Opinion: With all eyes on Iran, North Korea could get away with nuclear murder

Lest we forget: Pyongyang already has the bomb, and is probably more knowledgeable than Iran on how to use it.

Tom FentonOctober 1, 2009 07:54Updated May 30, 2010 12:09

Anti-North Korea protesters burn portraits of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as they shout slogans denouncing the North's nuclear program at a rally in Seoul, Sept. 4, 2009. The world is focused now on Iran's developing nuclear program, but North Korea already has the bomb and presumably knows how to use it. (Lee Jae-Won/Reuters)

LONDON, United Kingdom — The American news outlets have trouble focusing on more than one serious issue at a time. And in these turbulent times, they have more than one to choose from: Iran, Afghanistan, health insurance, the continuing banking crisis, the economy, the persistent threat of terrorism and on and on.

Right now, Iran is near the top of the news agenda. Crucial talks are set for Thursday in Geneva between the Obama administration and other world powers set on preventing Tehran from developing nuclear warheads.

But by concentrating on the Iranian threat, the media, and perhaps our government as well, may be failing to pay enough attention to a threat that is more imminent and potentially more dangerous than Iran's uranium enrichment and missile programs.

North Korea already has the bomb, and is presumably more advanced than Iran in the techniques of making nuclear warheads. It is also testing missile systems and is the major supplier of missile technology to Iran. Indeed, North Korea is a major proliferator of the technologies that are the key to becoming a nuclear weapons country. Its past clients have included Libya and Syria. So why is North Korea being treated as a less urgent problem than Iran? The short answer — often given by experts working on the problem of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons — is that Iran is not yet a nuclear power, so there is still time to stop it from becoming one. That's true, but it is no reason to neglect the much more imminent and unpredictable North Korean threat.

The real reason why less attention is being paid to the North Korean threat may be that most Western experts simply don't know what to do about it. A debate has now begun within the world of think tanks and foreign policy wonks. It goes something like this:

Traditional thinking says that carrot and stick negotiations — the approach that the Obama administration is using with Iran — are the best way to deal with the North Korean dictatorship. That was the approach used by the Clinton and Bush administrations. But so far it has not worked.

The North Korean regime makes promises to stop its nuclear weapons program in return for international aid, and then reneges on its promises. Then it does the same thing all over again. Former President Bill Clinton once remarked at a private gathering in Davos, Switzerland, that “North Korea's nukes are the only crop they have to sell.” They keep selling the same goods, and the West keeps paying for them in aid that keeps a nasty regime in power.

Then-President George W. Bush even announced last year that he would take North Korea off the bad boys list of states that sponsor terrorism. And the new Obama administration offered a symbolic outstretched hand to both North Korea and Iran.

But the end result has been that the despotic North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, has now torn up previous agreements with the international community, conducted new nuclear and missile tests and abandoned the six-party talks that have been the main forum for negotiating with the secretive regime. Kim suffered a stroke last year. Many experts believe his sudden about face may reflect an internal struggle over who is to succeed him if he dies or loses his grip on power.