The Politics of Extortion

The euphoria that followed last year’s talks between South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has given way to a rueful sense of a promise unfulfilled or--more accurately--an illusion shattered. The North permitted a few stage-managed meetings between separated family members, but other than that it has yet to turn the page in its external relations. This week, on the eve of the anniversary of the armistice that halted the Korean War 48 years ago, Pyongyang again trotted out its hoary demand that the United States agree to a peace treaty and withdraw its 37,000 troops from South Korea. Washington is ready to talk about a treaty, but only if it includes South Korea. To that the North has always said no.

Last month President Bush said he is ready to reopen a dialogue with North Korea. Some had expected an answer to come this week, when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun would be attending the annual ASEAN Regional Security Forum being held in Vietnam. But last week Pyongyang announced that Paek was “too busy” to attend the conference. It’s possible, we suppose, that the foreign minister of a collapsing Stalinist state that has diplomatic relations with a mere handful of countries finds every minute of his time spoken for. More likely, the snub was North Korea’s way of saying it has nothing it wants to talk to the United States about.

The Clinton administration’s North Korea policy increasingly came to be criticized as all carrot and no stick. Favors and rewards flowed from Washington even in the absence of substantive concessions from Pyongyang, driven by a hope that the North could be induced to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons and its exports of missile technology to other trouble-making states.

The Bush administration, after surveying North Korea’s weaknesses and capabilities, intends to be tougher. It wants to remain engaged with Pyongyang, because that is the best way to gauge North Korea’s intentions. It also has some concrete objectives in mind for lessening tensions, chief among them reducing North Korea’s massive military buildup--approximately 700,000 troops, 8,000 artillery pieces and 2,000 tanks--near the demilitarized zone separating it from South Korea. And it wants to talk about curtailing Pyongyang’s missile development and export program.

North Korea’s adeptness at the politics of extortion may have left it, in Stalin’s apt phrase, dizzy with success. Now the Bush administration is telling Pyongyang it had better start practicing the politics of accommodation if it hopes to end its isolation and resuscitate its moribund economy. In short, and properly, expect no more carrots for a while.