Japan fears N. Korea near point of no return

The US wants multilateral talks with North Korea, with China, Russia, and neighboring states playing a role. Yet a Japanese diplomat with extensive North Korean experience says this will be difficult to bring off. Kim will not go into multilateral talks, he says. North Koreans traditionally resist pressure, and Kim could not stand the loss of face that would result by meeting in a forum where all parties were push him into a corner to change.

"That's Kim Jong Il's worst nightmare - to enter a format where he is ganged up on," says a Japanese diplomat who visited Pyongyang with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi last fall. "They can't take collective criticism.."

The Japanese feel that of all the Asian states, theirs is the one most likely to be attacked by Kim, should it come to that. Japan occupied Korea for 35 years, and Kim's father formed his core beliefs as an "anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter."

Dealing with Korea has been a bumpy road for the US-Japan-South Korean alliance since President Bush took office. Japan is the key US ally in Asia, and Japanese leaders affirm solid ties. Yet in 2001, when the new Bush team signaled a shift on the policy of engaging the North through dialogue, the news seemed lacking in consultation and dismissive. As months passed, a perceived lack of US policy spurred deepening questions, and in Seoul exacerbated old feelings that Korea has always been an afterthought for the US.

So slowly did US policy develop that last September, when Mr. Koizumi took a first-ever trip to Pyongyang to begin normalization talks, the move looked rather like an end run on a foot-dragging US ally.

Last October brought the first trip to Pyongyang by a Bush official, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly. The trip was designed as a "test," says one White House source. North Korea's new engagement with Japan, and a series of announcements on economic reform and outside ties by Pyongyang, was an "opening to test how serious Kim is about joining the world."

The test involved Mr. Kelly confronting North officials with evidence it was building a secret uranium-enrichment program. The North denied, then admitted to the program - and promptly said it was nullifying the 1994 agreement that shut down Kim's plutonium reactor.

The current dilemma is causing some US Asia specialists to venture that Kim is simply outsmarting the Americans. "The White House has tried to label this a non-crisis, and Kim has upped the ante each time," says one former Defense Department specialist. The State Department has so far seemingly played down Kim's behavior, and some sources speculate there may be intelligence showing that Kim does not have the capability to achieve his goal.

Much of the current narrative is based on US intelligence reports that are difficult to verify. They are being leaked by differing factions in the Pentagon and CIA, whose aims are unclear. As Secretary of State Colin Powell flew through Asia last week, he said Yongbyon had not been started. By the time he returned, reports said it had.

Little is known about whether the leaks are designed to increase US diplomatic activity, to spur Asian states to do more, or as a rationale for planning a military solution if one is chosen.

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