It is a Crisis — page 2

Aside from boasting a conventional army that could transform South Korea into "a sea of fire"—a threat from the North—how dangerous is Kim? Since the U.S.-brokered deal in 1994 to shut down his nuclear plants in return for aid and oil, Kim has been estimated to have enough fissile material to produce one or two atomic weapons. There is no evidence that he has tested such a device or has a workable nuclear bomb, although Tenet said last week that "it's a very good judgment" that weapons have been built. Kim has a stockpile of missiles that can reach South Korea and Japan, and he's developing longer-range models, including the Taepo Dong-2 three-stage missile designed to reach the continental U.S. Whether he could ever design a nuclear device small enough to fit in a missile is the question; but he also is known to have up to 5,000 tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas and sarin, and a biological weapons arsenal believed to include anthrax, smallpox and the plague.

At the time, the 1994 agreement was considered a shrewd compromise: the North's nuclear weapons program was supposedly closed down, and IAEA inspectors were stationed round-the-clock to ensure that it remained so. In return Kim was able to prop up his economy with free oil and the promise of two new $4.5 billion nuclear power plants that couldn't easily be used to make weapons. Since last October, China, Japan, South Korea and the U.S. have hoped to engineer a similar deal, perhaps with some new carrots and sticks. But they have also had to confront the fact that Kim's nuclear genie never went back into its bottle: he had been building a uranium-enrichment plant, the discovery of which prompted the current crisis.

Hard-liners in Washington have always suspected that Kim's long-term plan was to join the nuclear club. Now moderates are also convinced. "The North Korean government wants to have a nuclear arsenal," says Nicholas Eberstadt, a Korea expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. "The problem is we know their intentions and we don't like the answer. The only way to deal with the problem is to change the government in North Korea." Analysts in Beijing are coming to the same conclusion: that Kim's strategy is "regime survival." Kim believes that as a member of President George W. Bush's "axis of evil," he may be next in line for the Saddam Hussein treatment. And nothing will protect him better than a cache of nuclear weapons—along with the madman image he has in the West. Far be it from Kim to worry about starting a nuclear arms race in North Asia. "North Korea is so worried about its own security that nuclear weapons have really become part of its defense," says Yan Xuetong, a professor of international relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "That makes it much harder to stop [the North]." Victor Cha, a professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. agrees: "Maybe they aren't really interested in negotiations. Maybe they want to realize some sort of nuclear capacity, and then talk."

A scary notion, and one that Washington is eager to dismiss. "We think this is solvable," a U.S. State Department official insists. But the diplomatic shuffle since last October has been a bust, with almost all the interested parties talking past one another and Pyongyang going blithely along its own road. The feeble diplomatic gestures that have been made only seem to embolden Kim. Last month the Dear Leader snubbed an envoy sent from Seoul to try to defuse the crisis. For weeks Pyongyang watchers have expected Kim to ratchet up the tension yet again with another missile test over Japan. "We're at the mercy of the North Koreans," admits a Capitol Hill staff member. "They are the masters of brinksmanship until they get to the point where they have crossed yet-undeclared red lines." Delay is to Kim's advantage, too. He has already announced that he is restarting the shuttered nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, which would enable him to produce enough plutonium for one bomb a year. If he starts up the nearby reprocessing plant, he could churn out enough plutonium for several more bombs within a few months. At this point, there is only one person keeping North Korea from going into the international red zone: the Dear Leader himself. "The Bush Administration claims that the ball is in North Korea's court," says U.S. Senator Joseph Biden. "North Korea says it's in our court. From where I sit, the ball is sort of stuck in the net somewhere."

North Korea is insisting on direct talks with the U.S. It's an old Pyongyang ploy: it wants to be treated as an equal, without sharing prestige with South Korea or Japan. But Bush doesn't want to be viewed as going down Bill Clinton's route or to be accused of kowtowing to a rogue state. Washington says the international community has to resolve the crisis multilaterally, and was happy that the IAEA referred the North Korea issue to the Security Council. The next logical step in that process would be U.N. sanctions against North Korea, which Pyongyang has said it would consider as a declaration of war. In fact, the Security Council is unlikely to do anything soon.

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