NORTH-KOREA CLOSE TO THE BRINK

Since the collapse of Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and East European countries in the late 1980s North Korea has concentrated its efforts to cope efficiently with the new developments, entering the United Nations simultaneously with South Korea and signing an ''Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, and Exchange and Cooperation.'' It also embarked on normalization talks with Japan and counselor-level talks with the US. This series of events has been seen as a dramatic change in Pyongyang's policy toward the outside world. Nonetheless, in response to the burst of the North Korean nuclear issues and the uncovering of a spy ring last year South Korea, the US, and Japan ceased all contacts with Pyongyang. In contrast to South Korea's successful normalization with both Russia and China, North Korea has failed to improve its relations with the US and Japan. Moreover. faced with the deadlocked inter-Korean relations, a faltering economy. and diplomatic isolation, it abruptly decided to withdraw from the NPT, and escalated military tension on the peninsula, where the Cold War atmosphere has not yet faded. The current tension arises from North Korea's response to the perceived need to protect its own form of socialism against sweeping changes in the Communist world. It has been struggling with a last-ditch effort to safeguard its juche-based totalitarian society. However, the decision to pull out of the NPT shows it is turning back to old the closed-door policy. The leadership in Pyongyang may have concluded that North-South dialogue and talks with Japan and the US have not been-conducive to solving North Korean problems: economic hardship and diplomatic isolation. They worry that increased dialogue and economic exchanges will threaten their fundamental sources of one-man dictatorship and dynastic succession. We cannot expect that North Korea will in the near future adopt the East European model of reforms, such as decentralization of economic management, diversification of the ownership of production forces, introduction of more democratic forms of decision-making, and expansion of economic ties with capitalist countries. Considering North Korea's withdrawal from the NPT, this has become even more evident. Kim II Sung and heir apparent Kim Jong-il do not want what happened in post-Mao China, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to happen in North Korea; the price of political instability is too simply high for the North Korean leadership to pay. Change may be possible when it abandons its juche ideology, one-man-rule, and closed-door policy. This will not occur during Kim II Sung's reign. Nevertheless, South Korea should help North Korea emerge from the ''hermit kingdom'' and pursue more open and pragmatic policies, so that peace and stability can be maintained on the Korean peninsula.