North Korea has expressed regret for last month's naval clash with South Korea that left five sailors dead. While that is the responsible thing to do, questions swirl around Pyongyang's motivation for this surprising development. The most likely explanation is that North Korea's economic situation is worsening. It cannot afford to antagonize its chief source of aid and assistance. Nevertheless, South Korea, like Japan and the United States, must continue to make every effort to reach out to Pyongyang. North Korea is unpredictable and dangerous; isolating and threatening it could render it even more so.
On June 29, the two Korean navies faced off over the Northern Limit Line, the maritime border in the Yellow Sea that has been disputed since it was established by the United Nations after the Korean War. There is speculation that the attention lavished on Seoul for its World Cup performance may have contributed to Pyongyang's willingness to court an incident, but confrontations are not uncommon in the summer when fishermen from both countries work in the crab-rich waters. This time, however, a North Korean ship fired at a South Korean patrol boat at point-blank range, sinking the boat and killing four sailors, wounding 19 others and leaving one missing. North Korean casualties are not known.
After several weeks of condemning the South, the U.S. and warning of more clashes, North Korea sent a message expressing regret over the clash and called for talks to ensure it does not happen again. The Seoul government said it considered the letter to be an apology. North Korea's motivations are not hard to divine. The country is in desperate straits. Its economy shrunk by a third during the 1990s. Per capita income in the South is now 13 times greater than that of the North. South Korea exports more in a day and a half than North Korea does in a year. Famine has plagued the country for the last five years, claiming hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of lives and leaving millions more malnourished. South Korea throws away more food than North Korea produces.