North Korea’s Last Chance

North Korea has one last chance to talk seriously with a South Korean government that is offering generous assistance in exchange for reduced tensions along the heavily militarized border. If the talks set for next week in Pyongyang do not make progress, elections in South Korea later this year could bring to power politicians who would rather let the economically ravaged North collapse. It looks like a simple choice, but North Korea has proven adept at making irrational decisions.

North Korea’s domestic policy has been consistent for decades: all repression, all the time. But its foreign policy is more erratic. From its 1950 invasion that launched the Korean War until the late 1990s, it was an implacable enemy of South Korea and its allies, including the United States. When it had to confront the collapse of communism around the globe and starvation at home, it opened the door a bit. South Korea’s President Kim Dae Jung journeyed to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in June 2000 and was followed months later by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Then things slid backward.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has not made the promised reciprocal trip south, reunions of war-divided families have not been held for more than a year and the International Atomic Energy Agency has not been able to visit all the sites suspected of being used for nuclear weapons production in the North. President Bush included the North in his “axis of evil” in the State of the Union speech.

However, in his visit last month to South Korea, where 37,000 troops are stationed, Bush said the U.S. goal on the Korean peninsula was peace. That is also the goal of Kim Dae Jung, who won the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end tensions. But term limits will push him out of office this year, and North Korean recalcitrance has angered South Koreans, who may well elect a president far less sympathetic to Pyongyang. It is in North Korea’s own interest to encourage income-producing tourism from the South. It is in U.S. and South Korean interests for the North to pull its soldiers back from the border.

The United States, Japan and South Korea have given North Korea billions of dollars in food aid and fuel oil. Reciprocity by Pyongyang in halting rocket development, allowing weapons inspectors into the country, resuming family reunions and arranging a presidential visit south is long overdue. If Kim Jong Il rejects the chance offered by next week’s talks, he and his suffering nation may not get another for a long time.