WASHINGTON -- This fall much attention will be focused on the start of six-party multilateral talks in Beijing to stop North Korea's nuclear-weapons program. These talks, should they take place as committed to by Pyongyang last week, are a welcome development. For the first time in more than a decade, a discussion of nuclear disarmament on the Korean Peninsula will finally include South Korea.

However, a potentially more important set of events will parallel these talks in Beijing. These events could have far-reaching implications for the Peninsula and the world, yet they will exclude South Korea. This autumn, countries that are members of the Proliferation Security Initiative, or PSI, will likely begin exercises in the Pacific Ocean and Mediterranean Sea to practice search and seizure operations against the transfer of materials for weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.

These activities could represent the beginning of a new global norm, but they will bypass South Korea -- despite its national aspirations to become a player on the world stage -- because Seoul cannot look past its own preoccupations.

First announced by U.S. President George W. Bush in May, the PSI is not, as many simply believe in South Korea, an interdiction effort against North Korea. It is a larger cooperative effort led by the United States to share customs information; heighten inspection of trade and coordinate military, coast guard and domestic police activities; and prevent the use of WMD as instruments of terror.

Ten countries have joined the U.S. in the PSI (France, Britain, Germany, Australia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Netherlands and Poland), and two organizational meetings have already been held in Madrid and Brisbane.

There is some disagreement within the group about how to proceed. For example, Japan and some European countries do not want to name specific targets of the PSI (e.g., North Korea, Syria, Libya) while the U.S. would. PSI countries disagree on where the majority of efforts should be focused. Some members prefer to focus on WMD export and import controls. Others prefer to include PSI preparations to stop transfer on the high seas or by plane of these materials.

There are also disagreements among PSI countries about whether they should press for a U.N. Security Council resolution. But there is little disagreement on the general principle.

When the PSI was first announced, nearly every South Korean government official I met asked me why South Korea was not invited to join. The answer was obvious. When putting together a multilateral effort of this nature, the organizers only wanted charter members who were enthusiastic and who would not seek to water down the movement.

The Roh government, because it was perceived to be too sensitive to any actions that might upset North Korea, was therefore assumed to be uninterested in the PSI, and not invited. What is most maddening about this dynamic is that there is no acknowledgment by the Roh government that it can do both -- join the initiative and, if it chooses, continue to pursue engagement with North Korea. The Roh government seems to believe that doing the latter automatically excludes the former. This is an incorrect assessment. Historically, the most successful engagement policies in international relations are backed by strength. If the policy is backed by weakness, then it is nothing more than appeasement.

South Korea is a member of the nonproliferation treaty. It believes in the peaceful use of atomic energy. It opposes terrorism. It opposes the transfer of WMD technologies. These are the basic principles shared by PSI countries. The PSI's purpose is nonproliferation and creating a system of information-sharing, exercises and agreements that will prevent terrorists from acquiring WMD.

The Roh government should seek unconditional membership in this group. Short-term concerns about upsetting North Korea should not take precedence over the support of a fundamental set of inviolable principles that all civilized countries should adhere to. This may be difficult to see within Seoul, but from a foreign perspective, South Korea is perceived to be slowly and quietly drifting away from its postwar Western alignments.

If the government remains fixated on domestic issues and remains blinded to all foreign policies that might irk North Korea, it will awake after the April 2004 general elections to a world that does not fret about whether South Korea remains in the Western orbit, but instead questions why it should still belong in this orbit.