The New York Times was out over the weekend with an editorial endorsing the idea of an American pledge of nonaggression toward North Korea, along with economic aid for the North Korean regime. “Given Pyongyang’s history of breaking past agreements, it should not receive any rewards based on promises alone,” the Times says. “There is, however, no reason Washington cannot spell out what it will be willing to do once North Korea demonstrates that it has permanently abandoned its nuclear weapons ambitions.”

Well, there are reasons. At least 200,000 of them. That is the number of people that, ac cording to congressional testimony in April by Soon Ok Lee, are languishing in North Korea’s political prison camps. A coalition in Washington is working to make sure that, as the Hudson Institute’s Michael Horowitz puts it, Congress opposes “any agreement that gives a nickel to North Korea that does not include significant progress on human rights.” One could argue that it is worth consigning 20 million North Koreans and the 200,000 political prisoners to perpetual suffering under a brutal communist totalitarian regime so long as that regime agrees to abjure nuclear weapons. We saw the outcome of that kind of logic on the eve of the last World War.