Word: jong
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After all these months, the West has little idea what Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il, the designated successor, are up to. Are they bent on extorting the best combination of diplomatic and economic benefits for a pledge of good behavior, or are they simply determined to build an atomic arsenal? Donald Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, argues, "The North Koreans want a face-saving way out of the corner into which they have painted themselves." He thinks the U.S. ought to specify exactly what benefits the North will reap if it gives...
...going to bargain away." The diplomatic fog, he thinks, has all been cover for a determined bomb program. Norman Levin, a senior analyst at the Rand Corp., believes North Korea is bargaining, but not about economic aid or diplomatic recognition. The issue is securing the succession of Kim Jong Il, who does not have the popular following or revolutionary credentials of his father. But, says Levin, if the younger Kim "outsmarts the Americans and keeps the nukes, it would be a great victory for his legitimacy...
...West is now waiting to see whether Pyongyang backs down. Some analysts are sure the end of the diplomatic road has already been reached. They argue that the regime and especially its unproved heir apparent, Kim Jong Il, view an atomic program as the trump card of their credibility and will not forgo it for anything. Other experts think Pyongyang might eventually give up its nuclear dream, but only in exchange for massive economic aid, a guarantee of Western support for Kim Jong Il's succession and a withdrawal of U.S. troops from the South -- concessions neither Seoul nor Washington...
When North Korean and American diplomats emerged after an hour of secret negotiations in a basement room at U.N. headquarters last week, Pyongyang's ambassador Ho Jong stopped to talk briefly with reporters. North Korea, he declared with satisfaction, had made some unspecified proposals aimed at resolving the dispute over his country's nuclear program...
North Korea's Kim Jong Il, 51, wears high-heeled shoes and a bouffant hairdo in an attempt to look taller. He is a poor speaker and worries whether he can match his father's commanding power. But even those who laugh loudest at his vanities take one of his indulgences quite seriously: Kim, who has taken over day-to-day dictatorial duties from his 81-year-old father, "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung, appears determined to build a secret arsenal of nuclear weapons. His government had threatened to quit the 150-nation Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons...