ed Threat of nuclear test

Allies should both send warning and offer olive branch

There are strong indications North Korea will conduct another ― its fourth ― nuclear test as early as by the end of this month. “We are preparing a hard blow,” or “something big will happen before April 30,” are the words coming out of the reclusive regime, a defense ministry spokesman said here Tuesday. The ministry has also detected various types of activities at Punggye-ri, where the North has conducted three nuclear tests since 2006, he added.

Pyongyang must exercise restraint. If the communist regime pushes ahead with yet another provocation, it will completely shut the door toward a diplomatic settlement of the two-decades-long nuclear crisis.

The rash move, coming at a time when the South is grief-stricken with the loss of hundreds of young lives in one of its worst maritime disasters, will also estrange South Koreans from Northerners beyond repair.

No doubt the biggest victim of the alleged plan to explode a nuclear device will be North Korea itself, as the international community will further tighten the already severe economic sanctions on the most flagrant violator of the nonproliferation regime. Most menacingly for the North, even China, its biggest economic lifeline, will find it hard to not join the group of punishers.

But whether all these rather hasty predictions come true or not depends on the message from U.S. President Barack Obama who arrives in Seoul Friday for a two-day visit. The U.S. leader and his South Korean counterpart are likely to send strong warnings against any misjudgment on the part of Kim Jong-un, while reaffirming their airtight security ties.

Such a move is necessary to prevent the North’s miscalculations ― for now ― but hardly sufficient to solve the crisis fundamentally. In a worst-case scenario, Pyongyang will put its threat into action before this month passes depending on the result of Obama’s stay here.

As even some objective American analysts, including former U.S. ambassador to Seoul Donald Gregg, concede, North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons program. For Pyongyang thinks it is the only, and most economical, means of survival ― ensuring its security against the world’s sole superpower and seeking economic growth with the saved defense costs ― unless and until the U.S. normalizes relationship, guarantees the continuance of its regime as well as its economic survival through sufficient aid.

More than a few South Koreans also think the North’s nuclear problem can be solved more easily than expected if Washington decides so. Unlike the case of Iran, in which there are major opponents to a negotiated settlement of its nuclear crisis such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, there are few obstructers in this part of the world to resolving the North’s nuclear crisis.

Some U.S. politicians, including neo-cons, say America must not “buy the same horse twice,” pointing to the North’s repeated breaches of promise. Strictly speaking, however, it is also true Washington has not paid the price even once for the horse it promised to buy.

All these force Obama and President Park Geun-hye to come up with more flexible, advance ideas for luring the North back to dialogue during their summit. Otherwise, Koreans can’t help but interpret the U.S. reluctance as reflecting its strategy to use North Korea to maintain checks on China.