Word: hwang
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Enough of a disaster to topple its 49-year-old communist regime? Or to scare its reclusive "Dear Leader," Kim Jong Il, into a last-gasp invasion of South Korea? Last week Hwang Jang Yop, the highest-ranking North Korean official ever to defect to the South, rattled nerves with a warning that Kim's million-man army was preparing for a suicidal attack. What's more, the North "is capable of scorching" South Korea and Japan with nuclear and chemical weapons, according to an article published by South Korea's largest daily newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, which secretly obtained...
...State Department was skeptical of Hwang's warning. United Nations inspectors believe North Korea was left with only enough plutonium to fuel about two bombs after it agreed to freeze its nuclear-weapons program in 1994. The Pentagon saw no evidence that Pyongyang was preparing for an attack and did not order the 37,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in South Korea to a higher alert level...
...with a sincere desire to end long-standing hostilities. North Korea reportedly also is asking for commitments of regular food aid shipments over the next several years before negotiations begin, an idea that both the U.S. and South Korea have rejected. Despite tough talk following damaging comments by defector Hwang Jang Yop that the North plans to "scorch" South Korea and Japan with chemical and nuclear weapons, it's clear that the rapidly disintegrating north desperately needs help fast. International relief organizations say the famine-ravaged country will be out of food sometime in May, putting an even greater urgency...
...good on similar offers of aid, most notably by pledging $10 million in relief after Nort h Korea made an emergency plea to the World Food Program. Incentives aside, some analysts say the sheer number of dilemmas faced by North Korea -- epitomized by the defection of high-ranking official Hwang Jang Yop -- may have it teetering on the edg e of collapse, and that, more than any promise of aid, is what could bring its leaders to the bargaining table. But North Korea remains difficult to read, and with its leader, Kim Jong Il, still wielding considerable power, anything...
BEIJING: Signs increased Tuesday that the war of nerves between North and South Korea over a high-ranking defector is nearly over. Echoing remarks by one of his spokesmen that Hwang may have fled of his own free will, North Korean dictator Kim Il Song grudgingly declared on state radio: "As the revolutionary song says, cowards, if you want to go, then go away. We will defend the red flag of revolution to the end." South Korean Prime Minister Lee Soo-sung told parliament his government was negotiating to have Hwang depart Beijing for Seoul as soon as possible. Letting...