N. Korea's test threat launches uproar

Despite a missile shield on bases in Hawaii and the west coast, the only real capability the United States now has to come even close to the Taepodong in the air is by firing missiles aboard Aegis-class destroyers deployed between Korea and Japan and also in the northern Pacific. Even that defense is uncertain at best.

The system on these destroyers includes antimissile missiles, but the US is not likely to use them unless North Korea aims a missile at either the US or Japan. The Taepodong II now on the launch pad – the successor to Taepodong I, fired on Aug. 31, 1998, in a trajectory over Japan and into the northern Pacific – now is tipped with a communications satellite that its booster would try to send into orbit.

US satellite imagery would be able to determine within minutes after liftoff exactly where it was going.

The US ambassador to South Korea, Alexander Vershbow, argues that firing a missile with a communications satellite is still a hostile act considering that another model of the same basic missile might carry a nuclear warhead.

Mr. Vershbow, a sometimes outspoken advocate of toughness in dealing with North Korea, made plain his views after a lengthy meeting with Kim Dae Jung, the former president who proclaimed the "sunshine policy" of reconciliation with the North. Mr. Kim, having opened a new era in North-South reconciliation by flying to Pyongyang six years ago for the only inter-Korean summit, received the Nobel Peace prize later that year. The success was later tarnished by revelations that his government had secretly funnelled more than $500 million to the North before the summit.

Vershbow and Kim found common ground in the view that a missile launch would deepen the North's isolation, but the ambassador did not go along with the view that the US should make conciliatory gestures.

Rather, he said afterward, six-party talks in Beijing should resume as a precondition for anything "despite the North Korean boycott" – a reference to the North's refusal to attend talks after the US Treasury's actions.

And, said Vershbow, "This missile has military capability," the more fearsome considering North Korea's "illegal development of nuclear weapons."

Vershbow's words may have had some impact on the South, which has been reluctant to join the US and Japan in strong condemnation of a launch. Unification Minister Lee Jeong Seok said "additional assistance would be difficult" – a scarcely veiled threat to hold off on promises to provide several hundred thousand tons of food and fertilizer in the event of a launch.

Perhaps more significant, Kim Dae Jung put off a plan to go to North Korea next week after it became apparent he might become a target of conservative attacks that would undermine his role as an of a soft line and a critic of US policy.

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