Editorial: The North Korea Problem

Secretary of State John Kerry sent several important messages to North Korea after talks on Friday in Seoul with South Korean leaders. Speaking at a news conference, he said that the United States would defend its South Korean and Japanese allies if there was conflict, that the international community would never accept the North as a nuclear weapons state, and that Washington was willing to resume long-stalled negotiations but only if the North Koreans agreed to move seriously on denuclearization.

But the window into North Korea's nuclear intentions and American policy in response was as blurry as ever. The Defense Intelligence Agency rang alarms bells on Thursday with a report that it had concluded with "moderate confidence" that the North was capable of launching a missile with a nuclear warhead. Mr. Kerry and other officials later dismissed the report as premature.

On Friday, in a background briefing for journalists, a senior American official played down an expected North Korean missile test, saying it might provide the country's leader, Kim Jong-un, with an "off ramp" to save face and de-escalate tensions. Hours later, Mr. Kerry used a news conference to warn Mr. Kim not to proceed with the test in an "already volatile, potentially dangerous situation," saying Mr. Kim "needs to understand, as I think he probably does, what the outcome of the conflict would be." 

In that climate, Mr. Kerry's reaffirmation of American interest in negotiations could get lost, especially since he put the responsibility on the North to act first, by seriously committing to denuclearize, and seemed inclined to let South Korea's new president, Park Geun-hye, move ahead first on her call for dialogue with North Korea.

That's worth trying, but China, the North's only ally and chief benefactor, remains crucial to any progress and is going to have to apply more pressure on Pyongyang than it has so far.

There are signs that some Chinese officials are becoming fed up with Mr. Kim's threatening ways, and that should give Mr. Kerry a new opening when he visits Beijing on Saturday to make the argument that China's support has allowed Mr. Kim to operate with impunity. For a country like China that values stability above all, that should be an untenable situation.

North Korea poses a more imminent nuclear threat than Iran. But so far, Mr. Kerry's continuing trip does not make us confident that the administration has a fully thought out strategy that will be any more successful than the current one, which has failed to curb either the North's nuclear weapons program or its bellicosity.

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