In the UN Security Council, a consensus on the need for sanctions against North Korea is being formed to an extent that U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said it was the first time the council has been so near an agreement on sanctioning North Korea in the last decade. But the South Korean president talks like a current affairs commentator on TV: there’s a case for sanctions, there’s a case for dialogue. Still, what that means when the rest of the world is going for sanctions is that he favors dialogue. Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok, well aware of the president's mind, told the National Assembly Thursday, "North Korea is not a country that responds well when pressured and sanctioned."

The question is what a role "dialogue" has played in resolving the North Korean nuclear standoff over the past three years. The government has persistently maintained that South Korea will persuade the North to give up its nuclear programs through dialogue under its leadership. Once Pyongyang scraps its nuclear development programs, it proposed, Seoul will pay it over W1 trillion (approximately US$100 billion) in the form of heavy oil, power transmission and perhaps building a light-water reactor. In the nebulous "comprehensive approach" toward resolution of the nuclear standoff, it may have promised an even larger sum to the North.

Yet North Korea pushed ahead with a nuclear test, regardless, demanding more U.S. carrot without paying any attention to South Korean carrot. Presumably getting the North to abandon its nuclear program now that it has tested a nuclear weapon will be rather more difficult than before that. Insisting on a formula that so signally failed when it was easier now that it is hard, then, is tantamount to giving up on a resolution of the nuclear standoff altogether.

On Monday, right after the North announced a nuclear test, the president said North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons is “intolerable.” But without offering any specific plan for getting North Korea to give up its nuclear program, the president now mutters that some UN sanctions are unacceptable and puts conditions on others. Going a step further, the administration is said to have tentatively decided to continue package tours to Mt.Kumgang and business at the Kaesong Industrial Complex irrespective of a UN resolution. Koreans and the world are fed up with this administration's hypocrisy. It might as well say frankly, like the addlebrained so-called 386 Generation of former student activists who support it, that there is nothing wrong with a nuclear-armed North Korea because the bombs will be ours once unification comes.