This has not been a good few weeks for the North Korean nuclear accord, which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice apparently hopes will be one of her signature achievements. First came word that Pyongyang would not deliver the full and complete listing of its nuclear activities that had previously been agreed to. The State Department, desperate to clinch a deal, would not allow this blatant noncompliance to sink the agreement.

Now comes word, via this Wall Street Journal report, that the intelligence community will confirm for Congress what is already widely suspected–that the Syrian site bombed last September by Israel was a plutonium-producing nuclear reactor being built by North Korea. This helps to explain why North Korea is unwilling to provide a full rundown on its nuclear proliferation activities-and makes it harder for the State Department to defend its cherished treaty.

While these may seem like setbacks, they are actually an opportunity to press North Korea for full and complete, Libyan-style disarmament if it hopes to reap all of the promised goodies (such as shipments of fuel). The accession of a new, more conservative leader in South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, makes this a better bet since he eschews the appeasement of his predecessors (known as the “sunshine policy”) and favors a tougher approach to North Korean human-rights and nuclear-proliferation violations. The question is whether Lee’s more hawkish stance will clash with the dovish approach of the Bush administration’s second term.