DESPERATE TYRANT, GLOBAL MENACE

The Economist, July 10th, 1999

MEET the face that is threatening to give Asia its very own Cuban-style missile crisis. Kim Jong Il's plans to test another long-range missile over the Pacific have caused such alarm in South Korea, Japan and the United States that the North Korean leader may yet blink. But then again, he may not. The reclusive Mr Kim is one of the last survivors of unreconstructed communism. His country is on its uppers. His people are hungry. He is without friends, save perhaps a reluctant China. And he has just one aim: to stay in power. He may think that infuriating his neighbours is the best way of doing so. For everyone's sake, Mr Kim needs to be persuaded that launching another rocket-the one he fired across Japan last August caused consternation all round-will do him no good. He is, however, a difficult man to persuade of anything, especially when the message he receives is confused. And that is what has happened in the past. North Korea has long been at work on a secret nuclear programme. Five years ago, when it pro

vocatively unloaded the plutonium-rich core of its main nuclear reactor without international inspection, and threatened to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the programme began to look increasingly sinister. The North's neighbours, however, failed to respond with one voice. South Korea and Japan dithered, fearful of provoking a military clash with such a hostile and unpredictable regime. China flatly opposed America's efforts to impose sanctions. Instead, the Americans were left to negotiate a deal that will eventually reward North Korea with two western-designed nuclear reactors in return for an end to its mischievous plutonium reprocessing.

Since then North Korea's economic problems have gone from grave to grotesque (see our survey). Though Mr Kim is ready to pay for expensive rocketry, he relies on outside help to feed his people, chief among them his cronies and the soldiers who keep him in power. Is there, in this paradox, a chance for leverage?

Many have thought so. North Korea has recently been offered a bundle of inducements-diplomatic recognition and an easing of remaining trade sanctions by America, huge dollops of aid from South Korea, with still more in prospect eventually from Japan-so long as the freeze on its nuclear programme continues and it stops testing and selling its long-range rockets. But the lesson Mr Kim seems to have learned from the 1994 nuclear bribe is that the worse he behaves, the more desperately outsiders will try to buy him off. He is now almost certainly hoping for more rewards.

The time has come to disabuse him. Unfortunately, China, which does not want to see North Korea collapse into the arms of capitalist South Korea, and worries lest the flow of hungry refugees across its border should become a flood, keeps supporting Mr Kim. It does so with supplies of food and fuel which, unlike the carefully monitored deliveries of oil that are provided until the new reactors are ready, or the humanitarian aid that the rest of the world sends, probably goes straight into army stores. South Korea, reasoning that talking is better than shooting, recently offered fertiliser just to persuade NorthKorea to show up for talks. The trouble is that talking with the North never yields anything. Even America seems to have been blackmailed. Only after a promise of more food aid was it allowed to inspect a suspicious excavation in order to assuage its worries that North Korea was planning to restart its nuclear programme. The world is right to dread seeing North Koreans starve because of the folly of the

ir master. The difficulty is that, without sticks as well as carrots, Mr Kim has no incentive to change his behaviour, whether it is sending submarines and torpedo boats into South Korean waters, or firing ever more powerful rockets that could some day carry nuclear, chemical or biological warheads. Indeed, Mr Kim, convinced he can get away with anything, may be about to overplay his hand. No more bribes For once, all of North Korea's neighbours see a common threat, even if they are still divided over what to do about it. Although South Korea is still more worried about Mr Kim's short-range guns, which can easily hit its capital Seoul, another rocket over the Pacific would make the South's "sunshine policy" towards the North-a policy that separates political differences from economic contacts-look decidedly silly. It would also put an end to the plans to buy off Mr Kim's nuclear ambitions with nuclear reactors. Most of the money for the project comes from South Korea and Japan, but some cash and almost all t

he political leadership comes from the United States. Neither America's Congress nor Japan's Diet would continue to pay up if North Korea were building, testing and probably selling to others new means to threaten their security. North Korea's missile madness will top the agenda as Japan's prime minister visits China this week.

And for once, China is rattled too. It may not expect to be the target of North Korea's new missiles, but Mr Kim's unannounced rocket test last August blew a hole through China's regional diplomacy. Until then China had been leaning on Japan not to join America in research on anti-missile defences. Now research will start. America is keen to have extra protection for its troops in Asia and elsewhere. China worries that even limited defences will undermine its nuclear deterrent, and is anxious that America will extend such defences to Taiwan, which China claims as its own. (Indeed, three years ago China itself showed how useful better defences could be to Taiwan, when it lobbed missiles into the sea lanes near the island in an attempt to intimidate Taiwanese voters.) Now that North Korea's preparations for a new test have got everyone's attention, what can usefully be done? The response this time should be simple, and unanimous. It should be to advise North Korea, first, to take the goodies on offer and forge

t about any more missile tests. But this message is most unlikely to be heeded unless it is accompanied by another: that if any test goes ahead, not only will the offers of aid, trade and diplomatic recognition be withdrawn, but severe economic sanctions will be applied. Admittedly, China would be deeply reluctant to go along with that. It hates to see a fellow communist country-however exasperating-chastised. That is why China, as North Korea's propper-upper of last resort, could do more than any other to persuade Mr Kim to take the diplomatic way out. The choice is as stark for China as it is for America, South Korea and Japan. It is either to allow North Korea to set off a destabilising new round of suspicion, rivalry and even fighting in East Asia, or to persuade Mr Kim to back down.