North Korean question lingers

After President Bush's first face-to-face meeting with South Korea's new president, the American people still don't have a very good idea of what the administration intends to do to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula.
President Bush and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun agreed that the peninsula should be free of nuclear weapons. That's like saying, "Let there be peace on Earth." Easier said (or sung) than done.
There seem to be two roadblocks between the United States and North Korea at this point. One is that the Bush administration has labeled Clinton-era accommodations with North Korea as something akin to blackmail and has vowed to have none of it. The other is that North Korea is ruled by Kim Jong Il, a certifiable madman who oversees an outlaw regime that supplements its meager income by smuggling drugs, counterfeiting other nations' currency and dealing in weaponry. The money it takes in doesn't go to feed its starving people, but to build new and more sophisticated weapons.
That said, Kim Jong Il is a North Korean fixture who isn't likely to go anywhere soon, and any attempt to depose him would be guaranteed to send his million-man army marching into South Korea.
The Bush administration should recognize that the Clinton administration was on the right track in offering North Korea incentives of food and oil to lure it away from its nuclear weapons program.
"Millions for defense, not a penny in tribute," is a catchy phrase, and may have even passed for international policy in the 18th century. Today it pays to be more pragmatic.