Peace on the Korean Peninsula is fragile and has been for half a century.

The armistice that ended large-scale hostilities 50 years ago today left a house divided. A free, capitalistic and democratic South Korea faces in North Korea an oppressed, totalitarian dictatorship.

Led by the same family since 1947, North Korea is an unstable, dangerous country. It has a military with more than a million soldiers, and large numbers of missiles, mortars and artillery poised within striking distance of the South Korean capital of Seoul and 37,000 U.S. soldiers stationed there. Pyongyang is actively pursuing a nuclear arsenal and evidence suggests the regime could have six to eight nuclear weapons by the end of the year.

It’s time for direct, one-on-one negotiations. The United States is loath to give into North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s atomic blackmail. The country has cheated on agreements in the past and is untrustworthy. But there are two things Washington can provide that Kim Jong Il wants desperately: security and aid.

Much of the population is hungry, and the economy is bankrupt. The failed state’s nuclear weapons program and aggressively postured military are all that remain for it to bargain with. The country is dependent on the international community, and China specifically, for food and energy.

After President Bush’s axis of evil remarks and the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it’s understandable that Kim Jong Il would feel threatened. U.S. policymakers often call for the demise of the North Korean regime and war plans designed to destroy the country’s nuclear facilities and destabilize its leadership are an open secret.

North Korea has demanded direct talks with the United States. The United States, in turn, has demanded that talks be regionalized and include Japan, China and South Korea.

Can North Korea be trusted? The country has proven time and again that it cannot be. But there are only three paths left open for the United States: Do nothing and hope that North Korea collapses under its own weight before it can build, and possibly sell, nuclear weapons. Launch a preemptive military strike and start a war. Or, through negotiations, end the immediate threat and develop a framework for monitoring North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Negotiations are the right course.

According to Cheol-Hwan Kang – a journalist in Seoul who spent 10 years in a North Korean prison camp – writing in the Washington Post, more than 200,000 North Koreans are held in concentration camps for crimes that include reading a foreign newspaper, listening to a foreign broadcast or complaining about the chronic shortages of food. The prisoners are tortured, starved and executed.

Fifty-three years ago, American and United Nations forces fought a terrible war to prevent this type of oppression from swallowing South Korea. A North Korean invasion in 1950 forced our country into a military response. The cost for defending South Korea was high, more than 33,000 dead American soldiers, more than 100,000 wounded. More than a million Koreans, Chinese, Russian and U.N. soldiers and civilians died. If a new war erupts, the devastation could be staggering.

Nuclear weapons in the hands of Kim Jong Il are unacceptable. Negotiations are our last, best chance to avoid a violent outcome. There are no other reasonable alternatives.
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