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		Seoul, a city held hostage April 25 2003 I'm writing on the 21st floor of the Lotte Hotel in Seoul, South Korea, conscious that around 14,000 North Korean artillery pieces are trained on the city, and that I am just six minutes flying time away from North Korean airspace. Military planners believe that if a war were to break out, North Korea could rain hundreds of thousands of shells an hour on the 12 million residents of Seoul. Many of these could contain chemical or biological weapons. Perhaps in a week, US and South Korean forces could silence the guns. But in those terrible intervening days, the minimum estimate of civilian casualties in Seoul is a million, and the toll could rise to two or three million. This morning I stood on an observation post in the Demilitarized Zone (or D-M-Zee, as the Americans call it), looking out at the hills where those guns are dug in - and at a country where 22 million people have no human rights at all, where they live in grinding poverty, where thousands die from starvation, despite the large volumes of aid being sent in. North Korea has one of the largest armies in the world - 1.1 million men. That's 5% of the population, 10% of the male population and probably 20% of men of working age. This impoverished nation spends nearly half its national budget on its military. The régime takes no meaningful steps to feed its people or develop its economy. Its only objective seems to be survival. In political terms, it's on another planet - but geographically, it's only thirty miles away. This week (of April 21st), vital talks on the NK nuclear crisis have been taking place in Beijing. Two days ago I met South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-Kwan in Seoul, and I asked him what outcome from the talks would be a success. He replied "It will be a success if they can agree to a further meeting". It seemed a desperately modest objective. Yet today we hear that the talks broke up without any agreement at all - and the NK side admitted to having a nuclear weapon. The EU's Head of Delegation in Seoul is an Englishman (and concert pianist) called Dorian Prince. He drew my attention to the different perceptions of the NK nuclear threat between the Koreans, and the rest of the world. The Koreans, reasonably enough, focus on the dire threat to their own country, and especially to their capital, Seoul. In what Mr. Prince rather patronisingly described as "The taxi driver's view", the NK nuclear threat was aimed at Japan, so Korea was OK. It seems extraordinarily naïve for anyone to imagine that a nuclear exchange between NK and Japan could leave South Korea's vibrant, prosperous economy unscathed. A full scale East Asian conflict seems more likely. More sophisticated Koreans think that the conventional NK threat from artillery, Scud missiles and planes is so vast that a nuclear attack could be little worse. Western powers, while recognising the dire threat to Seoul, are also concerned that NK is selling weapons and missiles to anyone who will buy. How long before they supply weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups? Certainly a nuclear NK could drive China and Japan to develop anti-missile systems, and perhaps prompt Japan to develop nuclear weapons. It could lead to a nuclear arms race across East Asia. NK is blackmailing the world in two ways. They say that a new UN resolution condemning their recent withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty would be interpreted as "an act of war", with an implied threat of retaliation against Seoul. And by failing to feed their own people, they force the world to supply food aid - much of which goes to feed their bloated military. Yesterday I met recently-elected South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun. Coming from a centre-left background, one of his first acts in office was to declare support for the US/British action in Iraq. Like Tony Blair, he had to face down opposition in his own party and rely on support from the opposition. On the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsular, he said he thought that if NK were to be given security guarantees, it might give up its nuclear programme. I asked if he thought the US might be prepared to give such guarantees. Even then, I added, even if the immediate nuclear crisis could be solved, how could the North Korean people be freed from their living hell? Was régime change the only way? I was not could convinced that he had a viable strategy on either of these questions. Later that afternoon, US Ambassador Thomas Hubbard remarked, quite rightly, that most past non-aggression treaties have been precursors to war. President Roh hoped that NK could be persuaded to liberalise without régime change. Previous President Kim Dae-Jung had the same hope, embodied in his so-called "Sunshine Policy" toward the North. But he ended up with precious little to show in exchange for the major concessions he made. The North Korean regime can only survive by maintaining a brutal police state and total isolation from the real world. They aren't about to give that up. A recent leaked memo from Donald Rumsfeld suggested co-operation between the US and China to achieve régime change in NK. On the face of it a bizarre idea - but stranger things have happened. China certainly does not want an American client state on its border across the Yalu River. On the other hand, nor does it want a nuclear Korean Peninsular - or the steady stream of starving NK refugees fleeing to China. And it is keen to gain global recognition in diplomacy as well as in trade. It may be possible for China and the US to find a common solution. The Chinese have enormous influence with the NK régime. Recently they cut off their oil pipeline to NK for a few days "for maintenance" - a very Chinese way to demonstrate who has the whip hand. The storm clouds are gathering over the hostage city, and we dare not rely on wishful thinking alone.