Word: jong
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...what goes on inside its borders - North Korea can also be predictable. Since at least the early 1990s, Pyongyang's relations and level of engagement with its neighbors and with Washington have swung wildly from outright hostility toward rapprochement and back again. No matter how tense things get, Kim Jong Il (like his father Kim Il Sung before him) always steps back from the ledge and tries to re-engage...
...head of intelligence Kim Yang Gon - to the funeral for the late South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. The delegation stayed an extra day, requesting and getting a meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung Bak. According to South Korean news accounts, they carried a "conciliatory message" from Kim Jong Il. Historically, the North's intention has been to evoke a "euphoric reaction in its opponents for simply returning to the previously unacceptable status quo," says Bruce Klingner, former deputy head of Korean analysis at the CIA. (See pictures of Bill Clinton's North Korea rescue mission...
Obama debriefed Bill Clinton face to face last week; details of the message that the former President carried from Kim Jong Il are not yet known. But make no mistake, the whiff of horse flesh is again in the air. For now, according to diplomats and officials in Seoul, both the Obama Administration and its allies in South Korea are in agreement: under no circumstances will they back off their demand for complete denuclearization in the North. But a senior official in Seoul tells TIME that South Korea will allow the disbursement of economic aid to the North "in parallel...
...overarching question, for both the U.S. and South Korea, is whether Pyongyang will get rid of its nuclear program as it has twice agreed. But Cheong Seong-Chang, director of Inter-Korean Relations at the Sejong Institute, notes one important difference: Kim Jong Il has been sick, and has apparently taken steps to arrange a dynastic succession for his youngest son, Kim Jong Un. It's possible that Kim may want to do a deal once and for all. Suffice to say that the Obama Administration has little choice but to see whether that's true...
...policy also clashed with that of then incoming U.S. President George W. Bush, who famously told a journalist that he "loathed" Kim Jong Il. A summit meeting between the two ostensible allies went poorly. At one point in a 2001 summit, Bush publicly called the South Korean head of state "this man," instead of President Kim. Kim's supporters in Seoul were furious. Both sides would later acknowledge that the two Presidents had very differing views on how to deal with Pyongyang. (Read about Kim Jong Il's secret family...