Will N. Korea Ever Learn?

American and South Korean efforts to penetrate North Korea’s steel wall of suspicion have again been blunted by the Stalinist regime’s abiding fear that any accommodation will be perceived as ideological or military weakness. Seoul and Washington are more ready than they have been for 50 years to seek better relations with Pyongyang. The North’s response has been to provoke a confrontation with South Korea in the Yellow Sea, prompting the United States to increase its naval presence there. North Korea has reminded everyone how tough it can be, and also how irrational.

Pyongyang’s bellicosity has not helped South Korean President Kim Dae Jung’s “sunshine policy” of encouraging economic and cultural contacts with the North. At the same time the Clinton administration, alarmed over North Korea’s nuclear program and its missile exports to Iran and Pakistan, has taken a new initiative. In a message carried to Pyongyang late last month by former Defense Secretary William J. Perry, the United States offered to ease its economic sanctions dating from the 1950-53 Korean War if North Korea would halt its missile building program, end its sales of missile technology and extend its freeze on developing nuclear weapons. North Korea didn’t say yes to Perry after 15 hours of talks. But neither did it say no, leaving the impression--at least until this week--that it might be ready to consider some shift in policy.

Impoverished and famine-stricken, North Korea can ill afford to further antagonize those on whose humanitarian aid it most depends. Yet, bizarrely, that is just what it is doing. Faced with the prospect of accepting some measure of detente with its two greatest enemies, it chose to put on a self-damaging display of aggressiveness. North Korea is notorious even among its few friends, like China, for the suspicion with which it regards most of the world.

This fear-driven isolation continues to threaten stability and security in Northeast Asia. Seoul and Washington can only make clear that they remain ready to seek reasonable accommodation with Pyongyang, so long as there is no sound of gunfire in the background.