Say ‘Enough’ to This Fear Monger

After months of coaxing by the Clinton administration, North Korea has agreed to send a high-level delegation to Washington next month. It might be wise to lock the doors to the treasury.

While few Americans were paying attention, North Korea’s brutally repressive Stalinist regime became a major recipient of U.S. aid, despite an unbroken history of hostility between the two countries going back half a century. In recent years the United States has given Pyongyang fuel oil and food worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and North Korea hasn’t been shy about demanding still more.

The oil is part of a multibillion-dollar energy deal under which the United States, South Korea and Japan are providing Pyongyang with a pair of light-water nuclear reactors, the first of which could become operational in 2007. These will replace Soviet-supplied graphite reactors, from which North Korea is suspected of extracting enough plutonium to build one or two bombs. The food aid is a humanitarian response to a lengthy famine, largely the result of irresponsible policies that may have taken 2 million lives. It’s unclear how much of the aid has reached ordinary citizens. Much of it is believed to have been diverted to the military and political elites that prop up Kim Jong Il’s regime.

North Korea’s test-firing of a missile over Japan in August 1998 and its subsequent display--under the gaze of a U.S. satellite--of a three-stage missile that might be capable of reaching Alaska or Hawaii won Pyongyang significant American concessions. In a vague understanding between the two countries, North Korea indicated it would suspend missile tests. Washington in return said it would ease trade sanctions in place since the Korean War of the early 1950s.

North Korea has shrewdly calculated the lucrative benefits that could be extracted through U.S. concerns about its bellicosity. Each gesture carries a price, and in most cases Washington has been ready to pay. Pyongyang’s latest venture into extortionate diplomacy is typically crude. It says it has found the remains of more than 400 American servicemen killed in the Korean War, and it has linked their return to a demand that the United States pay up to $50 million to build children’s clothing factories. So far the answer has been “no deal.”

The agenda for the coming Washington meeting hasn’t been set, but the Clinton administration clearly is eager to discuss ways to curb North Korea’s missile program. It might be a good idea to rein in that eagerness and consider whether the United States has perhaps not been overreacting to its own inflated fears.

North Korea is scary because for decades it has shown contempt for international norms. Now it may have stashed away about 20 kilograms of plutonium. And it may have built--though not tested--a long-range missile. But are these possibilities conclusive enough and threatening enough to justify the costly concessions Washington has made? It’s time, we think, to start insisting on a lot more from Pyongyang in return for U.S. help and to suspend that help if greater cooperation isn’t extended.