Word: kim
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...Kim is shrewd enough not to court annihilation by using a nuclear device. "He is very knowledgeable about what goes on in the international scene," South Korean President Kim Dae Jung recently told TIME. And yet Kim apparently is convinced that he will someday go to war with the U.S. According to Kim Hyun Shik, a former professor at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, the North Korean leader watched the Gulf War closely and even ordered a film produced that analyzed the weak points of the U.S. military. The conclusion: Iraq lost because it lacked the will to attack...
...DANGEROUS IS NORTH KOREA? THE answer has long been difficult to divine, given the insularity of the Hermit Kingdom and the erratic behavior of its leaders, first Kim Il Sung and now his son Kim Jong Il. At every turn since the beginning of the crisis last October, Kim Jong Il has repeatedly called Washington's bluff, ignoring warnings and raising the stakes. Kim chose not to buy more time by denying the U.S.'s evidence that he had started a secret uranium-enrichment program. The U.S. and its allies halted fuel-oil deliveries to North Korea; at that point...
...quest for a nuclear weapon has obsessed the Pyongyang regime since the 1950s, when Kim Il Sung began working to amass an arsenal potent enough to deter a feared U.S. attack. Though Pyongyang has made gestures suggesting it was ready to make concessions in exchange for aid and security guarantees, neither Kim Il Sung nor his son gave up the raw material for bombmaking or renounced the desire to obtain the Bomb; in their mind, doing so would sap the country's bargaining strength and make the regime's survival dependent on its neighbors' goodwill...
...failed to devise a strategy to thwart Kim's ambitions before he realizes them. Many Korea watchers in Washington say the White House's rhetorically bellicose approach toward Pyongyang--underlined recently by Bush's declaration that "I loathe Kim Jong Il," made to the Washington Post's Bob Woodward--has heightened the regime's paranoia about a U.S. attack and accelerated its nuclear rush. Says Derek Mitchell, who worked on Asia policy in the Clinton Pentagon: "People talk about North Korea being crazy, but it's not. It's purely rational for a nation with no assets being threatened...
...Kim's moves also betray a mounting desperation. Some North Korean defectors believe Kim is trying to stockpile nukes before the U.S. can coordinate an attempt to topple him. Other defectors say that few North Koreans would rise up to defend the regime if it came under threat. Since taking over upon his father's death in 1994, Kim has overseen a collapsing economy and a famine that killed more than 2 million people. The government cultivates a cult of personality around Kim--citizens are told to treat him as a demigod, and pictures of father and son hang...