Word: kim
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...pessimistic; after all, Pyongyang did return to the negotiating table this week after boycotting the talks or nearly a year. But after the resumed six-party talks aimed at bringing the North's nuclear program to an end concluded in Beijing, Friday, it was depressingly clear that Dear Leader Kim Jong-il is in no hurry to end his newly-minted membership in the nuclear club. Pyongyang's delegates refused to even discuss the nuclear program, instead insisting that the talks first solve the issue of some $24 million in North Korean funds that are frozen in a Macau bank...
...Japan feels 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...
...Monday North Korea's delegate Kim Kye-gwan demanded the lifting of U.N. sanctions imposed after the October nuclear test, as well as banking sanctions previously imposed by the U.S., before it halts its nuclear program - a typically hard-line opening stance for Pyongyang. He also insisted that the talks be about "arms reduction," i.e., that North Korea be accepted as a nuclear power. The U.S. has no intention of doing that, of course. But Pyongyang appears to be insisting that before there is haggling over the precise contents of an incentive package to coax North Korea to retreat from...