The Dangerous Korea.

The current North Korean regime guarantees crisis after crisis.

Nicholas Eberstadt is a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute and Harvard University. His many books include the forthcoming End of North Korea (AEI).

ONCE again, the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea"-a.k.a. the DPRK or North Korea-has been getting itself into the news. And since Pyongyang's principal export to the rest of the world is headaches, the news naturally has not been good.

At the end of August, North Korea demonstrated that it had joined the handful of states that can produce a multi-stage ballistic rocket-by launching one, without warning, over the main island of Japan. Although Pyongyang subsequently insisted that it was only trying to send a music satellite aloft to celebrate two imminent joyous events-the regime's 50th anniversary and the formal accession to supreme power of Kim Jong Il, son and heir to the late Kim Il Sung-analysts less caught up in the spirit of those festivities noted that the reach of DPRK weapons of mass destruction (including what may be the world's third-largest arsenal of chemical weapons) had just been ominously extended.

In addition to presiding over a clandestine missile-development program, the DPRK also happens to have been presiding over a clandestine famine. For over three years-since a 1995 DPRK international appeal for emergency food aid- Western governments and U.N. agencies have shipped hundreds of millions of dollars in relief supplies to North Korea to mitigate a hunger crisis whose precise dimensions Pyongyang has steadfastly refused to disclose. But by stubbornly restricting information about, and access to, stricken areas and vulnerable groups, the North Korean regime has fundamentally compromised the ability of these foreign donors to pursue their humanitarian mandate. By September, Doctors Without Borders-the private, highly respected worldwide charitable organization-could bear that situation no longer: it announced that it was shutting down all its operations in the DPRK at the end of the month.

And then there is the matter of the "suspect underground facility." Back in 1994, after two years of intermittent international drama over its nuclear program, Pyongyang signed an "Agreed Framework" with Washington that seemed to promise a permanent halt to the DPRK's nuclear-development (read: atomic- weapons) efforts in return for a schedule of benefits, including up to half a million tons of free heavy-fuel oil every year and the concessional construction on North Korean soil of two "safe" light-water nuclear reactors worth well over $4 billion. In mid-August, however, the New York Times reported that the U.S. intelligence community had detected "a huge secret underground complex in North Korea" that might be "the centerpiece of an effort to revive the country's . . . nuclear weapons program."

American entreaties for immediate inspections of this subterranean site were greeted first by escalating demands and then by not-so-veiled threats. When U.S. diplomats raised the issue last summer, their North Korean counterparts reportedly agreed in principle to inspection-but wanted $300 million in cash if that inspection failed to uncover suspect activities. In later discussions, their position hardened: $300 million up front, and for a one- time-only peek.

At this writing, a North Korean Foreign Ministry delegation is shuttling between New York and Washington, listening to continued warnings from State Department officials that the "Agreed Framework"-already highly unpopular in Congress-will be a dead letter without complete DPRK cooperation in resolving the unanswered questions about this new complex. So far, though, Pyongyang has not exactly been responding cooperatively. On December 4, the daily paper for the ruling North Korean Worker's Party declared that American agitation for inspecting the underground facility signified that "the United States has set out to execute 'Operation 5027'"-the Pentagon's (defensive) contingency plan for a war in the Korean peninsula. That same day, a spokesman for the general staff of the North Korean "People's Army" suggested that "preemptive strike" was "by no means an exclusive option of the United States. The mode of strike is not a monopoly of the U.S., either." Lest the point be missed, another officer went on to state that if conflict breaks out, "Neither the U.S. territory nor Japanese islands will remain without a mishap." (Remember the launch of that musical satellite?)

Thus we may well ask: Do these various developments indicate that Washington is confronted by a new North Korean crisis? That, of course, depends on what you mean by "crisis."

If by "crisis" we mean a confrontation that threatens to heighten the level of international hostility, tension, and anxiety, the answer is obviously yes. If, on the other hand, we mean an unstable state of affairs in which a single decision by one of the drama's main actors may set events in motion that none will later be able to control, the answer is rather less self- evident.

