The press in East Asia warns the US against taking a hard line on the North Korean nuclear issue and advises dialogue, although there are reservations about the ability of regional governments to influence the Pyongyang regime.

Kim Chang-ki, the foreign news editor of South Korea's nationalist Choson Ilbo, deplores what he sees as the naivety of those South Koreans who told a recent survey that the North was not targeting the South with its nuclear weapons.

He says this is an "extreme slackening of national security consciousness", as even if the North were in fact targeting Japan or the US, any conflict with them would inflict great damage on the South.

He also accuses the South Korean Government of failing to communicate the danger to the public through the state media and of making only a "pro-forma" statement about the North's actions.

Moderation welcomed

The more conciliatory Chungang Ilbo praises the US for not cutting off food aid or declaring the North's nuclear activities a crisis.

The only result of sanctions would be to make North Korea more self-reliant China's Global Times

"This change from a hardline policy to a more moderate one is positive for the smooth resolution of the incident," it says in an editorial.

A military option would endanger the region, the paper says, and so the only hope is for the US to persuade neighbouring countries to put pressure on the North and itself to proclaim itself open to dialogue.

The paper also suggests that the US should try to understand that personal attacks on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il will only prompt intransigence from the regime's "life-or-death" approach.

Writing in Singapore's Straits Times, columnist Tom Plate assesses China's dilemma over North Korea.

He writes that the US is China's most important foreign policy relationship, and as such the North Korean problem is highly unwelcome for China.

He thinks China is inclined to stand by and let South Korea and Japan take the initiative over the North, but fears that neither country has enough clout to impress Pyongyang.

China scathing

China's Global Times is scathing about US sanctions against the North on the grounds that Pyongyang relies little on foreign trade.

"The only result of sanctions would be to make North Korea more self-reliant," it says, adding that this "would not bring down the regime".

Columnist Frank Ching, writing in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, sees the confrontation as spiralling out of control.

He acknowledges that Pyongyang has violated the 1994 US-North Korean Agreed Framework by embarking on a covert nuclear weapons programme, but criticises the US for refusing dialogue.

He says neither China nor Russia is likely to take action against North Korea, so the only solution is a peace conference involving all regional players plus the European Union to provide international guarantees for the framework.

"By taking the issue out of the bilateral arena, any agreement would be sheltered to a large extent from American domestic pressures," he concludes.

'Cruel game'

Writing in Japan's Sande Mainichi, political analyst Takanori Ishimori sees North Korea as trying to take advantage of tensions between the US and South Korea's incoming president.

Trends in the Korean Peninsula have become a cruel game," he says, "of North Korea versus the world community on security issues, and the Koizumi government is engulfed in the vortex".

Japan's relations with the North have been preoccupied by the issue of the kidnapping of Japanese citizens, and Mainichi sees Japan as having little choice but to follow the "hardline" US lead.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.