Word: pyongyang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...perpetually frosty state of relations between North Korea and the U.S. has meant that Washington's diplomats don't rack up many frequent-flyer miles traveling to the isolated capital of Pyongyang. Prior to last week, the last time a senior American diplomat visited was October 2002, and then only to confront the North with secret intelligence about its nuclear-weapons program. But on June 21, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the U.S.'s lead negotiator in the six-party talks aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nukes, showed up in Pyongyang unexpectedly, and this time...
...perpetually frosty state of relations between North Korea and the U.S. has meant that Washington's diplomats don't rack up many frequent-flyer miles traveling to the isolated capital of Pyongyang. Prior to last week, the last time a senior American diplomat visited was October 2002, and then only to confront the North with secret intelligence about its nuclear-weapons program. But on June 21, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the U.S.'s lead negotiator in the six-party talks aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nukes, showed up in Pyongyang unexpectedly, and this time...
...unmistakably hopeful sign that the deal Pyongyang signed in February but ignored until last week was still in force, and that North Korea dictator Kim Jong Il might actually be living up to its terms. Days after Hill's visit, North Korea allowed into the country a group of U.N. inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who are there to verify the shutdown of the plutonium reactor at Yongbyon. Pyongyang has also agreed to account for and eliminate its stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-making material the North may have accumulated in the years since Kim kicked...
...million tons of additional fuel oil or its equivalent to power its electricity grid) as well as a long-sought diplomatic concession: direct negotiations with Washington that could eventually lead, according to the agreement, to normalization of ties between the U.S. and North Korea. As a signal to Pyongyang that the Bush Administration means what it says about establishing diplomatic ties, Hill in a June 22 press conference in Seoul said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was prepared to attend six-party talks in Beijing this summer. That would be the first meeting between a U.S. Secretary of State...
...Washington has been bartering with North Korea over nukes for 13 troubled years. The first time Pyongyang promised to halt nuclear-weapons development was in 1994, a deal that was eventually abrogated after the U.S. accused the North of conducting a secret program to enrich uranium for bombs. The level of mistrust on both sides is deep and abiding. "It's never a straight line from point A to point B, no matter what [the agreement] the North has signed might say," acknowledges one diplomat involved in the six-party talks. "You obviously hope for the best...