[EDITORIAL]Unity on North Korea

It is reassuring that the leaders of South Korea, the United States and Japan have agreed on a unified stand on North Korea`s nuclear development programs. The key element of their agreement was that their governments would make sure the North gives up its nuclear programs and that they would do so through peaceful and diplomatic means.

In line with the agreement, the leaders, whose governments are key players in the six-party talks aimed at resolving the nuclear issue, endorsed the accord the North signed on Sept. 19, which calls for Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear programs in return for energy aid and security guarantee.

The series of summit talks among the leaders, which will be capped by President Roh`s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin today, followed the latest round of the six-way talks in Beijing last week. The leaders` unflagging commitment to the six-party talks is welcome all the more because the latest session did not produce any tangible progress because of the confrontation between Washington and Pyongyang.

In this regard, Roh and Chinese President Hu Jintao were right to urge the two main antagonists to make concessions to move the two-year-long process forward. Roh and Hu said that "both parties shared the view that each party to the talks should show sincere flexibility on its position." One can easily guess to which parties they were referring.

The main point of the U.S.-North Korea standoff is who should act first. The U.S. side demands that Pyongyang dismantle its nuclear-related programs and activities before it gets new light water reactors, while the North insists the opposite.

President George W. Bush, after meeting Roh, made it clear that the light water reactor will be considered only after "they have verifiably given up their nuclear weapons and, or, programs." We hope this should not be the precondition for conducting behind-the-scenes negotiations with the North before the resumption expected early next year of the six-party talks.

On the North`s human rights and economic conditions, the Roh-Bush joint statement opted such watered-down expressions as the "situation for the people of the North" and a "common hope for a better future." That Bush refrained from his usually harsh criticism of the Pyongyang regime and its leader Kim Jong-il should be conducive to the six-party process.

Such a softened stand, however, should not allow the North to be complacent about its human rights violations, already an international concern as evidenced by the U.N. General Assembly`s adoption of a resolution on the issue. This should awaken Kim Jong-il to the reality that he would get little from the outside without resolving the nuclear issue and improving human rights in his country.