When President Bush visits American troops at the demilitarized zone today, he will carry with him a satellite photo of the Korean peninsula at night. The South will show up as awash in the electric light of prosperity and freedom. The North will be nearly dark, its few feeble flickers all that poverty and repression allows.

It’s an effective visual, one that in different circumstances could serve as an invitation for North Korea to continue its reconciliation with South Korea and, with it, the building of a modern society. In current circumstances, following the president’s “axis of evil” remark, this portrayal of North Korea as a primitive, even subhuman place, could be perceived as further and unnecessary incitement to war.

It remains unclear why Mr. Bush chose to lump North Korea along with Iraq and Iran – some leakage out of the White House hints it may have been for no more reason than the perceived need to include a non-Islamic state in the list of potential future fronts in the war on terrorism. Also unclear is why – after he so carefully distinguished between the people and the democratically elected leaders of Iran, with whom the United States have no quarrel, and the Muslim mullahs who actually run the country – he offered no elaboration whatsoever regarding North Korea. It may well be one the world’s worst-governed countries, but there is no public evidence that it actively supports global terrorism. Selling missile technology to anyone with the cash is North Korea’s offense. It is a serious offense, but North Korea hardly has a monopoly on dealing weapons to people of bad intentions. North Korea is, however, the administration’s Exhibit A in its case for a missile defense shield.

The problem with the “axis of evil” remark is that it seems to have done real damage to South Korea, an ally. President Bush has been fighting a war on terrorism for a mere five months; only since Sept. 11 has it become the center of his foreign policy. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung has spent five years trying to create peace with North Korea; his efforts won him the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize and the future of his nation depends upon his continued success. Nearly two years have passed since Mr. Kim’s historic visit to Pyongyang, but, following the State of the Union address, hints that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il would revive the reconciliation process and come to Seoul have been replaced by Cold War threats of massive military retaliation.

In a speech in Japan on the first stop of his Far East tour, President Bush said the United States seeks “a region in which demilitarized zones and missile batteries no longer separate people with a common heritage and a common future.” As he stands in one of those DMZs today, he might consider how, when it comes to separating people, ill-chosen words can do just as much damage as razor wire and minefields. Such a thought might be enlightening.