North Korea goes nuclear: an authoritarian, unpredictable regime now has the bomb. What are the implications for the U.S. and the world?

• Author: Sanger, David E.
• Position: Cover story

North Korea may be a starving, friendless, authoritarian nation of 23 million people, but it certainly got the world's attention last month when it exploded its first nuclear weapon.

What concerned the United States and the rest of the world was not just the entry of another nation into the nuclear club, but also North Korea's habit of selling whatever weapons systems it develops to anyone willing to pay for them. So while the obvious fear is that North Korea might use nuclear weapons against its neighbors or other nations, the larger worry in this era of terrorism is: Who else might end up with North Korean nuclear technology?

The underground test was conducted October 9 in the mountains above the town of Kilju (see map, p. 15). Experts say the explosion was small for a nuclear blast, which might indicate that it was only partially successful.

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Five days after the test, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling for economic sanctions to punish North Korea. "This action by the United Nations, which was swift and tough, says that we are united in our determination to see to it that the Korean Peninsula is nuclear-weapons free," said President Bush.

But the U.N. resolution was widely criticized for being too weak and largely unenforceable. (In fact, both South Korea and China have indicated they intend to maintain some economic ties with the North.) Meanwhile, the North Koreans announced that they considered the sanctions a "declaration of war," and there were indications that they intended to test a second nuclear device.

President Bush has said he will rely on diplomacy, not military force, to disarm North Korea. No one doubts that the U.S. could swiftly defeat North Korea. But the fear is that its 1-million-man army could easily destroy Seoul, South Korea's capital, only 35 miles from the North Korean border--and put the 28,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea at risk.

Tensions between North Korea and the U.S. go back more than 50 years. All of Korea had been occupied by Japan from 1910 until 1945. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Army occupied the northern half of the country and installed a Communist regime, while Allied forces assumed control over what became South Korea.

THE KOREAN WAR

In 1950, North Korea, backed by the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and China, invaded the South. In response, the U.N. called up an international force to defend South Korea. About 90 percent of the troops and equipment came from the U.S. In 1953, the U.N. and North Korea signed an armistice which ended the fighting. However, North and South Korea have never signed a peace treaty, which is why American troops remain on the peninsula.

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union and other Communist regimes collapsed, leaving North Korea as one of the world's few remaining Communist states. Its dictator, Kim Jong Il, known as "Dear Leader," took power when his father, Kim Il Sung (the "Great Leader"), died in 1994.

North Korea's economy began a catastrophic decline in the late 1980s, with the loss of...