Word: ils
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...insults for its nemesis, the United States. Pyongyang blasted George W. Bush in a newspaper editorial last week, calling the U.S. President "a first-class war maniac." A top Chinese Foreign Ministry official said the diplomatic taunts, particularly Bush's April comment calling North Korea's Kim Jong Il a "tyrant," had "destroyed the atmosphere" for productive negotiations. But this war of words has been escalating for years...
...Jong Il's idiosyncrasies can overshadow his atrociousness. With his bouffant hair, platform shoes, "pleasure groups" of attractive young women, and lusty appetite for fine wine and sushi, the North Korean dictator sometimes comes across more like a movie villain than a true menace. In Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea, veteran journalist Jasper Becker dutifully recounts the strange tales of Kim's extravagance. But the author is less concerned with the Dear Leader's personality quirks than with the murder and misery under Kim's brutal rule. To Becker, Kim Jong Il...
...That's an assessment he shares with the U.S. President. "After a succession of statesmen?Jiang Zemin, Vladimir Putin, Kim Dae Jung, Sweden's Goran Persson, Madeleine Albright?have returned home to tell us how rational, well informed, witty, charming, and deeply popular Kim Jong Il is, President Bush's judgement that Kim is loathsome seems the only honest and truthful one," Becker writes. He measures Kim's odiousness not just in nuclear weapons but in corpses. Kim and his father, Kim Il Sung, are responsible for the deaths of millions of North Koreans, he estimates, including as many...
...That sort of personal connection to the North Korean people animates the book. Becker challenges anyone he considers to be aiding and abetting their suffering. Former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with the North is denounced as a prop for Kim Jong Il's shaky regime. China, which treats refugees as illegal immigrants and repatriates them to face a nightmarish fate, is criticized for ignoring basic Geneva Convention obligations. The United Nations gets the harshest criticism. Becker spends a chapter cataloging the failures of U.N. aid agencies during North Korea's famine. Their chief...
...While the U.S. suspects the North has nukes already, a test might force the world to accept it as a member of the nuclear club?as happened with Pakistan and India, which detonated bombs in the late '90s. But North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il would be taking a huge gamble. Detonating a nuke would give Washington a stronger argument for imposing economic sanctions. Even Pyongyang's nominal ally China might react harshly, concerned that a regional arms race would ensue. On Thursday, U.S. President George W. Bush phoned China's President Hu Jintao to urge him to take firmer...