SEOUL — As North Korea accelerates the pace of its nuclear weapons program, the United States and its allies have limited options to prevent one of the world's poorest and most erratic nations from becoming a nuclear power.
In a matter of weeks, faint hope that North Korea might be coaxed into voluntarily dismantling its nuclear facilities through multinational talks has all but evaporated.
The Bush administration appears to have ruled out any kind of preemptive strike on North Korea, which with its conventional artillery alone could inflict massive casualties on neighboring South Korea and the more than 30,000 U.S. troops stationed there. And with diplomacy failing, nonproliferation experts have begun to speak despairingly of the inevitability of a nuclear North Korea.
U.S. spy satellites have detected what could be the groundwork for an underground nuclear test around the city of Kilju, officials said Friday. There are other ominous signs as well. Last weekend, the North Koreans launched a missile into the Sea of Japan, possibly a new ballistic missile that could reach U.S. bases in South Korea. The main North Korean nuclear reactor at Yongbyon has been shut down in apparent preparation for the extraction of more plutonium.
"It looks like North Korea is intent on becoming a nuclear power, and the time is running out to stop it," South Korean legislator Park Jin, a member of the National Assembly's defense committee, said Friday.
The CIA has believed for some time that North Korea might have one or two nuclear weapons, and Pyongyang, the capital, announced Feb. 10 that it had nuclear capability. But it has not been officially deemed a nuclear power by the international community because it has not tested a device.
"The general working assumption is that they could test with relatively little warning if they choose to do so," a U.S. official in Washington said Friday. The factors in their decisions probably would be "more political than technical."
Among American policymakers, North Korea has long been known by the epithet "land of lousy options." Never has it seemed to them more true, watching from the sidelines as Pyongyang puts its nuclear program on fast-forward.
During a previous nuclear showdown, when Bill Clinton was president, and another tense period in 2003, policymakers stared down the path of military action and blanched. Although there is no doubt that the United States and its allies would prevail in any contest, military analysts believe that North Korea could kill hundreds of thousands of people in South Korea and perhaps Japan before it goes down in defeat.
