The stunning revelation that North Korea has a clandestine nuclear-weapons program casts a dark cloud over the future of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. It also dampens prospects for Japanese-North Korean normalization talks, not to mention the resumption of U.S.-North Korean dialogue.
To achieve a peaceful and nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, it is imperative that the major players in the region -- the United States, Japan, China and Russia -- foster an ad hoc "concert of powers," just as they have done in the war on terrorism. If these East Asian powers truly recognize the urgency of deterring war, halting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ending instability on the Korean Peninsula, they should make concerted efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon the nuclear option as a means of survival.
North Korea's stunning admission casts a poor light on the "Pyongyang Declaration" that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Kim Jong Il signed on Sept. 17, in which the North Korean leader promised in the document to "comply with all related international agreements" for an overall resolution of nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsula.