North Korea - Trouble from Pyongyang is nothing new. Here's what to expect—and what can be done about it

What Can We Do About North Korea?

by David Frum

Crisis, pause, crisis, pause: this has been the tempo of North Korean behavior since the end of the Cold War. Now it's crisis time again. 

Nuclear threats from the North. The U.S., South Korea, and Japan 

mobilize forces. Eyeballs bulge. The North has second thoughts. 

The whole thing subsides.

The United States and North Korea came to the brink of war in 1989 and again in 1994. The 1994 agreement put the United States in the odd position of actually supporting North Korea's acquisition of nuclear reactors for energy purposes.

It was the Bush administration's unhappiness with the 1994 agreement that led to the tough talk of the 2002 "axis of evil" speech. Back then, of course, it was considered ridiculous to suggest that North Korea might be cooperating with Iran and Syria. Now of course the whole world knows what President Bush knew then: North Korea provided the Syrian reactor destroyed by Israel in 2007. North Korea and Iran exchange weapons know-how. Iranian scientists were likely present at the most recent North Korean nuclear test, the culmination of a dozen-plus years of bomb and missile technology.

The quandary that Bush then faced in secret is visible now to the whole world, and only becoming harder to solve.

North Korea is an economic wreck and a technological backwater. When the U.S. Treasury Department succeeded in freezing North Korea's main international trade bank account, it caught only $25 million, a fraction of what a top Russian oligarch would spend on a single yacht.

But there's one thing that North Korea can produce in abundance: trouble. And today, it is back in business.

........

• North Korea is a regime with a limited future.
• The second truth to keep in mind: North Korea survives only because of Chinese subsidy and protection.
• Americans have been hoping since the late 1980s that China would help. This week, we're all still hoping.

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