White-knuckle, bared-fang negotiations present the observer steeped in modern, Western sensibilities with prima facie evidence of an inherently explosive condition. Yet for better or worse, that sensibility is not shared by North Korean decision-makers, who occupy a universe with ideological, cultural, and metaphysical coordinates very different from our own. Indeed: One may even argue that high-tension, gut-wrenching brinkmanship is regarded by the DPRK's leadership as the natural approach to international relations. Certainly it is a manner of conduct for which five decades of North Korean diplomacy has revealed a strong preference.

Foreign observers understand amazingly little about this desperate, heavily armed state. In part, this is testimony to the success of Pyongyang's longstanding campaign to cloak North Korea in total secrecy-not least to conceal the regime's capabilities and intentions from its adversaries. But it also speaks to the precepts upon which that state has been built-precepts that, to the sophisticated internationalist worldview, seem antique or otherwise utterly alien.

"Socialism with Korean characteristics." Whatever can that mean?

Perhaps, for one thing, a Leninism in which there can be no winners unless there are also identifiable, dominated losers. Perhaps, also, an obsessive focus on race (the Korean word is minjok) and on racial destiny.

The same September 1998 DPRK Supreme People's Assembly that formally elevated Kim Jong Il also proclaimed that North Korea should be a "prosperous and powerful socialist state." A pity that Washington-replete as it is these days with semioticians-has not yet harnessed those considerable talents to parse that phrase.

Americans who have pored over English-language translations of DPRK official pronouncements have noted the frequency with which the peculiar term "flunkeyism"-a word of utmost opprobrium-is used. That word, however, is the official DPRK translation of a well-known Korean term, sadaejuui, meaning the doctrine of "serving the great" observed by ancient Korean kingdoms, under which regular tribute to China (the great power of the old East Asian order) was ideologically justified. The DPRK's current official state philosophy is the late Kim Il Sung's juche-thought: and juche may be seen as "flunkeyism" stood on its head. No longer (by this interpretation of the current doctrine) will North Korean money flow to the Great Powers: instead, the Great Powers will proffer gifts to Pyongyang-and those gifts will be received not as charity, but rather as tribute to the sole legitimate (socialist) throne of the Korean race.

STARVE THE STATE

If such an analysis roughly describes the viewpoint of the interlocutors with whom Americans must contend, how should our policymakers proceed? Here are four modest suggestions.

First, while Americans may have a deep moral preference for feeding the North Korean people in this time of travail, they should have no similar disposition for nourishing the North Korean state. For this reason, the current arrangement for food relief to North Korea-in essence, cutting checks to Pyongyang's "Public Distribution System"-should be absolutely unacceptable. If lives of ordinary North Korean citizens are to be saved, what might be called "intrusive aid" is indispensable. Unless and until intrusive aid can proceed unhindered in that country, no taxpayer funds should be devoted to that project.

Second, the "Agreed Framework" should be recognized for what it is: an ambiguous and mischievous document ripe for misuse. The American negotiators who hammered it out have repeatedly emphasized that it is not an "agreement"-that it does not bind any party to specific actions or hold parties in non-compliance if given objectives are not met. "Failure" of the "Agreed Framework," consequently, is very much in the mind of the beholder. And if the "Agreed Framework" should "fail," it is not self-evident that the dilemmas posed by coping with North Korean policy objectives will have been altered in any material way. Washington must therefore be reconciled to live with the fundamental tensions that separate American world interests from those of Pyongyang.

Third, isolated as the DPRK regime may be, American policymakers should appreciate that Pyongyang follows the international news. American actions- and inaction-in distant locales affect Pyongyang's calculations, as well as its articulation of its international position. America's response (or lack of one), for example, to the continuing provocations of an all-but-impotent Serbian state and a hamstrung Iraqi state, along with Washington's flaccid reaction to Libya's defiant refusal to expose its state-sponsored terrorists to international justice, have surely informed North Korea's current negotiating tactics.

Finally, we should recognize that the essence of the "North Korean crisis" is in fact the North Korean regime: its outlook, behavior, and intentions. The North Korean crisis will continue to capture headlines until the DPRK undergoes a basic transformation-or until that state disappears from the world stage. For this reason, any prudent North Korean policy must be a long-term one-and must prepare for, and encourage, the evolution of a Northeast Asia that no longer need contend with an actor like the present North Korean government.