Word: pyongyang
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...moment, the primary obstacle to Pyongyang's receiving more international donations in exchange for false promises to dismantle its nuclear weapons program is U.S. President George W. Bush, who has stated that he will not be blackmailed. Last week, however, Pyongyang executed a deft end-run around Bush. North Korea's play was to invite an unofficial delegation of Americans (including former...
...complex. As the would-be dealmakers settled into their hotel rooms, North Korea's news agency pitched a "bold concession" for ending the nuclear impasse: in return for an end to Washington's economic sanctions and a resumption of free supplies of energy from the U.S. and its allies, Pyongyang would "refrain from [the] testing and production of nuclear weapons and even stop operating [its] nuclear power industry...
...figured out a formula for extracting protection money from abroad in return for promising to scrap the nukes: make a deal, break the deal, then demand a new deal for more, issuing threats until you get what you want. So far, it's worked pretty well. Pyongyang got the previous President Bush to remove all U.S. nukes from South Korea to grease the 1991 North-South deal for the "denuclearization" of the Korean peninsula. Pyongyang was caught cheating on that understanding?so it threatened to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire," and landed an improved deal from the Clinton...
...October 2002, North Korea was once again caught cheating on its nuclear freeze arrangements?this time, with its secret, highly enriched uranium program. So what did Pyongyang do? Naturally, it upped the ante. It kicked out all the inspectors called for under the Agreed Framework and tore up its copy of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Kim started saying the D.P.R.K. possessed nuclear weapons and that it might be time to test, or sell, one. And it began asking for a lot more foreign cash to keep things quiet in the neighborhood. Under last week's proposal, North Korea would...
...looks as if Pyongyang's shakedown artists have judged their international market correctly. Western and Asian diplomats are whipping out their calculators to figure the new price for postponing a North Korean nuclear breakout. Last week, Beijing lauded North Korea's "further willingness" to "stop nuclear activities"; in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell hailed the offer as "a positive step" that "will allow us to move more rapidly toward the six-party framework talks." Lost in this feel-good chorus was any apparent recollection of the original objective of talks with the North: namely, to hold Pyongyang...