Word: pyongyang
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...have statements from Thomas Hubbard, who was President Bush's ambassador to South Korea during his first term, saying Bolton misrepresented Hubbard's views about the bitingly anti--North Korea speech Bolton gave in July 2003, just days before the launch of delicate six-nation talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear-weapons program. The speech--in which Bolton vilified Kim Jong Il as a "tyrannical dictator" and said life in North Korea was a "hellish nightmare"--infuriated the North Korean government and, U.S. diplomats say, nearly torpedoed the talks. In defending his undiplomatic language, Bolton told...
...time when the situation on the Korean peninsula is deteriorating and the need for multilateral diplomacy is mounting. North Korea has already declared itself a nuclear power, one that is entitled to formal disarmament talks like any other nation with nuclear arms. It is impossible to verify if Pyongyang really has the Bomb, but neighboring countries think it unwise to test whether Kim Jong Il is bluffing. So getting Pyongyang back to the negotiating table?the "six-party talks" that the North walked out of last June?becomes more urgent by the month. Recently, the apparent shutdown of a reactor...
...deep-sixed relations with Japan by admitting that North Korea kidnapped 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and held them for decades. He tried repairing the damage by sending five of the abductees home in the following months. The remaining eight, according to North Korea, had died. Last November, Pyongyang returned to Japan the cremated ashes and bone fragments of Megumi Yokota, who was kidnapped in her hometown of Niigata in 1977 at the age of 13, and allegedly committed suicide in 1994. Tokyo ran DNA tests on the remains and announced they weren't Yokota's. Public anger...
...became an invaluable partner in addressing the North Korean nuclear crisis that flared up the following year when the Hermit Kingdom decided to reclaim its place in the headlines from Osama bin Laden by declaring that it had already gone nuclear. Lacking any palatable military options for dealing with Pyongyang but reluctant to accede to its demand for direct talks with Washington, the Bush administration came to rely on six-party talks involving itself, North Korea, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea as the forum to negotiate with Pyongyang. Getting the North Koreans to attend, much less cut a deal...
...process has thus far failed to deliver an outcome acceptable to Washington; Pyongyang greeted Secretary Rice's arrival in Asia with an announcement claiming to have expanded its nuclear arsenal. But it established a kind of holding pattern in the U.S. relationship with China, during which the Bush administration focused on its war in Iraq and related matters. For China, the period represented an opportunity to consolidate its astonishing strategic gains assembled in line with what some in its foreign policy establishment call a policy of ?concealing strength and waiting for opportunities.? China has no need to exert itself...