In an earlier post I noted that Bill Powell seemed to go out of his way to miss the valid points of Bush’s Korea-Iraq comparison. In his latest time article, “Has Kim Jong Il Come to His Senses?,” Powell summarizes the views of “optimists” and “skeptics”:

The optimists say that Kim has effectively made the decision, as one east Asia diplomat put it, “to do a deal that serves his interests.” Stripped of the anodyne diplomatic language, he means Kim has decided to be bought… At the same time, the optimists believe, Kim has sent signals that he is receptive to change in North Korea.

[. . .]

The skeptics roll their eyes at these notions. They believe, simply, that the outside world — or at least, the diplomats in the outside world — has never been able to get it through its head that Kim Jong Il, as head of the North Korean regime, is simply interested in his obstreperous hold on power. Period. He doesn’t give a whit about economic reform because it might come back and bite him…

The basic summaries of those positions are correct, yet a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue still made its way into the article when the author got away from reporting facts and shifted to analysis of what specific actions will mean:

But a moment of truth of sorts will arrive soon enough: if Kim verifiably shuts down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor — a process that is supposed to begin later this summer — he will, in fact have given up something that the pessimists have always believed has been critical to him: his nuclear card, which in his view has guaranteed his regime’s survival in the post-Sept. 11, preemptive world. Give that up, and the optimists will have a reason to smile, even if they are members of the Masochists Club. (emphasis added)

The bolded text is utterly incorrect for many reasons. First, shutting down a reactor is a nuclear card, but Kim has more in the deck, including a) whatever nuclear weapons have already been produced, b) stockpiles of plutonium, and c) a highly enriched uranium (HEU) program of unknown advancement (though admittedly likely only at the pilot stage if still active). Second, there is also nothing stopping North Korea from simply doing what it did previously; ejecting IAEA inspectors and restarting the reactor. Finally it may be that Kim would be getting something for shutting down a nuclear reactor that he’s about to be forced to shutdown anyway due to its decrepit condition. Shutting down Yongbyon would indeed make optimists smile, but it is in no stretch of the imagination giving up, “his nuclear card.”

In answer to the question posed in the title of the post: it is an improvement, but without permanently disabling the facility, in practical terms it means nothing.