LOS ANGELES -- Last Saturday's fierce 21-minute naval gun battle between the two Koreas was unfortunate and tragic for several reasons -- not just for the loss of lives on both sides. The deadly duel splashed cold water on South Korea's sudden place in the sun. Its soccer team had just completed its surprisingly successful 2002 World Cup run, and despite ominous predictions of temperamental clashes between Seoul and Tokyo -- not usually the closest of pals -- the two countries' management of the games had proved exemplary.

No one knows for sure whether the clash was motivated by a food-hungry North Korea in dire need of greater access to fishing waters, its jealousy of the South's World Cup success or by elements of the South Korean military eager to punch out the North's lights. But it would seem that only a loser Stalinist regime like Pyongyang would want to spoil the Cup afterglow. What's sadder is the propensity to use the incident to undercut President Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine" policy of aggressive diplomatic engagement with North Korea.

The argument is that Kim is naive, soft on communism and beating a dead policy horse. The naval clash thus handed a golden opportunity not only to political opponents of Kim's Millennium Democratic Party, who face a December nationwide election that looks increasingly desperate, but also to policy wonks and media critics in Seoul and Washington who harbor deep doubts about the policy.