N. Korea’s Neighbors Accept U.S. Hard Line

Despite doubts about the Bush administration’s hard-line campaign to thwart North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, East Asian nations have decided not to openly resist the strategy, analysts in the region believe.

The lack of significant opposition from neighbors China, Japan and to some extent South Korea comes even though some policymakers have expressed concern that the U.S. refusal to have a dialogue with North Korea until it abandons its nuclear programs could drive Kim Jong Il’s dictatorial regime into a deeper, more dangerous political isolation.

The U.S. has also halted shipments of heavy fuel oil to the North, and accused the regime in Pyongyang of breaking a 1994 agreement that would provide the country with two safer nuclear power reactors in return for a freeze of its nuclear program.

“It’s a bit of a misstatement to call the United States the ‘bad cop,’ but it’s extremely important that Washington take a tough approach,” Japan’s deputy chief Cabinet secretary, Shinzo Abe, said this week.

The dangers of a nuclear-armed North Korea to East Asia’s stability, the belief that America wants to resolve the crisis peacefully and Washington’s decision not to insist that others also isolate Pyongyang have all worked to reduce opposition to the Bush administration’s stance, analysts said.

Japan, which had initially differed with the U.S. on how strong a line to take, this week underscored that it had no differences with the U.S. on the issue. China, although clearly nervous about the administration’s move, has remained quiet.

Elsewhere, there were signs of support.

“The U.S. has no choice,” summed up Chu Sung Bao, a Korea specialist at the National Chengchi University’s Institute of International Relations in Taipei, Taiwan.

So far, the only major public outcry has come from South Korea, where criticism to the strong U.S. stance has become part of a wave of anti-American sentiment sweeping the country. Although opposed to the tough Bush policy toward Pyongyang, South Korean President Kim Dae Jung’s government in Seoul remained silent on the issue during the final days of the run-up to today’s presidential election.

Polls were due to close today at 1 a.m. Pacific time.

The dearth of resistance to the administration’s hard line against a possible nuclear threat from North Korea contrasts sharply with the deep disquiet among the community of nations as it watches the United States deal with a remarkably similar threat from Iraq.

For its confrontation with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the U.S. has worked hard to enlist skeptical, skittish allies.

In recent days, efforts to contain North Korea’s nuclear program have appeared to unravel with frightening speed. The regime in Pyongyang announced last week that it planned to reactivate a plutonium plant and end international monitoring of it. That move came just two months after the North set off diplomatic shock waves by declaring that it was engaged in a secret uranium-enrichment program -- apparently for the development of nuclear weapons.

Analysts note that several factors are at work in the region that reduce resistance to the Bush administration’s tough policy. Among them:

* Governments in Asia believe that the U.S. wants to resolve the crisis peacefully. Despite erratic, often-belligerent rhetoric out of Pyongyang and a credible nuclear threat, the U.S. has consistently stressed its desire to coax the communist regime toward normal behavior, not destroy it.

“We have no intention of attacking North Korea,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told reporters in Washington on Monday -- just four days after Pyongyang declared its intention to reopen its nuclear facilities.

* Asia-Pacific countries view North Korea as a serious danger to regional stability, especially after it test-fired a ballistic missile four years ago, indicating that it could soon develop weapons capable of hitting targets as far off as Alaska or Hawaii. In Japan, a harder line against North Korea is also easier to sell, with emotions running high as Tokyo struggles to resolve issues related to the abduction of Japanese nationals by the regime in the 1970s and ‘80s.

“Japan prefers to make the abduction issue its top priority and have the United States handle the nuclear issue,” said Toshimitsu Shigemura, a Japanese expert on Korean affairs.

China also sees North Korea’s nuclear threat as a major political liability -- one drawing unwanted U.S. attention to the region and helping justify American arguments for deploying a missile defense system there. China vehemently opposes such systems, fearing that they could invalidate its own modest nuclear arsenal or be used to prevent reunification with Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province.

* The U.S. has not forced countries in the region to sever their contacts with Pyongyang. Japan and South Korea, for example, continue to work on construction of the light-water nuclear reactors that are part of the 1994 agreement. Both countries continue to maintain diplomatic contacts on nonnuclear issues.

Although White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer announced last week that South Korean President Kim had agreed during a telephone conversation with President Bush that there should be no “business as usual” with the North until the nuclear issue is closer to resolution, a spokesman for Kim gave a differing account of the discussion.

Spokesman Im Sung Joon said that the two heads of state agreed only that North Korea’s insistence on restarting its nuclear program “cannot be accepted and that North Korea should be asked immediately to drop the program.”

The day after Fleischer’s remarks, a South Korean Red Cross delegation traveled from Seoul to the North Korean resort of Mt. Kumgang to discuss building a permanent meeting place for families separated since the Korean War. Another delegation is scheduled to go to Pyongyang next week for a marine affairs committee meeting.

Japan also said it plans to go forward with talks on normalizing relations with Pyongyang.

Meanwhile, there is plenty of low-level grumbling that the U.S. approach is too harsh.

In Beijing, Piao Jianyi, a North Korea expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said escalating rhetoric is making neighboring nations nervous. “We used to say that North Korea engaged in brinkmanship, pushing tensions to the verge of war, but now it seems like the U.S. is using this tactic as well.”

China and Russia issued a statement this month calling for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula and urging Washington to continue talking with Pyongyang.

But the least receptive audience to the Bush administration’s uncompromising line toward North Korea is in Seoul.

Lame-duck leader Kim, having devoted his presidency to coaxing the North Koreans out of isolation, will make every attempt to salvage his efforts to engage the North until his successor is inaugurated Feb. 25.

“The South Korean government doesn’t like to say so in public, but they blame the Americans for what is happening,” said Moon Chung In, a North Korea specialist with Yonsei University. “The Bush administration has created a situation where the North Koreans are pushed in a corner. And their bad behavior becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that allows the Bush administration to say, ‘I told you so.’ ”

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Marshall reported from Hong Kong and Demick from Seoul. Special correspondents Anthony Kuhn in Beijing and Tsai Ting-I in Taipei and Takashi Yokota in The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.