Word: korean
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...game of high stakes. The security and stability of the region has been under threat for more than a decade because of the North's nuclear-weapons program. Efforts to convince North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to abandon his nuclear aspirations, either with offers of economic aid or threats of economic sanctions, have been unsuccessful?and officials in Washington and Tokyo have often expressed frustration that China hasn't used its considerable leverage to force concessions from Pyongyang. North Korea depends heavily upon China, its largest trading partner and strongest ally, to keep its sick economy on life support...
...China and North Korea fought against the U.S. and South Korea during the Korean War and were once famously said to be "as close as lips and teeth." But their longtime alliance has become increasingly strained as China modernized its economy and prospered while the North remained isolated and stagnant. "China and the D.P.R.K. have enormous mutual distrust in spite of the fact that they have an alliance on paper," says Michael Green, who was senior director for Asian affairs for the Bush White House's National Security Council and met with Chinese officials to talk about nuclear proliferation issues...
...founded, says Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. In 1994, China's reduction of rice supplies to the North?part of a previous effort to force Pyongyang to negotiate over its nuclear-weapons program?contributed to a devastating famine. "The famine was the fault of North Korean mismanagement, of course, but it's clear that Chinese actions were the straw that broke the camel's back," Eberstadt says. If China halted aid today, "Who can say whether there might not be a civil war" in the North, says Kenneth Lieberthal, an international-relations professor at the University...
...been urging Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks, the multilateral forum created to negotiate an end to North Korea's nuclear program. Pyongyang's delegates walked out of the last round of talks in November, vowing not to return unless the U.S. lifts a freeze on North Korean assets at a Macau bank. That freeze was imposed to crack down on North Korea's trafficking in drugs and counterfeit U.S. dollars...
...Washington's interdiction efforts, and North Korea's record as a serial proliferator makes it a major target. The program was spurred by an incident in December 2002, when a Spanish warship intercepted--and then released--a Cambodian-registered freighter in the Arabian Sea that was manned by North Koreans and was carrying 15 North Korean--made Scud missiles bound for Yemen. At the time, there was no international legal authority for the weapons to be seized. The PSI changed that, and the U.S. insists the program has crimped North Korea's exports of weapons and matériel...