Word: ils
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...risk for Kim Jong Il is that citizens with new access to radios and VCRs are learning that their miserable status is not inevitable. "Now people's minds are more open," says Park, the television trader. "They are all demanding better living standards." Dragging a color TV from China to sell in a Korean market may not be the way that revolutions normally start. But such flickers of enterprise may yet light a fire that could consume the regime. --By Donald Macintyre/ Seoul
...Jong Il has long taken a personal interest in staging North Korea's biggest celebration: his birthday. Typically, Feb. 16 is marked by fireworks displays, mass loyalty pledges, forced pilgrimages to Kim's mountaintop birthplace and the sudden appearance of food--gift bags of candy and cookies for the children unlucky enough to be born in such an isolated, impoverished and tyrannical land...
...party talks strategy; Pyongyang is now restating its longstanding demand for one-on-one dialog with Washington, and the U.S. will likely find that South Korea, China and Russia all endorse this call for the administration to drop its aversion to talking directly to the regime of Kim Jong-Il. Hardliners in Washington are claiming vindication, arguing that the North's announcement shows that talking to the regime does nothing to deter it from the nuclear path. They may be right, although China and South Korea may be inclined to read the latest North Korean announcement as simply...
...hawks in Washington can point to the fact that the North pursued its weapons program in secret even when it was committed to a deal with the Clinton administration as evidence that Kim Jong-Il is engaged in a game of deception designed to buy time, win concessions and go nuclear anyway. The hardliners have a tougher time, however, selling their own remedy, which involves tightening the economic noose around North Korea in the hope of forcing the collapse of its regime. Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld noted Thursday that "I don't think that anyone would characterize the leadership...
...North Korea back into the six-party talks, two conditions must be satisfied. First, the Bush Administration must stop insulting and overtly threatening Kim Jong Il by talking about "regime change" or "regime transformation." That condition may have been satisfied, at least for the moment, by the moderate tone of the State of the Union address. Second, as in the past, China must offer a suitable financial inducement to Pyongyang to come to Beijing...