SEOUL — As North Korea accelerates the pace of its nuclear weapons program, the United States and its allies have limited options to prevent one of the world's poorest and most erratic nations from becoming a nuclear power.
In a matter of weeks, faint hope that North Korea might be coaxed into voluntarily dismantling its nuclear facilities through multinational talks has all but evaporated.
The Bush administration appears to have ruled out any kind of preemptive strike on North Korea, which with its conventional artillery alone could inflict massive casualties on neighboring South Korea and the more than 30,000 U.S. troops stationed there. And with diplomacy failing, nonproliferation experts have begun to speak despairingly of the inevitability of a nuclear North Korea.
U.S. spy satellites have detected what could be the groundwork for an underground nuclear test around the city of Kilju, officials said Friday. There are other ominous signs as well. Last weekend, the North Koreans launched a missile into the Sea of Japan, possibly a new ballistic missile that could reach U.S. bases in South Korea. The main North Korean nuclear reactor at Yongbyon has been shut down in apparent preparation for the extraction of more plutonium.
"It looks like North Korea is intent on becoming a nuclear power, and the time is running out to stop it," South Korean legislator Park Jin, a member of the National Assembly's defense committee, said Friday....
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