North Korea: A nuclear deal comes undone

President Bush hasn’t had many foreign policy successes, said Mike Chinoy in the San Francisco Chronicle. And now, one of the few he has achieved “is on the brink of collapse.” In June, North Korea blew up the cooling tower at its main reactor in Yongbyon, taking an important first step toward dismantling its rogue nuclear program. But last week, Pyongyang said the deal it had forged with the Bush administration was dead. The North Koreans ejected U.N. inspectors from the facility and said they were preparing to resume processing weapons-grade plutonium. As usual, dictator Kim Jong Il’s regime had a convenient excuse, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. The North Koreans are saying they’re backing out because the White House hasn’t kept its promise to remove their country from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. But the U.S. promised to do that only if the regime turned over all its plutonium and revealed how many nuclear weapons it had made—which North Korea has yet to do. Breaking commitments, sadly, is “business as usual” for Kim’s regime.

The same can be said of the Bush administration, said The New York Times. For six years, Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration hawks refused to talk to North Korea. The result? Pyongyang churned out fissionable material and actually tested a nuclear bomb. That’s when “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a competent team of diplomats” took over. Their patient efforts yielded the Yongbyon breakthrough. Now, in the waning days of this administration, “Cheney and Co. are back in charge.” The White House is changing the deal, insisting on a new, tougher verification program “that only a state vanquished in war might accept.” Inspectors would be free to roam North Korea and demand access to any and all sites, documents, and officials. Apparently, the hawks wanted the agreement to fall apart.

That would be especially unfortunate now, said The Economist. Kim is rumored to be ill, possibly suffering from a stroke. There are also “mounting signs of a new famine,” and the regime may be open to changing its rigid policies to avert disaster. The country is now dotted with “informal markets.” There’s been more contact with the outside world, especially China. Little by little, Kim’s ability to control everything his people see and hear is slipping. “That makes him vulnerable—in ways the outside world should exploit.”

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