Trading With the Enemy

President Bush yesterday lifted restrictions on North Korea that had been in place under the aptly named Trading With the Enemy Act. He did this not in reaction to the closing of North Korea's prison camps in which Christians and other political prisoners are tortured — they are still open. He did it not in reaction to North Korea's opening its political system from totalitarianism — it is still a police state dedicated to the personality cult of Kim Jong Il. He did it not in reaction to North Korea voluntarily ceasing its efforts to build a nuclear bomb for Syria — that had to be stopped by Israeli military action. He did it, instead, to reward North Korea's as-yet-unverified claim that it had confessed to nuclear activity that it should never have conducted in the first place.

The news met with deep skepticism on Capitol Hill, as our Eli Lake reports at page one. And understandably so. A similar deal in the Clinton administration was essentially a fraud, which is why North Korea is back at the bargaining table extracting yet more concessions from America. The right policy toward North Korea is the same one as toward Iran — one that focuses not on nuclear disarmament but on freedom and democracy. Until North Korea's people are free their leaders will be a threat, with or without nuclear weapons. Mr. Bush, who spent some of the most moving moments of his presidency meeting with those who escaped the North Korean gulag, surely comprehends this, even if his diplomats are tempted to put the truth of it aside in pursuit of disarmament deals.