski, of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington. North Korea is thought to have one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. Putting a chemical, biological or even nuclear warhead onto a missile is considered much easier than developing a long-range, reliable delivery system. Intelligence officials believe North Korea has sold missile technology to the Pakistanis and the Iranians, Syrians and possibly other Middle Eastern clients.

Some analysts saw Monday’s launch as a missile marketing effort. And Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper quoted an unnamed U.S. government source as saying there was information that an Iranian mission was observing the launch.

However, McClenny insisted that, despite the test, the missile is not yet operational.

Official Pentagon estimates say the Taepodong missile will be complete in 2010, but Rep. Doug Bereuter (R-Neb.), chairman of the House Asia and Pacific subcommittee, said that assessment may be far too optimistic.

“North Korea can now deploy the Taepodong missile rapidly with very little warning, just like they deployed the earlier, shorter-range, single-stage Rodong missile after only one test,” Bereuter said. “We must not assume that Pyongyang will require years of testing and further refinement of the missile. . . . The speed with which the Taepodong was developed suggests that it is only a matter of time before North Korea possesses truly long-range ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles].”

Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-Ala.), chairman of the foreign operations Appropriations subcommittee, said the test doomed the administration’s hopes for getting Congress to continue funding the project. He said the administration is asking for $30 million for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, on top of $130 million that has already been invested.

“This is going to make it very very difficult, if not impossible, to include the administration’s request” for North Korea funds in the appropriations bill, Callahan said in a telephone interview.

The North Koreans have been infuriated by Congress’ unwillingness to pay for the 500,000 tons of fuel oil that the U.S. has pledged to deliver each year for 20 years while the reactors are under construction.

Because of funding delays, only 218,000 tons of the 500,000 tons pledged for delivery by Oct. 20 have been sent this year, The administration has been scrambling to come up with the estimated $28 million to send the fuel oil but has so far been unable to secure the money. Moreover, a deal among the U.S., Japan, South Korea and the European Union to reapportion construction costs for the reactors, scheduled to be signed Monday, was indefinitely postponed, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization said in Seoul.

North Korea has repeatedly warned that if the United States reneges on the fuel oil, it may have no choice but to restart its nuclear program. Several months ago, it also announced that it would continue to market its missile around the world to earn the hard currency it needs, unless the United States lifts the punitive sanctions.

Matter of Respect

“The North Korean government does not want to be regarded as a humanitarian problem, it wants to be regarded as an arms control problem because countries regarded as arms control problems get more respect,” said Nicholas Eberstadt, a North Korea watcher at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. However, “it’s not impossible that North Korea will miscalculate and exceed Congress’ patience,” he said.

“The administration has taught them that they can extort benefits from the United States,” complained a Republican House staff member who specializes in policy toward the Koreas, and who declined to be named. “They know this administration will try to take the path of least resistance.”

Robert A. Manning, an expert on Asia policy for the private Council on Foreign Relations, agreed that U.S. policy rewards “bad behavior.”

“They do something outrageous, and the Clinton administration says, ‘What do you need to keep it out of the newspapers?’ ” Manning said. “There is a terrible negative cycle where the only time the United States takes them seriously is when they do something provocative. But when they do something provocative, it becomes much more difficult to give them anything. This is taking blackmail to a new level.”

Efron reported from Tokyo and Kempster from Washington. Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington also contributed to this report.