It’s not hard to understand why. Each of the three major powers surrounding North Korea – China, Japan and South Korea – has an enormous stake in making sure that the dispute with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) does not degenerate into something more dangerous. Seoul lies within easy range of the North’s heavy artillery, and the periodic outbursts from Washington’s hawks, calling for a first strike from allied forces in Korea, give the South Koreans fits. There’s no such thing as a ““surgical strike’’ on the Korean peninsula. To take out the North’s suspected reactor would mean major collateral damage in the South. Last week, as Sen. John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and George Bush’s former national-security adviser Brent Scowcroft called for U.S. military action, Seoul’s stock market crashed and people began lining up to buy canned foods.
Beijing is even more wary of American war drums. Despite recent, very public noises of comradely support for Kim Il Sung, China’s rulers are irritated that Pyongyang has allowed the nuclear issue to gain ballast. Above all, they want peace and quiet. ““Make no mistake,’’ says one Western diplomat in Beijing, ““the ultimate goal really isn’t stability on the Korean peninsula but stability inside China.’’ That means Kim’s regime must survive. Beijing wants to see gradual economic liberalization in the North, if only to forestall a chaotic collapse in a country with which it shares a 400-mile border. The Chinese know better than anyone how rapidly the North’s economy is deteriorating, and want no part of any serious sanctions.
Tokyo’s calculations toward the North are also dominated by parochial concerns. Japan is home to 700,000 resident Koreans, most of whom are descendants of people brought over as laborers during Japan’s 35-year occupation of the Korean peninsula. A good chunk of those Koreans openly support Pyongyang, and they send some $1 billion a year in money and goods back home. They also funnel lots of cash to Japan’s socialist party. That made the timing of the nuclear crisis particularly excruciating for Tokyo: Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata now presides over a minority government, and the socialists hold the balance of political power should the opposition bring a vote of no confidence against Hata this summer. That could happen as soon as this week. Partly because of pressure from the socialists, Tokyo is balking at the U.S. proposal to prevent Koreans in Japan from remitting money to comrades in Pyongyang.
All three countries have watched in agony as the nuclear crisis escalated over the last 15 months. None were willing, as one high-ranking Japanese diplomat acidly put it recently, to ““let the IAEA’s rules of inspection disrupt the stability of the Korean peninsula.’’ Translated, that means all of them are more or less willing to live with a nuclear North, if it comes to that. But if Jimmy Carter’s strange journey to Pyongyang last week somehow made that less likely, they’ll sleep a little better in Mr. Kim’s neighborhood.
