Word: ils
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...announced it was restarting its plutonium-based nuke program, which it had frozen under the Agreed Framework, and expelled inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Then, having been been named to President Bush's "Axis of Evil," and having watched the Bush Administration knock off Iraq, Kim Jong-il did the only thing he could do to guarantee no one would mess with him: he went ahead and developed a bomb and exploded it this past autumn...
...have staked out such sharply different positions on the terms under which North Korea would dismantle its weapons, that the North seeks a deal. "The economic benefits for them are just too much to pass up; a deal is there to be had," says one Western diplomat. Kim Jong-il is the only one who can say whether that optimism is warranted. We'll find out soon enough...
...uniquely endangered by a nuclear-armed North Korea. While some of that fear has to do with Pyongyang's habit of testing missiles near Japan, or threatening to turn its former colonial occupier into a "nuclear sea of fire," the decisive change came in September 2002, when Kim Jong-il admitted to visiting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that Pyongyang had indeed been guilty of abducting Japanese citizens. Kim paid a heavy price for his uncharacteristic outburst of honesty...
...limits on Russian influence were made clear in July 2000 when Kim Jong-il pulled a fast one on Russia's then-rookie President Vladimir Putin. Back then, Kim told Putin - who visited Pyongyang en route to his debut G8 summit in Okinawa - that North Korea would scrap its missile programs if other countries agreed to blast its satellites into orbit for the purposes of "peaceful space exploration." Putin tried to play Kim's statement as a trump card in his case against Washington's plans to develop a national missile defense system. But, the following month, the North Korean...
...Russia was particularly upset when, despite its efforts to cultivate the Stalinist regime of Kim Jong-il, North Korea test-fired missiles toward waters inside Russia's economic zone. And Moscow is certainly more concerned about North Korea than it is with Iran's nuclear program - there's no payoff for Russia in Pyongyang's nuclear doings, and it has already caused plenty of trouble...