There’s no alternative to patience with N Korea

North Korea’s test of an intercontinental ballistic missile changes the strategic landscape in Asia — yet the options for dealing with Pyongyang are as ugly as ever. The overriding need is to exploit these limited possibilities more thoroughly and creatively.
The Hwasong-14 ballistic missile launched earlier this week could be capable of reaching Alaska, and a missile that can hit the continental U.S. is only a matter of time. One day soon, defending Seoul or Tokyo could put U.S. cities at risk.
The Trump administration’s original hope — that China would use its economic leverage to make Kim Jong Un back down — wasn’t thought through. China’s fear of a collapse that would result in a unified Korean peninsula, dominated by South Korea and hosting U.S. troops, far outweighs its annoyance with Kim. Absent the threat of overwhelming economic pressure, China’s ability to influence the Pyongyang regime is limited.
The White House’s apparent fallback — raising the possibility of a preemptive military strike — is no more plausible than before. There’s little chance the U.S. and South Korea could take out the full nuclear arsenal Kim is thought to have built; retaliation by the North, which has hundreds of artillery pieces aimed at Seoul and huge stocks of chemical and biological weapons, could cause unthinkable casualties. A more limited attack — say, an attempt to take out an ICBM being readied for a test launch — risks an escalatory spiral that can’t be contained.
China has urged the U.S. and South Korea to suspend their joint military exercises in exchange for the North freezing its missile and nuclear tests. The U.S. should tell China it’s willing to discuss this, but only if China helps pressure North Korea into real compromise. One possibility would be to leak word of U.S.-China talks about the future of the peninsula, which should concentrate minds in Pyongyang.
To concentrate them further, China should step up the economic pressure on Kim. Further measures could include cutting financial links and fuel shipments to the North (this may already have begun). If China balks at this, the U.S. could impose further secondary sanctions on Chinese banks and companies that do business with the North.
The U.S. should also work harder to help smaller countries in Asia and Africa close loopholes in existing sanctions, support NGOs and international organizations that shine light on the North’s deplorable human-rights record, and promote the supply of uncensored information into North Korea.
With all this in place, a verifiable nuclear and missile freeze may be achievable — though in the short term, full denuclearization probably isn’t. That’s a tough pill to swallow. So is suspending joint exercises and training as the price of a freeze, because that would affect U.S. and South Korean military readiness.
Yet the situation isn’t hopeless. There are signs that the North may be ready to negotiate and turn to the task of revamping its basket-case economy. What the U.S. and South Korea need above all is time, in hopes that greater openness will eventually undermine the regime from within. Patience in the face of Kim’s crimes and provocations is a deeply unappealing option, and far from risk-free. Unfortunately, it’s the best available course.

—Bloomberg