While hatreds rage in the Middle East, another peace process has been making headway in Korea. It got a big push recently with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea. The prize has brought his people together in celebration and strengthened his hand against South Korean hardliners who oppose his unrelenting drive for national reconciliation.

The high point thus far was the summit meeting in June in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. Kim and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Il, agreed to work toward eventual reunification. A few days later, the Clinton administration finally lifted sanctions on nonstrategic trade and investment relations with Pyongyang. The sanctions had been in place since the Korean War, half a century ago. They closed the American market to goods made in the North by South Korean and Japanese companies. The United States had promised in 1994 to phase them out in return for North Korea’s freeze on construction of plants to produce nuclear fuel, but congressional Republicans had repeatedly blocked relaxation.

Conciliatory moves stepped up the momentum. Separated families were reunited. Liaison offices were opened in Seoul and Pyongyang. The two sides agreed to restore a cross-border railway.

Still, the question of North Korean missiles threatens this Far East peace process. Pyongyang has continued to develop those weapons. U.S. leaders fear the intercontinental missile that already has been tested with partial success. It conceivably could strike Hawaii or Alaska. And the Japanese fear a medium-range missile that is ready for deployment. Advocates of a U.S. missile defense system have seized on the missiles as an argument. They warn that North Korea is a “rogue state” that could unleash an unprovoked missile attack against American targets.

Selig Harrison, a Korea specialist at the Century Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, makes a persuasive case for a more balanced view of the missile threat. In his six visits to North Korea, he has learned that Pyongyang’s leaders are guided more by fear than by aggression.

In an article published this month in the World Policy Journal, Harrison notes that, with the end of the Cold War, North Korea has lost the military support of Moscow and Beijing, while confronting a U.S. presence of 37,000 combat infantrymen and supporting troops. More important, it fears a surprise attack by U.S. and South Korean air power, which is far superior to the North’s aging air force.

Harrison writes that the current campaign for a national missile defense system depicts North Korean leaders as “irrational xenophobes harboring a mindless anti-American hatred,” who might well use nuclear weapons to attack the United States even if it meant national suicide.

On the contrary, writes Harrison, North Korea is acting rationally in terms of its own embattled history. “Indeed, the North Korean effort to develop nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems was a direct response to U.S. nuclear saber rattling during the Korean War and the subsequent deployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in the south from 1958 to 1991.”

With a boost from the Nobel Committee, it looks now as if the United States is willing to help bring a negotiated end at last to the Korean War and give peace a chance.