In Brief

North Korea’s latest missile launch highlights the danger of current circumstances on the Korean peninsula, including the possibility of accidental war. As this week’s lead from Chung-in Moon, a top adviser on North Korean affairs under the Kim and Roh administrations in Korea, points out, the stand-off with North Korea has hardened positions all round, appears to offer little promise of a breakthrough short of pushing the envelope on regime change through collapse in North Korea, and heightens the prospect of accidental war. Sung-han Kim talks the tougher line of the Lee administration. But in the end he concludes that ‘…. the United States and other participating countries of the Six Party Talks are expected to explore a package deal, putting all issues on the table at once. They already purchased North Korea’s horse twice through the Geneva Agreed Framework of 1994 and the February 13 Agreement of 2007, which means they will never buy that horse (the ‘freezing’ of the nuclear weapons development program) three times. North Korea must dismantle nuclear facilities and eliminate nuclear weapons in a complete and verifiable manner’. It is difficult to disagree with Kim, and with the implication of this analysis that all issues have not yet been successfully put on the table no matter how much Chris Hill tried). But it is also impossible to disagree with Moon, in that the time for benign neglect of the North Korean issue is well and truly passed. A dangerous situation is daily becoming more dangerous, not because of strategic intent on either side but because of the heightened probability of accident. And, as Moon argues, there is a lot of diplomatic downside in this situation for the US, not only in managing the North, but also in the South.