The response to my Jan. 10 article "Pyongyang is the real victim," which blames the United States for its mishandling of the North Korean nuclear problem, tells me two things: First, Japan Times articles are followed abroad much more widely than I realized; second, many believe firmly in the incorrigibly evil nature of the North Korean regime.

It is true that North Korea is no candidate for sainthood. Its hardliners have behaved much like their counterparts in other dictatorial regimes -- leftwing and rightwing -- who believe they are under threat and who have a monopoly over truth. A dynamic of torture and forced confessions leading to tens of thousands being imprisoned or killed for alleged spying and sabotage can easily get under way. Deviations from official ideology are cruelly punished. Constant praise for leaders is demanded.

But is this "evil" incorrigible? The Cold War gave us the doctrine of communist irreversibility, which said that the totalitarian nature of communist regimes was crucial to the survival of those regimes and could only be changed by unrelenting Western confrontation. One result was the Indochina tragedy of the 1960s. Another was the loss of an early chance to end the Cold War.