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Kim Jong Lucy

In what passes for a charm offensive, North Korea just released one of three Americans it has been holding prisoner. Tuesday's surprise follows North Korea's high-level outreach to South Korea during the Asian Games; its decision to engage, not dismiss, a damning United Nations report on its human rights abuses; and a perverse warning-cum-invitation to the United States that thousands of American servicemen's remains from the Korean War risk being lost to "land rezoning and other gigantic nature-remaking projects."

Get ready, Charlie Brown: Kim Jong Lucy is teeing up the football again.

It's no coincidence that North Korea freed Jeffrey Fowle on the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework, an agreement that froze North Korea's nuclear program in return for fuel oil and two proliferation-resistant light-water reactors. North Koreans take their anniversaries seriously. Yet before the U.S. responds, it should reflect on the failure of two decades of diplomacy toward North Korea.

Well, not total failure. As Ambassador Robert Gallucci, who negotiated the framework, noted, the agreement shut down nuclear reactors that could have produced 200 kilograms of plutonium each year, enough for many more nuclear devices than the half-dozen or so that North Korea probably has.

But after three subsequent North Korean nuclear explosions, the discovery of a clandestine uranium enrichment program, numerous ballistic missile tests, and nasty provocations and clashes with South Korea, only a Dr. Pangloss--in this case, Sydney Seiler, the Obama administration's representative to the suspended Six-Party talks with North Korea--could characterize the history of U.S. policy as "not a failure--just an absence of success."

Now, one of the most important things the U.S. can do is to achieve a bipartisan consensus on how to deal with North Korea.

Start with a reality check: North Korea is not about to collapse. The North has made clear it's not going to give up its nuclear weapons. Setting denuclearization as the precondition for a resumption of talks is a recipe for stalemate.

While China can do more to make North Korea behave, it will never do enough. The two nations are no longer "as close as lips and teeth," as the old Chicom adage had it, and Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly badmouths North Korea's supreme leader, Kim Jong Un, to foreign visitors. Yet even though China still accounts for the majority of North Korea's trade, investment and assistance, Beijing won't use its leverage to the point where the pressure triggers instability on its borders.

For new talks to succeed, the U.S. must also expend more energy getting South Korea and Japan, barely on speaking terms, to get along. The U.S. can keep the pressure on North Korea (and on China) by working with its two closest regional allies to strengthen their deterrent and missile defense capabilities.

But first and foremost, let's use the diplomatic opening of Fowle's release to end the U.S. policy of "strategic patience"--the Obama administration's code-word for doing nothing while North Korea becomes more dangerous. North Korea is playing a long game, and for keeps. Don't expect to win if you're not willing to do the same.

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James Gibney writes opinion pieces for Bloomberg News.

Editorial on 10/24/2014

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