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When North Korea exploded its nuclear device at 10:36 a.m. on Oct. 9, Shinzo Abe's plane was en route from Beijing to Seoul for a summit with South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun. Upon landing, the new Japanese Prime Minister hurriedly gathered his staff at their Seoul hotel to devise Japan's response to the test. Some aides suggested canceling the summit and returning home to Tokyo immediately. Abe refused. "He was very clear that we weren't going to show that we were confused or anxious," says Hiroshige Seko, a special adviser to the Prime Minister...
...While Abe earned points for his handling of the nuclear crisis?even Yamaguchi admits that the administration "isn't making any mistakes"?his peacemaking visits to Beijing and Seoul will prove even more important, given the economic ties between the three nations and the need to coordinate regional responses to future diplomatic crises. That Abe managed to schedule the meetings at all was an impressive achievement, requiring the blue-blooded conservative to dodge toward the ideological center. China and South Korea had cut off most high-level contacts with Japan to protest former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits...
...next move. Rice arrives in China Friday for what promise to be difficult talks on how to implement U.N. sanctions against the looming backdrop of a possible second nuclear test by North Korea. A foretaste of those difficulties may have come during her talks with South Korean leaders in Seoul, who appear to have maintained their refusal to heed Washington's calls to join the U.S.-led effort to intercept and search North Korean vessels suspected of carrying prohibited cargoes, and to cut South Korea's economic ties to tourism and industrial projects in North Korea that earn valuable foreign...
...complete dismantlement and a full accounting of fissile material. We must be prepared to meet Pyongyang's concerns too--security assurances, energy assistance (including those proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors) and eventual normalization of relations. And there must always be an "or else"--that is, we must persuade Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing to support even more painful sanctions if necessary in the future so that the North is properly motivated. That is by far the best course, and we had better get on with...
What, then, can be done to rein in countries like North Korea? Pyongyang is especially prickly and dangerous, and already holds 10 million residents in the South Korean capital as virtual hostages. Seoul is only 30 miles from the border and has always lived under the threat of immediate destruction from North Korean firepower. Says a senior U.S. military officer: "[It is] within easy and rapid range of perhaps 10,000 artillery tubes with a 57-second flight time. That can cause World War II--size casualties." And that's without nuclear weapons. Now, unless the U.S. goes back...