ALL SMILES: A sales assistant in Seoul, South Korea, watches news of North Korea’s latest nuclear test, its biggest yet.
KIM HONG-JI/REUTERS
ONCE UPON a time, Bill Clinton thought he had rid the world of worry about the nuclear dreams of the cruel dictator of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, aka North Korea. The Agreed Framework was signed in 1994: Pyongyang promised to shelve its pursuit of a nuclear weapon in return for energy assistance—in the form of a light water nuclear reactor—from the United States, Japan and South Korea.
That deal died during the administration of George W. Bush, when the U.S. confronted the North about its secret effort to enrich uranium in pursuit of the bomb (the program covered by the Agreed Framework was for the North’s pursuit of a plutonium-based weapon). Ever since, Pyongyang and the world have been trapped in an endless loop: North Korea, slowly increasing its small nuclear arsenal, conducts another nuclear test; an outraged world passes U.N. resolutions to increase sanctions meant to inflict sufficient economic pain to bring Kim Jong Un, the current dictator, to heel. Some time later, Kim tests another bomb, as he did on September 9.