Back to nuclear talks

Progress in nuclear diplomacy between the United States and North Korea could accelerate now that talks are resuming, but not if South Korea's hard-liners get their way.

The hard-liners are playing on doubts about who is actually running North Korea following the death of Kim Il-sung. They also are sowing doubts about how much bomb-making plutonium the North may have already produced. The best way to lay those doubts to rest is to keep negotiating and see whether the North lives up to its commitments.

The evidence suggests that Kim's son remains on the negotiating path laid out by his father. In talks with Washington last month, the North firmed up its pledge to freeze its nuclear program by agreeing to seal its reprocessing facilities and halt construction of two new reactors -- reactors that could generate far more plutonium than the one it now has. In return, the United States promised to help build new light-water reactors and to meet the North's electricity needs in the meantime.

Spent fuel rods that the North removed from its one working reactor also remain under international inspection at Yongbyon, preventing extraction of four or five bombs' worth of plutonium. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the North has kept its pledge not to reprocess spent fuel. It has also refrained from refueling the reactor. So long as the North does not reprocess or refuel, its nuclear ambitions can be kept in check and the dialog can continue.

Unfortunately, stopping the North from building bombs does not satisfy Seoul's hard-liners. They want to undermine North Korea's new regime. To that end, they never miss a chance to disparage the younger Kim's legitimacy and want America to put off diplomatic ties. Some of Seoul's top leaders seem sympathetic to the hard-liners' complaints. They would be wiser to recognize that coming to terms with Pyongyang is the only way to make the Korean Peninsula nuclear-free.

-- The New York Times