Yet, giving in to the North Korean demands sets a bad precedent. Gary Mihollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Controls, said that he feared conciliation undermined the credibility of the system designed to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. Besides appearing provocative, sanctions will not work because there are too many people sympathetic to North Korea. About 300,000 Koreans in Japan profess loyalty to Japan. Furthermore, Premier Li Peng of China opposes economic sanctions to compel North Korea to accept full international inspection of its nuclear facilities and will veto any such resolution in the UN Security Council.
Military action carries with it enormous risk.
One option is to bomb North Korea's nuclear plants as Israel did to Iraq in 1981. But the US does not know where all of the North Korean facilities are located. South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia would be exposed to the fallout. South Korea has nine nuclear electric-power plants within easy range of North Korean bombers. According to Leventhal, North Korean retaliatory bombing could bring about disasters on the scale of many Chernobyls.