How Dangerous Is North Korea?
Dictator Kim Jong Il is pushing the world toward a showdown over his nuclear weapons. How will the Bush Administration respond?

Late last month Yongbyon was the site of a party of sorts, thrown by 100 North Korean officials and attended by the two U.N. weapons inspectors assigned to monitor the complex for signs that North Korea is trying to restart its nuclear-weapons program. In full view of the inspectors, the North Korean officials cut dozens of seals from a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor–reopening it for the first time in nearly a decade–and covered over U.N. surveillance cameras fixed to the walls of the plant. When they finished the task, the hosts celebrated with a round of beers.

They were just getting started. The next day, North Korean scientists began removing seals and surveillance cameras from a cooling pond where spent fuel rods had been lying untouched. They reopened a nearby facility designed to extract plutonium, which can be used to fashion nuclear bombs, from the spent fuel. Appearing at the door of the Yongbyon guesthouse accommodating the two U.N. inspectors, a smiling North Korean official read aloud a letter informing them it was time to leave–immediately. The official volunteered that there were in fact two seats on the next Air Koryo flight from Pyongyang to Beijing.

Thus did the North Korean regime escalate a showdown that began last October, when it confirmed U.S. intelligence reports that it was illegally building a new uranium-enrichment factory–another pathway to the Bomb. The expulsion of the inspectors was the clearest sign yet that Pyongyang is intent on pushing the stand-off to the brink. It is unknown whether North Korea has ever actually constructed a nuclear weapon. But given the relative simplicity of making a crude device, some U.S. analysts suspect that it has a bomb, albeit an untested one.

The Bush Administration has done its best to counsel the world not to panic, making daily appeals to give diplomacy a chance. But with each new North Korean gambit, that official nonchalance sounds more off-key. Seemingly overnight, the U.S. begins the New Year eyeball to eyeball with a paranoid, ruthless regime bent on obtaining nuclear weapons to complement an army the Pentagon rates among the most formidable in the world.

In 1994, when the Clinton Administration demanded that North Korea shut down the Yongbyon reactor, the Pentagon drafted plans for strikes to take out North Korea's key nuclear-production sites. Pentagon officials say the plan has recently been reviewed and modified, but few believe any American President would ever authorize it. An attack on Pyongyang's nuclear facilities could spread lethal radiation over China, Japan and South Korea and trigger a North Korean counterattack. The regime boasts a standing army of 1 million troops–the world's fourth largest–with an estimated 4.7 million more in reserve. It also keeps a massive store of artillery shells and hundreds of Scud missiles that it could load with biological and chemical agents and rain down on South Korea and the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed there. Some U.S. military officials believe that a conventional exchange with North Korea could result in as many as 1 million South Korean casualties. Even so, a senior Bush Administration official says, the chief impediment to U.S. military action is the possibility, however remote, that Pyongyang might try to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

Putting in place sanctions tough enough to inflict persuasive pain on North Korea would take months, giving Pyongyang time to successfully extract new nuclear-weapons material. So is there another way out? South Korean officials are pushing the U.S. to negotiate a climb-down with Pyongyang; Kim, North Korea's leader, they believe, is desperate to end his country's isolation and would agree to give up his nuclear ambitions if the U.S. dangled the promise of normalized relations and pledged not to attack him.

The CIA isn't sure the North Koreans have the skill to make a nuclear device small enough to load onto its missiles. But if they do, the danger is great. Pyongyang wields a huge stash of short- and medium-range missiles, including at least 100 Nodong missiles capable of striking Japan. U.S. intelligence officials say Pyongyang wants to become the first rogue state capable of striking the U.S. homeland with a missile. In 1998 the North Koreans test-fired a three-stage Taepo Dong-1 rocket that landed in the Pacific Ocean. The Pentagon believes that North Korea is developing an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Taepo Dong-2, that could reach Alaska, Hawaii and possibly California. The North Koreans had pledged not to test-fire any long-range weapons until this year. If testing resumes, a U.S. military official says, Pyongyang may be able to target the continental U.S. with a nuclear warhead "within several years."

A U.S. intelligence source says a Washington-led embargo against Pyongyang would take time to loosen the regime's grip on power, since Kim has already shown that he's "willing to let a lot of people die off." But eventually sanctions might take their toll, as even top government officials and members of the security services began to feel the pinch. "If the regime can no longer maintain the lifestyles of [those] people," says the source, "it could be in serious trouble."

A hard-line containment policy, though, would also erode Washington's moral credibility, putting the U.S. in the position of starving a country into submission. Even if the White House figures a way out of the current standoff without resorting to sanctions or military force, the U.S. may at some point have to face the prospect of outright confrontation. Administration officials concede that the White House may wind up engaging in a direct dialogue with the North Koreans, while never calling it that. But the U.S. will demand assurances that North Korea keep its commitments this time. If it doesn't, the White House may yet decide that, as with Baghdad, the only way to disarm the regime in Pyongyang is to change it.

—from TIME, January 13, 2003

Questions

1. What strategy is South Korea advocating to diffuse the situation with North Korea?

2. What are some of the possible consequences of a war with North Korea?