Standoff at the 38th Parallel.

One Korea

John Bolton

North Korea is and will remain a threat to the United States and our friends and allies as long as it retains nuclear weapons, which likely means as long as it exists. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has an unequalled record of breaking its commitments and proliferating dangerous technologies to other rogue states. Recent events simply confirm a sixty-yearlong reality in Pyongyang.

Unhindered by press reports of Kim Jong II suffering a stroke, or speculation about regime crisis, the DPRK'S efforts to sustain its nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs continue in plain view. First, North Korea suspended "disabling" the Yongbyon nuclear facility and threatened to reverse the process entirely to protest not being removed from the United States' list of state sponsors of terrorism. This ploy is yet another example of the North's consistently successful negotiating tactic of selling the same concessions again and again for higher and higher prices. Even advocates of the vaunted six-party talks now worry that the State Department's shamelessly submissive approach is harming U.S. interests.

Then, Jane's Defence Weekly and other sources revealed the existence of a ballistic-missile test facility, under construction for the last eight years, and capable of launching North Korea's long-range Taepodong-2 missiles. Jane's noted, among other things, how similar the facility's rocket-engine test stand was to the Shahid Hemat test stand near Tehran. This was a stunning parallel to the North's cloning of the Yongbyon reactor, on the banks of the Euphrates River in Syria, also undertaken entirely during the pendency of the talks. Given extensive ballistic-missile sales and research-and-development relationships between North Korea and Middle Eastern regimes like Iran and Syria over the years, the nuclear cooperation was powerful evidence that the North was actually expanding its weapons programs under the cover of the six-party talks.

State's negotiators dismissed the Syrian reactor as ancient history--not evidence of a current, ongoing nuclear program--and stressed that the newly discovered missile test facility was not operational. That last explanation lasted only a few days before press reports emerged that North Korea had conducted a static-firing test at its newly constructed facility.

This testing, if confirmed, is a plain violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1718, which should have brought a strong reaction from Washington and other Security Council members. Instead--silence.