October 17, 2002

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: ELLEN BORK, Deputy Director

SUBJECT: North Korea

The admission by the North Korean regime that it has been engaged in a secret program to develop nuclear weapons brings crashing to the floor more than a decade of U.S. policy toward that singularly repressive totalitarian state.

U.S. officials who traveled to Pyongyang to confront DPRK officials with evidence of the covert program were dumbfounded by the reaction of the North Koreans. Reportedly, the North Korean side said, in effect, "yeah, what about it?" North Korea's admission vindicates the views of skeptics -- including members of Congress who in 1999 released a report finding what North Korea now confesses to -- that Pyongyang had never ended its efforts to become a nuclear weapons power in exchange for Washington and its allies building North Korea two new nuclear reactors and providing it with huge amounts of economic assistance.

Now what?

President Bush instinctively distrusted, and sought to end, his predecessor's "engagement" policy, which arguably had its origins in the first Bush administration. After the terrorist attacks on America last year, the president unselfconsciously called North Korea "evil." Ignoring North Korea's threat to American allies, troops and even one day to America itself became untenable.

Understandably, the president wishes to deal with the enormous threat he has identified from Iraq without being distracted by a crisis in North Korea. He should not do so however at the expense of clarity about the threat posed by Pyongyang and the need for the regime to be replaced. In that connection, statements from administration officials today apparently recommitting the administration to the failed policy of never-ending diplomacy with Kim Jong Il are of real concern.

In the wake of the weapons program revelation, we need a new statement from the administration outlining the goal of US policy toward North Korea and how to achieve it.