N Korea: beggar and chooser

Recently I visited South Korea for a conference.

The two Koreas are a stunning example of the differences between the success of an open society and the dangerous, grotesque failure of a closed one.

At the time of partition in the 1950s, the North was richer than the South. Thirty years ago South Korea was as poor as Ghana. Now it is as rich as Portugal and a member of the OECD.

Despite the change in fortunes, we must take the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il seriously (not withstanding the boiler suits and a haircut modelled on boxing promoter Don King).

Here is one of the most dangerous regimes on Earth. Paranoid, aggressive and failing - to the point where millions starve and thousands of refugees cross into China - it is reliant for basic food on the fearful goodwill of those who are regularly denounced as enemies of the people of North Korea.

The personality cult of Kim Jong-il makes Saddam Hussein and Joseph Stalin appear modest. Yet he has one powerful card and he plays it with chilling skill - the nuclear card. The Cold War is not over in Korea. North Korea spends 43 per cent of its budget on its military. Two great armies mass on the border; more than 30,000 US troops are based in South Korea.

Seoul is within artillery range of Kim's vast war machine.

Like Hussein, who broke the UN-sponsored food-for-oil program to favour the party apparatus and the military, so the North Koreans pervert and divert food aid and use it to cement their power. (As does Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. It is an interesting fact that there has never been a famine in a democracy.)

Over recent years South Korean leaders adopted a sunshine policy of engagement, aid and assistance. Young Koreans don't see the North as the threat their parents did. As one South Korean politician said, they see North Korea as a charity case, not an immediate threat.

History sped up in the few days I was in Korea. For months since the North admitted it had broken the treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and was pursuing nuclear weapons - thus also breaking the 1994 agreement reached by the US Clinton administration - the region has held its breath. Missiles were tested. Japan launched its own satellites to gather information on the North and was warned against such aggressive acts by Pyongyang.

The defeat of Hussein evoked a statement from the North that it needed overwhelming military might to deter America.

Now North Korea has demanded direct talks with the US. The US refused, wary of previous failures and asking why it should reward bad behaviour.

The US has taken a more multilateral approach, attempting to enlist the regional support of China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

Suddenly North Korea has relented and said it might be willing to accept US demands that any discussions include other countries in the region. Thus the recent meeting hosted by the Chinese in which the North Koreans again asked to be paid for breaking their word, or, as US President George Bush called it, the old blackmail game.

North Korea is in shock and awe of the US success in Iraq. But watch this space. We have learned that dictators are, by definition, out of touch and live in another reality. Rational people too often expect rational responses from irrational people.

Do they or don't they have nuclear weapons? North Korea is not Afghanistan or Iraq. They have a million troops, 800 fighter aircraft and a public that has no information other than what the state tells them. Violent excursions into the South and the kidnapping of fishermen are commonplace. Military intelligence suggest these troops are capable and motivated, unlike the Iraqis. North and South are still technically at war.

The UN's chief nuclear monitor has called for zero tolerance and says North Korea has produced plutonium and has not declared it. Some intelligence services suggest it could have a few nuclear weapons.

The meeting in China was a good sign. The Chinese have leverage. I am looking forward to mass protests against North Korea by the well-meaning who got Iraq exactly wrong. Only kidding!