The author, Gong Ro-Myung, 72, is a former foreign minister of South Korea, the Korean chairman of the Japan-South Korea Forum, and president of the Asahi Shimbun Asia Network. He also served as South Korea's ambassador to the USSR, Russia and Japan.

The U.S. presidential election, which has been the focus of global attention, ended with the reelection of President George W. Bush. I've never observed American presidential election with such a strong intensity of concern as this last one. That is because foreign policy issues, particularly those that have much to do with the future international order, became campaign issues and also because suspected nuclear developments in North Korea and the war in Iraq, in which South Korea and Japan are deeply involved, became hot issues of contention.

Throughout the election campaign, North Korea had been attacking President Bush as being "the tyrant of tyrants - several tens of times more tyrannical than Adolf Hitler." After the election, however, it remained silent except for a short cynical comment appearing in Chosen Sinbo, published by the Association of pro-north Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryun), which said to the effect that "as an old saying goes that a hated man lives longer, Bush secured reelection, which even his father failed."

There is some apprehension that reelected President Bush might switch once again to a tougher line on North Korean nuclear issues. Mr. Colin L. Powell, who represented moderates, has resigned as Secretary of State. It is fortunate, however, that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who is known to have sought a balance between hard-liners and moderates within the administration, seems likely to succeed Mr. Powell.

On North Korea's suspected nuclear developments, it has been the policy of President Bush to seek its solution through the six-party talks. After the reelection of President Bush, Mr. James A. Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, stated in a seminar on November 9 that the U.S. administration would keep utilizing the framework of the six-party talks rather than engaging in direct negotiations with North Korea. He then called on North Korea to return to the six-party talks before the year is out.

Senator John F. Kerry, President Bush's opponent in the election, proposed having direct dialogue with North Korea but, now that he has lost, North Korea seems to have no other obvious choice but to participate in the six-party talks.

In South Korea, an opposition party member, citing a report from the Korea Institute of Defense Analyses, stated during a National Assembly session that, if a war broke out, North Korea's long-range guns could destroy a third of the Seoul area. This developed into a fierce controversy within the country, with the ruling party charging that the statement was a leakage of classified information. A researcher at RAND Corporation, a U.S. think tank, when discussing the capacity of North Korea's biological-chemical weapons, once stated that, if North Korea used sarin shells, it could cause several hundred thousand casualties in Seoul.

Further, as is well known, at the time of the first North Korean nuclear crisis in 1994, the then U.S. ambassador to South Korea reported that, once a war broke out, body bags containing 50,000 American soldiers would be carried home from the battlefield. In the end, the administration switched its hard-line policy and sought a settlement through negotiations. Should such a situation occur North Korea would, at the very least, be reduced to ashes and its regime obliterated from the earth.

These stories clearly show that the North Korean issue cannot be settled without ultimately resorting to diplomatic means. Fortunately, the United States, Japan and South Korea, at the third six-party talks, offered a formula for step-by-step settlement. Although North Korea raised various objections, I think that the matters can be fully discussed in the future negotiations. For that purpose, it is above all necessary to have all parties concerned, in particular North Korea, immediately sit down at the negotiating table.

What is necessary for the United States, Japan and South Korea, as the six-party talks at last draw near to a negotiating stage, is to secure ways and means for prompt decision-making among themselves. If the United States, as ever, remains divided within the administration into hard-liners and moderates, it will be difficult for it to work out a unified stance and hard for other nations to expect that U.S. leadership necessary to resolve the issues will be forthcoming. The new administration, therefore, should seek a way to appoint a high caliber figure to work on North Korean nuclear issues and have a coordinated approach, as was the case in the Clinton administration.

As for North Korea, it has been persistently demanding direct negotiations with the United States for the security of its regime. It should, however, be aware that a joint assurance by other participating nations would be more potent. It should also realize that, for as long as the six-party talks continue to function, there will be no rooms for the scenario of "regime change" which some in the United States have mentioned.

The six-party formula for seeking a settlement is not based on the principle of unilateralism, for which the Bush administration has been subject to criticism, but rather is a way of solving problems through international cooperation. This framework, different from the agreed Geneva framework at the time of the Clinton administration, is advantageous in that all parties concerned work together to find ways of settling issues. It is precisely for this reason that we are placing high hopes on this formula.