Word: ils
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Even since before the mystifying Kim Jong Il took power in 1995, the outside world has tried mightily to figure out how the North Korean regime works. Spy satellites are trained on suspected nuclear sites 24 hours a day. The U.S.'s "Big Ear" - the National Security Agency - eavesdrops on communications. Defectors from the North have been thoroughly scrubbed and spies have been recruited. During the presidency of George W. Bush, diplomats from the U.S. and four other countries talked, on and off, for years with their counterparts from Pyongyang...
...North Korea is already the world's most isolated country. The only thing that would meaningfully "deepen" that isolation would be for China to shut down trade entirely across its border - something Beijing has never given any indication that it's prepared to do. The idea that Kim Jong Il's regime even cares if the nation's isolation "deepens" is dubious at best. As for the U.N., it met in emergency session just after the long-range missile launch in April and gently tightened sanctions that were already having no demonstrable effect on North Korea's behavior...
...Bush years. But Beijing may be coming to the reluctant conclusion, if it hasn't already, that North Korea means what it says: it intends to be a state armed with nuclear weapons, whether the rest of the world likes it or not. (See pictures of Kim Jong Il...
...North Korea they see is the one they get; that perhaps, on the question of nukes, it simply can't be bribed? North Korean leaders have long cited the year 2012 as being particularly significant for their country. It will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the nation's founder and Kim Jong Il's father and predecessor. Jong Il, now 67 and ailing after suffering a stroke last summer, is thought to be arranging a succession now; foreign intelligence analysts believe he wants to pass power onto to his youngest son, 26-year...
...bargaining chips. And the bargaining can only be with Washington, which Pyongyang has recognized for some time as its best hope for surviving. From the North's point of view, any bargain would have to take the form of a new package deal that would reaffirm to Kim Jong Il that the U.S. is not hostile to the regime, accepts its legitimacy and is willing to provide long-term development assistance. Only the U.S. can persuade the leadership in South Korea not to seek to absorb the North or undermine it - so long as North Korea terminates its plutonium-bomb...