That All-Important Matter of Face : Agreement salvages North Korea’s pride and bolsters hopes for nuclear containment

The effort to entice North Korea away from its presumed nuclear weapons program has taken an important if still provisional step forward with an agreement to implement the general accord that Washington and Pyongyang reached last October. Progress came after more than three weeks of arduous bargaining over how the new agreement was to be phrased. Both sides, at the same time, continue to warn that many bumps remain in the road ahead. When dealing with North Korea, it could hardly be otherwise.

U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Robert Gallucci, speaking in Seoul, cautioned that there is “quite a list� of issues still to negotiate. “This is not the last hurdle,� he said of the new accord.

The impasse until now revolved around Pyongyang’s almost hysterical attempt to exclude South Korean technology from the project that will give it a new nuclear power system. In exchange for that considerable benefit North Korea promises to freeze its nuclear weapons program. But South Korea, along with Japan, will pay most of the $4-billion cost of the two light-water reactors that are planned to replace the Soviet-supplied reactors whose used fuel rods can yield weapons-grade plutonium. Seoul rightly insists that unless it is the prime provider it will have nothing to do with the deal. Not only will it be writing the checks but it is also looking ahead to the time when a country divided by Cold War politics 50 years ago will again be unified. A single Korea would need a compatible and integrated power system.

Pyongyang’s resistance to accepting South Korea as its lead nuclear patron is almost wholly a matter of pride. To have to rely on a bitter ideological rival whose remarkable economic growth and political development mock Communist North Korea’s own staggering failures is a humiliating prospect. Here is where the talks became an exercise in semantic face-saving. The agreement never specifically names South Korea as the provider of the new reactors. But a description in the agreement of the technology to be provided leaves it clear that the source can only be South Korea.

The United States will play a key role as coordinator of the project. That will let Pyongyang deal primarily with Washington, thus minimizing its contacts with its rival. Equally it will advance North Korea’s longtime interest in establishing a direct and continuing relationship with the United States that, Pyongyang hopes, could work to weaken the alliance between Washington and Seoul. Dissuading North Korea from becoming a nuclear power is an important U.S. policy goal. But preserving close American ties with South Korea is a strategic necessity. Pyongyang should be left with no illusions that it will be able to undercut those ties.