The ASEAN Regional Forum in Kuala Lumpur on Friday adopted a chairman's statement saying North Korea's missile tests will have a negative impact on regional peace, stability and security. In a separate meeting, the foreign ministers of 10 member countries urged an early resumption of the six-party talks on the North's nuclear programs and implementation of the UN Security Council resolution on the July 5 missile tests. The 10 were the five parties in the six-way talks minus the North -- South Korea, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia -- plus Australia, Canada, Malaysia, Indonesia and New Zealand.

The UN Security Council unanimously adopted the resolution on July 15. On July 16, the G-8 summit in Russia expressed support of the resolution. In other words, condemnation of the missile tests, urging the North's return to the six-party talks, and support for the Security Council resolution come whenever an international meeting is held. That is the position of the international community on the North's missile issue.

North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun was a loner at the ASEAN Regional Forum, where few of the other 25 foreign ministers there shook his hand. The foreign minister of China, the North’s staunchest ally, tried to persuade Paek to attend the 10-party talks, but in vain. So long as Pyongyang insists on boycotting the six-party talks under the delusion that it can bring the U.S. round to bilateral negotiations with its nuclear and missile threats, it will remain stuck out in the cold.

In South Korea, some 20 prominent figures including Ven. Song Wol-ju, former executive director of the Jogye Order, the nation's largest Buddhist sect, and the Rev. Choi Sung-kyu, former president of the Christian Council of Korea, on Friday issued a statement urging a paradigm shift in inter-Korean relations. "The nation now faces a security crisis due to the North's missile tests but insists on a Sunshine Policy of unconditional incentives," they said. "The government must stop harming our relations with the U.S. and driving us into international isolation with its sentimental nationalism and naive concepts of independence."

Saying that it needs examining if what the U.S. does about North Korea “is compatible with the will of the international community," the government still acts as if the international community has another kind of will. That has given North Korea the illusion that the two Koreas can confront the international community by way of their "one nation" rhetoric. As a result, the international community shuns both of them.