U.S. President George W.. Bush has told CNN the best way to solve the North Korean missile issue diplomatically is for Kim Jong-il to “look at the world" when he tries to gauge the reaction to the test launch, at a united international front sending “a clear message that this is unacceptable behavior." Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. envoy to the six-country talks on the North’s nuclear program, said his visit to Seoul on Friday came to make sure that the five nations involved in the six-country talks “can all speak with one voice to deal with this real provocative action by the North Koreans."

Our government's thoughts on these suggestions can be inferred from a message on the Cheong Wa Dae home page titled, "Let Us Free Ourselves from the Bygone Spirit of the Security Dictatorship Era" and posted Sunday by the office of the chief presidential secretary for public relations. "The president's uppermost concern is public security, closely followed by guarding against a sense of insecurity among citizens," it said. "Did the North Korean missile tests constitute a national security crisis? They did not target anyone in particular. There was no reason to make a fuss from the crack of dawn as Japan did. The president intended to cope with them calmly and without raised voices."

Even before the North fired the missiles, the government maintained the U.S. and Japan, in the absence of conclusive evidence that the tests were imminent, were fanning the crisis out of political calculation. It indicated Tokyo in particular planned to take advantage of a missile test to justify its own military buildup. From that, it is apparently only a small step to the conclusion that it is not in our national interests to respond as promptly and firmly as Washington and Tokyo did.

We will have to ask the government if that is so. Even the North Korean regime, a gang otherwise highly allergic to the mention of human rights, warned its fishing boats not to go out into waters where the missiles were expected to fall. Our own government was aware of that, yet it still let civilian airliners fly across the missiles’ path and fishing boats fish in the targeted seas. Are those the actions of a government whose primary concern is public security?

How on earth does the chief presidential secretary for public relations conclude that the firing of four Scud and two Rodong missiles, whose ranges cover the entire Koran Peninsula, are no threat to our national security? Is it in the nature of a calm response and avoidance of undue alarm to sleep through the launch of several missiles that could fall on the heads of every citizen in the country?

The government's security policy, apparently, is to sleep soundly, having hypnotized itself into the belief that North Korea, whatever nuclear weapons it may have developed and however many missiles it may have fired, would never target South Korea. Perhaps it shares the view put forward by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan or Chongnyon, a Pyongyang mouthpiece, that the North's nuclear weapons and missiles are the assets of the entire nation. Are we expected to swallow this nonsense?