Missile With A Message

By Donald Macintyre/Tokyo

Say this much for North Korea's quirky leader, Kim Jong Il: he knows how to get the world's attention. Early last week, a powerful new missile lifted off from a secret base on North Korea's eastern coast and streaked toward Japan. Dumping its first stage off the western coast of Japan, the rocket sped high over the country and plunked down into the Pacific Ocean. But it packed a political wallop that resounded in capitals from Tokyo to Washington. The message: North Korea may be broke and short of food, but the Stalinist state has a dangerous new toy.

With a range of up to 1,240 miles, far greater than anything else in the North's arsenal, the Taepo Dong-1 can reach all of Japan--and the 41,000 U.S. troops stationed there. The missile also raised the prospect of new threats to the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East, where Pyongyang sells its missiles to clients like Libya and Iran. More worrisome still is what the launch says about Pyongyang's aggressive missile program. Some experts believe North Korea is well on the way to building even more muscular missiles, capable of reaching Alaska, Hawaii and even the western part of the continental U.S. Says Republican Congressman Curt Weldon, a member of the National Security Committee: "It's the first time a rogue state has launched a multistage missile. It's extremely disturbing."

Why fire the missile now? The launch undoubtedly impressed potential weapon buyers. Missile sales are Pyongyang's biggest source of foreign exchange, peaking at about $700 million a year in the late 1980s, according to South Korean analysts. But revenue has declined to about $50 million as Pyongyang's clients have found other suppliers. With its economy imploding, the country desperately needs hard currency. "What they are doing is demonstrating a new product," says a senior Administration official.

North Korea's leaders probably calculated the launch would also thrill audiences at home, to set the stage for this week's celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of North Korea by Kim's father, Kim Il Sung. Last week the North Korean parliament, meeting for the first time since Kim Il Sung died in 1994, honored him with the title of permanent President (enhancing the truth of the slogan THE GREAT LEADER IS ALWAYS WITH US). Kim Jong Il doesn't need the title of President. He has used his authority as commander in chief and head of the ruling Workers' Party to run the country. Last week, he was awarded the power to declare war, sign peace treaties and control the defense industry, underscoring both his control and the growing role of the armed forces. Meanwhile, the meet-and-greet functions he so dislikes have been palmed off to the chairman of the Presidium. Marking the milestone with a nifty new missile could be a way to distract a country on its knees: famine has killed an estimated 2 million people in North Korea since 1995.

The U.S., however, was also a prime target audience. The launch came just hours before diplomats from both countries were due to sit down in New York City to iron out a minicrisis that erupted over the North's nuclear ambitions. U.S. spy satellites revealed a massive excavation northeast of Pyongyang that suggested the North could be attempting to revive a nuclear weapons project they had agreed to shelve. It's still not clear what is going on at the dig. Some analysts guess that the project is a kind of bluff, an attempt to leverage the impoverished regime's only real bargaining chip: its ability to threaten its neighbors. Unveiling a new missile would fit nicely with that strategy. "This may be a way of poking us and saying, 'Pay attention to North Korea. We can still be a pain in the neck,'" says Joel Wit, a senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington-based public policy think tank. The delayed negotiations resumed Saturday in New York, and State Department officials reported progress in the talks. They will brief the White House this week.

North Korea clearly doesn't think the U.S. has been taking it seriously enough of late. Pyongyang agreed to shut down its nuclear facilities in 1994 in exchange for two new reactors that don't produce bomb fuel and a yearly gift of 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil for conventional power plants. Washington also agreed to roll back sanctions. The hard-won deal brought both sides back from the brink of war. But Pyongyang is frustrated over what it sees as foot dragging in Washington. The reactors are behind schedule, and so are the oil deliveries.

Pyongyang may have a point. The Administration, U.S. critics complain, has moved on to crises in other parts of the globe, putting the 1994 agreement on autopilot. What's more, the White House underestimated how much money it needed from Congress to pay for the oil, which costs about $55 million annually. This year it asked for only $35 million, hoping to pass the tin cup among its allies. That hasn't worked, since many countries question why the world's leading economic power can't come up with the money. But U.S. lawmakers are even more reluctant to bankroll Pyongyang after Monday's launch. The Senate quickly passed legislation requiring President Clinton to certify that North Korea is not developing nuclear weapons or exporting ballistic missiles to terrorist nations before providing more fuel oil. If approved by the House, the requirement could kill the 1994 agreement.

Still, the Taepo Dong-1 should help to refocus the thinking of policymakers in Washington. It is light-years ahead of its predecessor, the Nodong-1, a one-stage rocket with a range of up to 620 miles. Multiple-stage vehicles require expertise in guidance systems and other tricky technology. Thus last week's launch means the North is a step closer to building intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach the mainland U.S., according to Richard Speier, a Carnegie Foundation consultant and former missile proliferation expert at the Pentagon.

What can the U.S. do? Certainly a "surgical" strike with cruise missiles a la Sudan and Afghanistan is out of the question. Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is 138 miles from Pyongyang, and the North has enough artillery to flatten it before a war even got into full swing. The U.S. is looking at antimissile defenses for more distant potential targets, but they are costly and nowhere near deployment. The so-called Theater High Altitude Area Defense missile program--billed as an improvement on the existing Patriot system--has been plagued with troubles. But pressure to pour money into such systems could grow as North Korea and other hostile states roll out increasingly sophisticated weapon systems. "The simple fact is, the largest loss of life we've had in a hostile action in the 1990s was when those kids were killed by a Scud in Desert Storm," says Congressman Weldon, referring to the 28 U.S. troops killed in their barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. "The outrage is that seven years later, we don't yet have a system to prevent that from happening again."

At week's end, military analysts were investigating claims by North Korea that it had put a satellite into orbit with last week's launch. The North Koreans say the satellite is for the peaceful exploration of outer space, but it also will beam tunes back to earth, including The Song of Marshal General Kim Jong Il. So far, listening stations haven't picked up any signals. But if Kim has spent millions on a song-singing satellite while his country is starving, he will retain his position as one of the most bizarre leaders in the world.

--With reporting by CNN's Mike Chinoy/Pyongyang, Stella Kim/Seoul, Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington

With reporting by CNN''s Mike Chinoy/Pyongyang, Stella Kim/Seoul, Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington