Saturday, November 02, 2002
NORTH KOREA IS NOT IRAQ. Not exactly hot off the presses, but always good to remember. How different?
North Korea has not started a war in half a century—whereas Saddam has started several in the last 25 years and used weapons of mass destruction widely in the process. In addition, there's an ongoing diplomatic process between North Korea and the United States, as well as U.S. allies Japan and South Korea—a stark contrast to the near total absence of communication between the United States and its allies and Iraq.
And despite its secret nuclear program, North Korea has generally behaved itself over the last 10 years. In fact, this last decade has probably been the best in the country's history in terms of its relations with the outside world. In the 1980s, it brought down a South Korean airliner, assassinated several members of the South Korean government, sponsored other terrorism, and sold half a billion dollars' worth of arms a year to other extremist states.
But in the 1990s, Pyongyang began to open up to South Korea and engage the United States diplomatically. Its arms exports declined by a factor of almost 10 (more because of geopolitics than choice). Its active support for terrorism essentially stopped. It did continue to develop and launch long-range missiles until 1998, but then agreed to a moratorium on flight tests.
