WHY IS NORTH KOREA OUR PROBLEM?

As the U.S. takes the lead in formulating the international response to North Korea's (apparently fizzled) nuclear test, there is a question which ought to be asked:

Why is this our problem?

In 1950, this was easy to answer.  The fledgling democracy in South Korea was too weak to protect itself.  North Korea was then an agent of an international Communist conspiracy.  We intervened in Korea less to protect the South Koreans than to protect Japan. 

But that was more than half a century ago.  The Soviet Union has collapsed.  The Communists who run China these days seem more interested in making money than in making war.

North Korea remains Stalinist, has a formidable military, and still dreams of conquering the South.  But its objectives are peninsular, not global, and it has little likelihood of obtaining them, even without American intervention.

That's because South Korea also has a formidable military, which could be made much more formidable if the South Koreans chose to do so.  South Korea today has more than twice the population of North Korea, 24 times the national wealth.

Our greatest fear is that North Korea will sell nuclear technology and/or missile technology to another rogue state, or to a terror group.  That concern is real, but the fizzling of the North Korean nuclear test suggests it may be overblown.

The North Koreans have been trying to convert the "spent" uranium fuel rods used in nuclear power reactors into plutonium to build bombs.  But they screwed up the reprocessing, as Jack Wheeler has explained:

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il wants the bomb yesterday, so North Korean scientists were under enormous pressure to make enough plutonium to build one.

The longer you leave the rods in the reactor, the more uranium is converted into plutonium.  But if you leave the rods in too long, you'll screw the pooch. That's because the ratio of isotopes in the plutonium changes the longer you leave it in the reactor. 

For the reaction to assemble fast enough for a nuclear detonation, at least 90 percent of the plutonium must consist of the P-239 isotope.  If more than ten percent consists of the P-240 or P-242 isotopes, the explosion will fizzle.

If that's what happened, then the North Korean stockpile of plutonium is too polluted with P-240 and P-242 to be made into bombs, Jack said. 

And if that's so, neither North Korean expertise nor North Korean nuclear materials will be of much value anytime soon to Islamic terrorists.

Our other fear with regard to North Korea is that in a future conflict, it might launch nuclear tipped ballistic missiles at the United States.  This was always a remote possibility, because it would be tantamount to national suicide on the part of the North Korean regime. 

And after the fizzled nuclear test and the botched test last July of its long range Taepo Dong II missile, it doesn't seem like the North Koreans will have the capability to hit our cities anytime soon, however much they might want to.

We wouldn't have to worry so much about North Korean nukes descending on Seattle or San Francisco if we weren't continuing to guarantee South Korea's military security, even though there is no longer a compelling reason why we should.

I suspect our prominence in Korean affairs is more a hindrance than a help in getting the nations of the region to rein in their rogue neighbor.

If China and South Korea don't go along, sanctions against North Korea can't work.
China has viewed North Korea as more of an asset than a liability, chiefly because of the discomfort the Norks have caused us. 

Remove us from the equation — or lower our profile — and China may focus more on the headaches Kim Jong Il causes them.

And as long as South Korea can rely on its security pact with us, it has no reason to modify its appeasement policy toward the Norks.  Remove or reduce that security guarantee, and South Korea would have to toughen up.

"There are no permanent alliances, only permanent interests," said Lord Palmerston, a 19th Century British foreign secretary. On the Korean peninsula, our interests are no longer served by our alliance.