Don’t Fold Up the Umbrella Yet : North Korea must drop its nuclear program

North Korea says it’s now ready to open its highly secret and apparently expanding nuclear plant facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. If Kim Il Sung’s regime honors its promise to admit agency inspectors later this year--and if is a word best kept handy where North Korea’s promises are concerned--then some of the mystery could be lifted from the complex of nuclear reactors and a fuel reprocessing plant that U.S. satellite photos have detected about 60 miles north of Pyongyang.

Washington’s deep suspicion is that the communist regime is rushing to acquire its own nuclear weapons; some intelligence officials think that could happen within five years. The question that looms ever larger is how to deal with this threat to Northeast Asia’s stability, a matter of concern not only to South Korea but to Japan, China and the Soviet Union as well. One answer being pondered is an implicit trade-off: North Korea would abandon its nuclear arms program in exchange for the removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from South Korea. It sounds simple. As with so many issues between nations, it may not be.

The United States has never acknowledged having nuclear weapons in South Korea, but assume for argument’s sake --and there’s a 99% chance the assumption is correct--that such arms are there. Why? Because since the end of the Korean War in 1953 American-controlled nuclear weapons have provided the great equalizer in the military balance on the peninsula. Pyongyang has a standing army of 930,000, Seoul’s is 550,000. The north has nearly three times as many tanks as South Korea, more combat planes, more missiles. Add to this that Kim, now nudging 80, still nurses the ambition to control all of Korea, an ambition that 41 years ago this month led him to launch his enormously destructive invasion. The U.S. nuclear umbrella over South Korea has almost certainly been the key deterrent that has ensured the peace since then.

It’s of course possible to keep that umbrella open without actually maintaining nuclear warheads on Korean soil.

Up to now, though, Pyongyang has demanded not just the removal of any such warheads but an explicit U.S. guarantee never to use nuclear weapons against the north. Such a renunciation simply isn’t in the cards, nor should it be, at least so long as North Korea is ruled by duplicitous and expansionist-minded leaders.

All of its neighbors will have cause for alarm if North Korea goes nuclear. South Korea and even Japan might then feel compelled to acquire nuclear arsenals, if in fact Seoul didn’t move preemptively to destroy the nuclear capability in the north. There is, though, a glimmer of hope. North Korea, isolated and broke, may be ready for a face-saving deal that would let it drop its costly nuclear weapons program.

The agreement to open itself to international inspection could finally be a signal that it’s ready to bargain seriously. It will cost Washington and Seoul next to nothing to test the reality behind that hint.