President George W. Bush, visiting Israel last week, compared those advocating dialogue with Iran to appeasers of Hitler. The American press read that slur as aimed at leading Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama. Obama shot back, "Thanks to George Bush's policy, Iran is the greatest threat to the United States and the Middle East for a generation."

What is interesting to us is that Obama, in his counterattack, asked Bush to conduct all foreign policies like his approach to North Korea. Obama must have intended to attack Bush's failed Iraq policy, but in the process he highlighted the fact that Bush has one face for dealing with Iran and another for North Korea.

The Bush administration regards cajoling Iran through negotiation as a dangerous lunacy that would only boost Tehran’s position, but it has no qualms cajoling North Korea. In return for the disablement of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and the declaration of the North's plutonium program, the U.S. is soon to remove North Korea from its list of states sponsoring terrorism. To expedite the negotiations, Washington has also offered Pyongyang aid of 500,000 tons of rice. Can this be the same Bush who declared North Korea part of an "axis of evil" along with Iran a few years ago?

Bush associates claim North Korea, even after testing a nuclear device, responded positively to nuclear negotiations thanks to the strong pressure Bush applied on China. That may have been part of the process, but objectively speaking Bush can hardly brag. Frankly, it is the U.S., not other countries, that changed its position most drastically prior to and following the North's nuclear test. That is what caused speculation that he was impatient to leave some kind of legacy, in the form of a denuclearized North Korea.

Whatever the real reasons why Bush, while keeping his face unchanged toward Iran, has changed his face toward North Korea: we who have seen both faces have keenly felt the critical influence of the U.S. and its president on the fate of the Korean Peninsula. We have also learned what damage and waste can result when the Korean and American leaderships differ in their philosophy.

Experts warn that bigger risks still lie in a liberal U.S. administration dealing with a conservative South Korean government than when the rightwing Bush administration dealt with the progressive government in Seoul over the last seven years. We already had that experience during the first North Korean nuclear crisis, when the Clinton administration concluded the Geneva Agreement by nearly excluding South Korea toward the closing phase.

Both the Lee Myung-bak and Bush administrations are conservative: it may look as though there is little risk that we are stabbed in the back. But the Bush administration's current position on North Korea's nuclear weapons doesn't differ much from that of American liberals. Conservatives in the Republican Party predict that if their likely candidate John McCain is elected president, North Korea policy would move away from that of the Democratic Party. But there is no guarantee that McCain, who would have to face a Democrat-led Congress, won't follow in Bush’s footsteps. What will happen if Obama is elected is less clear; he has declared he wants to meet the leaders of hostile countries.

The Lee administration must prepare for all possible North Korea policies on the part of the next American administration, particularly those advocated by the Democratic Party. That is the lesson the outgoing Janus-faced president offers our new government.